I Put a Toaster in the Dishwasher

I was once involved in a similar (unintentional) experiment with a multi-billion dollar defence radar. A several metres deep underground bunker, containing several 19" racks full of electrical/electronic gear, filled to ground level with a combination of mineralised surface water and mud during a storm.

What we wanted to do was cut the power, pump the water out of the bunker ASAP and immediately clean the whole lot with pure water.

What the (arse-covering) site manager did was nothing, not even cut the power, until a "risk-assessment" had been done. For the first few days we were able to peer into the bunker's hatch and watch der blinkenlights happily operating in the gloom underwater. That stopped after a few days. About a week later the risk had been assessed and a path of action determined: the power was turned off, the water was pumped out and everything was washed with pure water. By then electrolysis had dissolved just about every conductor in the system.

Electrical systems will happily cope with water in the short term, but the longer the exposure the less likely they are to survive. Time is part of the risk.

It is because people use heuristics to navigate their lives. Instead of doing complicated engineering reasoning all the time to ensure their safety they learn simple “rules of thumb”. These rules are incorrect in as much as they have both false positives (something which the rule prohibits, but is safe) and false negatives (something which the rule lets you do, but is not safe).

I’m a hobby jeweler and I use an ordinary household microwave to melt copper and silver to cast my projects.[1] At the same time “everybody knows” that you can’t put metal in a microwave.

What gives? Is everybody wrong? Of course not. It is just that the statement “don’t put metal in a microwave” is a simplified form of the true statement which would go something like this “don’t put metal in a microwave, unless you follow these safety precautions, and wear these safety gear, and your crucible is made of the appropriate materials, and your moulds are bone dry and …”. Aint nobody has the time to think about all the caveats and dangers when all they want is to warm their meals. So it is simpler, easier, and safer to tell people the abbreviated form of the rule.

1: here is a video https://youtu.be/Oim2QsDp0rY?si=CZrhg6ux1GfiDWqd

> These commenters are speaking authoritatively on subjects about which they are completely ignorant, but they are strident in doing so because they are repeating what everybody knows. They are intellectually secure in the center of a vast mob; their wisdom was received, not crafted.

This is an important takeaway for me, maybe even more than “electirc devices are washable”.

World is filled with conventional wisdom that limits us in countless directions. Knowing how things work empower us to break these “rules”.

A few years ago, an 8 port Cisco 2960 that was under my management went offline. This switch was in a plastic NEMA box mounted on the outside of a ski lift. When I went to imvestigate, I found that a small glacier had formed over the NEMA box, and had ripped the door off the box. When I got there, the box was full of ice, which was in the process of melting. The switch was still running, but the ice had ripped the trunk patch cable out - apparently the root cause of the switch going down. I unplugged it and extracted it from the ice, and dumped a not-insignificant quantity of water out from inside the switch. I let it dry out for a couple days, got a new cover for the NEMA box (which I screwed shut this time in addition to the little flip latch) and it's been running fine ever since. Who'da thunk?

My favorite example of conventional ignorance: some guy was traveling on a plane the girl sitting next to him asked him whether there was wifi available so she could browse the internet. This was about 20 years ago... and the guy was convinced that the girl was an idiot. "We were flying in the middle of nowhere, 20000 feet in the air, and this girl is asking me whether we have wifi?? Some people have no common sense!" Turns out there's a fine line between being an idiot and being ahead of your time.

It's always interesting to me to see what you can get away with washing/getting wet without ruining it. I bought a bunch of vinyl 45's off of eBay several years ago and they were pretty gross. I stumbled across a forum where someone recommended washing them with water and a little bit of dish soap. As you can probably imagine, a lot of people freaked out in the responses and said it was a terrible idea. I gave it a whirl because the records were cheap and they sounded perfect after they dried. There was no warping or damage, although a few of the labels got a little messed up (but the needle doesn't go there anyways, so I didn't mind). I guess you're supposed to use distilled water, but Chicago water worked just fine.

