How low can you go?

How far will I go to save energy? I recently read the owner's manual for our dishwasher, that's how far.

Locating the manual was easy: Filing our collection gets done regularly. Actually reading one, however, generally means there's a crisis afoot. 

And there is. An environmental crisis. Were there energy savings to be found in how we wash our dishes? And if so, what are the tradeoffs? 

I turned to the manual in search of answers. I'll share what I learned by reading it — and by testing the results — so that you don't have to. 

Our machine, an Asko ASEA 1502, is made in Sweden, and some critical passages in the manual were lost in translation. The manufacturer relies heavily on symbols to tell the story. 

With some squinting, I eventually figured out there are three dials I can turn — or I should say buttons I can push — to save energy. 

The first determines the duration of the wash cycle. A second controls water temperature, which can range from 150 to 110 degrees. The third turns a heating coil at the bottom of the machine on or off, for extra oomph steaming away water during the dry cycle. 

The most energy-efficient scenario is the shortest wash cycle using the coolest temperature without the heated dry. We were doing the opposite. All three settings on our machine were maxed out, and had been for years. 

A week-long experiment was conducted, with lots of settings tested - by which I mean, I futzed with the buttons and then eyeballed the results. Did the dishes suffer? 

Yes, a little. They were clean as always. But cooler water evaporates less completely - and with the coil turned off tiny puddles appeared here and there among the otherwise gleaming glasses and plates. Opening the machine and letting the contents air dry helped. 

So did giving them a quick twist with a towel prior to stowage. I figure, it's the least I can do to help. And there's no going back. The manual was crystal clear in one regard: "For greatest energy savings do not use heat during drying." 

A couple extra tidbits from the week, in the name of every little bit counts: 

• Dishwashers do themselves need to be cleaned - at least ours does. Scraping clean a series of filters ahead of the drain made a significant difference in how the dishes turned out -more significant than water temperature.

• Loading the machine with care also made a difference. Pointing the silverware up in the basket instead of down mattered most. (Sharp knives should point down, for safety.)

• Turn off the machine altogether between use instead of leaving in standby mode. Though the energy saved is "negligible" according to the manual, it's a good habit to be in with all appliances, for minimizing the effect of so-called "energy vampires."

• We'd been using too much detergent, filling the receptacle each time. The manual recommends this only for "hard" water with high mineral counts. It took two minutes on our local water district web site to learn our water was relatively "soft," requiring just one tablespoon of detergent.

In addition to energy, a fringe benefit was the amount of *time* saved. Running the machine on the most energy-efficient settings took 70 minutes instead of more than two hours — creating plenty of time to read up on my refrigerator.

Sam Silverstein is the editor of Yahoo! Green.