On a related note, I wonder if people around the world are familiar with electric showers. Essentially, it's a resistance similar to the one found in a toaster, placed right inside the showerhead. It heats the water as it flows through. People hearing about it for the first time are usually shocked that we don't die from electrecution.

R&D electrical engineer here! I have to do this sort of thing all the time and can confidently tell you it's pretty normal.

The real risk isn't really to the toaster (who cares, it's just a toaster, and even if it starts on fire when you plug it in, you're probably watching it pretty closely).

No, it's that you leach lead or other such nasties (sealing rubbers, PCB epoxies, what-have-you) into your dishwasher and start eating them when they get redeposited onto your dishes. Lead isn't that harmful... except when you eat it. Don't eat lead.

In fact, if you have a dedicated dishwasher for this (or ultrasonic cleaner! those are pretty awesome, most of the time, for most things!), I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to do this! You know what we call those kinds of things where I work? Parts washers. You know what we wash in them... circuit boards! It's fine! Circuit boards are cleaned with aqueous solutions all the time as part of normal manufacturing! If you don't have a dedicated dishwasher... well, I wouldn't do it then, but if you must, you'll want to run the dishwasher a few more times, empty, with a strong detergent, preferably a lead-chelating one. (You might also make one of those runs with dishwasher cleaner, and strike the whole "yearly dishwasher cleaning" task off your to-do list for the first time this... uh, decade?)

You will, of course, want to dry things well. This is both easier and harder with a toaster. Easier because, well, toasters get hot, and this will get any nooks and crannies dry. Harder because one of the tricks to get things dry faster after they come out of a parts washer is to rinse them in alcohol, because alcohol dries very fast. You, uh, don't want to do that with a toaster. At least not one you intend to run any time soon.

Jewish law requires some new utensils to be ritually immersed in water before use[1]. There are differences of opinion around electrical appliances, but I have successfully dunked toasters, cheese toasters, and many other small appliances, let them dry for a few days, and never had any issues.

In fact, had OP found this[2] article, they would have seen that

> Practice has demonstrated that immersion generally does not harm most equipment if allowed three days to dry out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tevilat_Kelim

[2] https://oukosher.org/blog/consumer-kosher/tevilas-keilim-a-p...

My son is starting his first week of high school. I am recommending to him that he pose related questions to his physics teacher:

- "Is it okay to wash a toaster in a dishwasher?"

- "Is it okay to put an electric hair drier in a fish tank when it is plugged in?"

And I am hoping he gets a very productive year of science for the effort.

I'd use de-ionized water and Simple Green (a citrus-based cleaner which evaporates at about the same rate as water), but I'd expect a toaster to survive once dry. I've cleaned several Teletype machines that way. The problem isn't water; it's solids left behind when the water evaporates, and corrosion.

Not all parts will survive this. Microphones and MEMS devices tend not to do well. Motors and transformers with paper insulation don't do well. Most modern electronics goes through a dishwasher-like process after assembly, to remove any excess solder and paste. A few parts have to be added past that point.

The anecdote of walking into a flooded band room to unplug a submerged power bar is uhh.... "shocking" to say the least.

I would never walk over to a live, submerged power bar to unplug it. Especially with your feet in the water. Very risky.

Whenever I think I've cracked the code on something and know better than everyone else, it's often the case I haven't accounted for everything.

From his PPS:

> until I planted my bare foot on that bare concrete floor a few inches from the submerged power strip, at which point I felt a mild but discernable tingle in that one foot.

I'll give up a clean toaster in exchange for not getting myself into those kind of situations.

The big issue is not the water that will dry if you wait but that the hot water will make something that is glued or something that has two materials that expand different when heated break.

There is no amount of letting it dry out or adding rice that will solve if things are apart.

I put USB keyboards in the dishwasher.

Having done that, I do recommend taking them apart and just washing the upper keycap board, and the elastic membrane underneath it.

The reason I recommend that is that the drying time takes long before all the water is gone from between the contact layers and all the keystrokes are reliable.

If it's okay for the keyboard not to be ready for use for a bunch of days, then you can just wash it as-is.

“GFCI” is maybe a bad name because it describes what the system is supposed to accomplish but not what it does.

It interrupts the circuit in response to a current imbalance between hot and neutral. Kirchoff’s laws… if the current is imbalanced, it must be going somewhere else.

Great article. I had an argument with a coworker how a normal breaker works and that it won’t just fail when exceeding the rated amp-age. That it can happily continue for minutes. And of course the biggest misunderstanding: Breakers protect the cables in the wall not humans. That they can do that as well is just a nice side effect.

Never the less, I would still argue to kill the power before stepping into water with an active mains line running through it.

Just a question. How about doing this experiment in 240 land? I would assume the result would be different?

Edit: replaced rated power with amp-age

The "running blow hair dryer in a water bucket or aquarium" story checks out: .https://youtube.com/watch?v=oJNbBP5MNE8

The relevant question here is: what version of NetBSD is the toaster running?

Today I learnt that pure water is not conductive and than tap water is a poor conductor at 120V which I believe is the american standard...

What about Europe's 230V ? Would he still have gone in the water to unplug the piano if he was in Europe ?

As a electronics person with microscope-level repair experience: the problem isn't the water, it is what is in it. And it can become an issue weeks later when residues of minerals and detergent combined with current flows corroded your contacts away, leakage current ts flowing in all kinds of unintended places. PCBs are laminated and can do funny things when treated wrongly. Whether that kills the device or not is hard to say without knowing what is inside it. If in doubt open it, wash everything with isopropanol and a toothbrush. Or you know, using a ultrasonic cleaner with the right solution.

Toasters and hair dryers (depends on the kind of course) are as low tech as it gets. Getting them wet is indeed not a big issue, when unplugged. But as a physics teacher he probably has heard about galvanization, oxidation and similar chemical things.. I hope. Corroded electrical contacts have a higher electrical resistance. Higher electrical resistances produce more heat. More heat produces higher resistance..

(2012)

I did this in 1994 personally. It was fine. I am not a scientist and did not overanalyze it. It seemed obvious to me it would be fine. For whatever reason, since that one time I have never had the need to run any other toaster through the dishwasher again.

This was a super simple basic toaster. I wouldn't do it with a modern one with all the various encoders and soft buttons and microelectroncs. Not for any scientific reason, just for similar reason as I wouldn't run my phone through the dishwasher.

He had me up to wading into the water. That seems unwise, and unnecessary when you could shut off the breaker first.

Also, as I assume others have pointed out, modern toasters are both electrical and electronic devices; I expect they wouldn't handle the dishwasher quite as well as older ones did.

Generally though, 100% on board with the author's point about strident repetition of common "wisdom".

I've done this with dirty keyboards before, it works pretty well actually!

> A colleague pointed out that toasters are cheap. So I tried it. Mine works, too. JD

That's the single best conclusion I've read.

I stopped watching the show Ozark because of the episode where the saboteur takes an AC line and drops it into the water by a dock in order to electrocute someone. I'm no expert in electricity, but I know that your body has to become a part of the circuit.

Similarly, the pivotal moment at the end of The Astronaut's Wife (1999) had me groaning.

I've always figured any device containing a capacitor would fry some part of the board when water short circuited it. Wrong thinking?

I am not educated in the US and never used toaster before entering the US, and I am surprised so many people think toasters can't be washed. Most electronic and electric products can be dried if you leave it there for a long enough time. I washed many of them throughout my life.

For my part, I ‘kept the faith,’ and continued searching for Reason.

This is science. Theory says one thing, but what does the evidence show?

My uncle had great fun hosing out his TV in the front yard, many years ago. It was the old CRT type with nice furniture type box, had years of dust built up and was causing problems he suspected in the high voltage. The neighbours raised eye brows, but all worked after.

One of Dave Rat’s old Red Hot Chili Peppers tour videos/blogs has him putting the channel cards from a very expensive analogue Midas sound desk in a dishwasher to fix them after somebody spilt beer over the desk during a gig. Worked great!

I have a similar but less extreme experience.

I have a Tommee Tippee prep machine for baby formula milk. The part it has water coming out got so dirty after months of use. Due to lack of sleep like any father of newborn does, I flip it upside down and clean it with running water, and then I found out all the water finds its way into the machine.

Then I completely disassemble it, I use a dehumidifier to blow dry air directly to the screen that water made its way between the glasses.

Then after it is completely dried, I put it back, it continued to work.

So happens I’m a physicist too.

Now I should find an electronics to throw into the dish washer. Unfortunately I already get rid of my toaster because it got so dirty, I should have kept it.

I like their post Eleven Senses. Great blog!

https://jdstillwater.blogspot.com/2019/12/eleven-senses.html

But what would happen if you Microwaved a Toaster?!

Bias and assumption are needed features of non-deterministic thought. We live in an infinite universe so thinking and exploring until you have truly 'got it right' would lead to death. I have built non-deterministic NNs (which are exceptionally effective by the way) and the key is the loss function and training for learning when to predict that the loop should exit.

I really like this article because it shows someone who keeps pushing their 'when to exit loop' training and the positive and negative implications of that.

Like all good writing, this article is not about the subject in the title. This is the pertinent line :

> They are intellectually secure in the center of a vast mob; their wisdom was received, not crafted.

It's funny because I was wondering exactly this on Monday. I never did try to put any electronics in the dishwasher, but, several times in the past, I was a bit amazed on how electronic devices - not rated as water-resistant - that got completely soaked, worked just fine after I turned them off and let them dry for some days.

In my past experiences, most stuff that got unusable was because water got inside the LCD display, and left some debris that was impossible to remove.

I decided to put my toaster in the dishwasher after that.

Your GFCI outlet may not always trigger:

https://youtu.be/SHGo-52wCDc?si=AzZ71UIpPYVjj31X

I was surprised that residential electrical wiring was such a nuanced thing. You ask a simple question like "why are neutral and ground connected?" to 10 electricians and you'll get 10 difference answers. I probably spent a good 5 hours to get to the bottom of it and now I have to remind myself again how it works.

Indeed, it does depend on the toaster. Conventional toaster OK as long as it fully dries. Some kind of fancy toaster with a microprocessor, well - it depends

it's nice to occasionally see a post-galilean mind

The line is between people who work in the real world and people who are mostly online.

In the real world, like a job site or auto shop, the hammer and flathead screwdriver are the two top tools. Generally abused and rarely mentioned in service manuals.

In the "online" world, every tool has strict boundaries and restrictions.

Please, please, clarify this bit for me.

> All that day, kids got to see Mr. Stillwater’s hair dryer running under water in a fish tank. I thought I knew about electricity and water, but what I possessed was Conventional Ignorance posing as Conventional Wisdom. Humbling.

Should I put the wifes running hairdryer into our fishtank to entertain our child?

This might be the best (at least most useful) post I have everr read.

If I change my mind I will let you know.

(2012)

I wonder how much the fraction of toasters that contain electronic components has increased since then.

I have cleaned keyboards and coffee pad machines in the dishwasher several times. Not sure it is recommended, but the things came out clean and after prolonged drying worked flawless every time.

Ooh, I love these points of Conventional Faith presenting itself as Reason. I would argue that most true Knowledge is actually knowing what is not true, yet commonly believed. Actually, if used wisely, you can execute arbitrages on financial markets for profit, aside from other social benefits, at the cost of appearing insane in the beginning. Peter Thiel says that almost every successful person has "secrets", i.e. things that they know about the world that fly in the face of Conventional Faith and that they therefore exploit to their advantage until it's a fait accompli. Personally, I have quite a few, which if I posted here, would get me downvoted like mad, even on HackerNews, but here are some of my LESS controversial ones:

* Cloud services like AWS actually take more time, resources, and headache to maintain than baremetal servers, whether at the scale of a few backoffice users or millions of consumers. Related: the vast majority (95%+) of apps could run on a single baremetal server and be more reliable than whatever cloud shit you use.

* Most SPAs are garbage. Unless you are building something like Figma, write backend code only, don't use a frontend framework like React, and when reactivity is needed, tie it to the backend with something like Livewire. Actually even Figma uses WASM.

* Using a framework like Laravel that makes the business logic easy is far more important than choice of a language based on its technical characteristics.

* People who are outwardly racist are often the easiest to work with, as a minority. And vice-versa, people who outwardly appear anti-racist are often masking a deeply inbred superiority complex and patronizing attitude (hello Democrats), and are the most difficult to work with unless you submit to their authority. Allowing open racism actually makes it easier for a minority to live, and I say that as a minority.

Oh I could go on but I'll stop here.

Why didn't he just turn off the fuses before rescuing the pianos instead of hoping it would be like the hair drying episode?

I often run my (PCB) boards through the dishwasher after soldering components to them. To clean off any flux that might be on them.

Love the distinction between "Conventional Wisdom and Conventional Ignorance" :)

I would fear the dishwasher would rust my Sunbeam vintage toaster.

Toasters are roach magnets

I was hoping they built a functional toaster inside the dishwasher, such that you could put bread in with your dishes, both would come out hot and ready, and the crumbs would be automatically washed away.

What we're told is realer than what we see.

> “Sorry #5, but a toaster is an electrical device, not an electronic one, and I’ve already soaked an electrical device in a fish tank for several hours, while it was running.”

Not entirely true. Most modern toasters have some sort of electronics in them

Unless the toaster's plugged in (and I don't see how it could be) AND as long as it dries completely, then it's probably fine.

<goes to skim the article>

Yeah, sounds about right.

> These commenters are speaking authoritatively on subjects about which they are completely ignorant

Welcome to the internet. First time here?

I used to ask electrical engineers who design building utilities if they ever touched a live wire with voltage running. If not, "how do you know it is really dangerous? How do you know it will electrocute you?"

They don't. EVER. Want to talk to me again if they don't have to. #ConventionalIgnorance

For reference, I touched 10k volts with microcurrents. It hurts! I touched 240 volts wire and felt the vibrations run up to my elbow before realizing what happened. It terrifies. And I touched 120v electricity leaking through a brick wall in vicinity of a lighting fixture. That hurts too much but doesn't kill.

Curious after reading the post, I asked GPT:

Sent by you: Can I put a toaster in the dishwasher?

Sent by Copilot: It’s not a good idea to put a toaster in the dishwasher. Toasters have electrical components that can be damaged by water, and it could be dangerous if water gets into the electrical parts. Instead, you can clean the exterior with a damp cloth and use a brush to remove crumbs from the inside.

Is there anything else you need help with?

Sent by you: I'm feeling adventurous and plan to let it dry out real well

Sent by Copilot: I admire your adventurous spirit! However, even if you let it dry out thoroughly, there could still be hidden moisture that might cause electrical issues or even pose a fire hazard when you use the toaster again. It’s really best to avoid putting any electrical appliances in the dishwasher.

If you’re looking for a safer way to clean your toaster, I can share some tips! Would you like that?

Sent by you: I did it anyway.

Sent by Copilot: Oh no! I hope everything turns out okay. Just to be safe, I recommend not using the toaster until you’re absolutely sure it’s completely dry, inside and out. You might want to leave it in a warm, dry place for several days.

If you notice any unusual smells or sounds when you do try to use it, it’s best to unplug it immediately and consider getting a new one. Safety first!

Is there anything else I can help you with?