I'm sure we all know dehumidifiers as a means to reduce indoor humidity and produce drier, healthier air for our homes. However, I'd never thought of them as a way to quickly, efficiently and cheaply dry laundry until I read this BBC report.
Given the high cost of electricity, tumble dryers have become much more expensive to use. Drying a single load of laundry could cost more than £1.50 (approximately US $1.91), according to the makers of energy tracking app Hugo. In comparison, a dehumidifier can help to dry clothes hung up indoors in just a few hours while only costing pennies.
Rachael Peterson, an electronics engineer who lives in Oxfordshire, uses her dehumidifier to dry out clothes hung up in an enclosure under her stairs. She does this overnight, on a cheaper electricity tariff, and says it costs less than 4p (about 5 US cents).
"The clothes are dried down there in a matter of hours," she tells BBC News. "Everything's dried properly."
There's more at the link.
I know a lot of people are battling to pay high electricity bills this winter. Admittedly, it costs to buy a dehumidifier (prices on Amazon range from $45 up to several hundred dollars), but if one can be found at a reasonable price, the savings in electricity to dry one's laundry might pay for it relatively quickly - and from then on, it's gravy (financially speaking). There are also the general health and environmental benefits to be considered. Having just dried out our home after an incident with rather too much water, I'm keeping those firmly in mind!
Peter
24 comments:
Or, one could harness the power of the sun and use a stinking clothesline!
Or, cheapest of all, use a clothesline?
A conventional dehumidifier is basically an air conditioner, so its power use is not negligible. Would it be that much more expensive to run the dryer in an apples-to-apples comparison, e.g. at the same time of day so the same rates?
Clotheslines outdoors are an excellent thing, if you're allowed to use them. However, a bunch of HOA's restrict that on the grounds of "unsightliness", and many apartment buildings forbid drying laundry on the balcony for the same reason. For people stuck in that trap, a dehumidifier may be a low-cost option (particularly compared to a laundromat dryer).
We always ran a dehumidifier in our semi finished basement which also had clotheslines strung across for winter and/or rainy days. This in northern Illinois where it could get quite humid in the summer months.
thing is though that having too little humidity, particularly in winter does have some negative effects including dry sinuses, static electricity, and drying out wooden furniture which can shrink the wood and separate glue joints.
Where I live, it's too humid most of the time to rely on a clothes-line. But I'm surprised that another point has been missed: When you hang your clothes up to dry instead of using a tumble-dryer, your clothes last a whole lot longer. Tumble drying abrades your clothes against each other and beats them up - as evidenced by your lint filter.
I've had a dehumidifier in the closet for a very long time, and haul it out occasionally when there's a need. It's infrequent, but as a tool it's invaluable, if you have the room to store one.
Allow me to point out that this is England in winter. Sun? What sun?
My apartment building doesn't allow drying laundry on the balcony, but Amazon has a foldable laundry rack for air drying clothing or towels for $29 that I use indoors.
Exercise with care; friend lost everything when dehumidifier malfunctioned in the night. Escaped with kids and dog, everything incinerated.
We have been doing without a dryer for almost 3 years now.
When we fled the big city, took our brand new w/d stack.
No gas hookups, I'll get it setup sooner or later.
Drives mother in law crazy, and my mother when she came to visit.
We have a big basement now and that's where I set clothslines.
Saves money, easy to do and well, driving the mom in law batty is just a bonus.
Those who live in an environment where the humidity is lowered by the air conditioner probably aren't going to be doing much of this. I could well be wrong, but I imagine the humidity in Oxfordshire is naturally quite a bit lower than here in the Silicon Swamp.
Actually do something like this now.
Have a dehumidifier running in our downstairs and regularly hang pants & such to dry. I have a Kill-A-Watt meter on the outlet and it shows ~3.75 amps when the compressor is running. Since it runs away, the clothes drying aspect is just a side benefit.
Or, as we do here in Florida during the winter, hang your clothes on a portable closet thingy under a ceiling fan.
As to clothesline, yeah, that's great, in low humidity areas, but some parts of the (Liquid) Sunshine State your clothes are drier when they first come out of the washing machine than hanging them outside (not serious, just seems so.) And because of the humidity your clothes will mold outside before the sun can dry them (totally serious on this one, if it's not a hot hot hot day, your clothes can mildew in the sunshine, no, serious, have seen it and experienced it several times.)
I guess I'm old enough to remember my Mom sharing a clothesline with the apartment building next door ~ 25' away (in the Da Bron'x); the only problem was the soot settling on the clothes from the garbage incinerator (each building had one).
Some of us also have to deal with dust browning the white load if it is outside, and some apartment complexes and condos forbid hanging laundry on balconies and patios.
TXRed
For reference, The US DOE "standard load" for clothes dryer testing is going to need about 5 pints of water removed for the clothes to be "fully dry".
Dryers are one of the biggest electrical loads on our homes -- hence the 30A 240V plug. But the usage is generally short, with a typical load needing less than 40 minutes of use. The 'de-humidifier method' is lower instantaneous energy use, for many times the length of time, and brings its own space (and mold potential) issues.
There's a good article (by a greenie, but an ethical scientist/engineer) on the efficiency of clothes drying here: https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2010/data/papers/2206.pdf
Their takeaways:
• Natural-gas dryers are cheaper to operate and have lower environmental impacts than an electric dryer.
• High washer spin speeds are more efficient than evaporating the water in the dryer, so save money by getting as much of the water out before drying as you can.
• Drying full loads is more efficient than a larger number of partial loads.
• A lower heat setting on the dryer is more efficient than higher heat settings.
• A “less dry” setting is more efficient than “normal” or “more dry.”
My takeaway: If you have the option of using "sensor" cycles rather than "timed" cycles, you should be doing so so that you're not wasting energy heating dry clothes. I've annoyed my wife (and several housemates in the years before marriage) by insisting that any dryer we buy has this feature, but it saves in the long-run on both energy cost and longevity of clothing.
That assumes you have 'room' to string wet clothes, etc. somewhere in your house, or you do very little laundry...
Interestingly a friend of mine has a no doubt very expensive Swiss Made tumble dryer which does exactly this rather than having a heater and fan, hence achieving a better than average 'Energy rating'.
Use caution. Dehumidifiers are now made in China and their electronics are........ahhh..........short-lived. There is a warranty period, but you'll notice that no retailer offers an extended warranty. There's a reason for that.
IIRC, Market Ticker had a column on that. Search his site.
I hang my clothes on a pole running across a room, with a fan pointing at them. I think it may help with the dry air from the forced air heater. Clothes dry fast with the low humidity heat. Leave an air gap between the hanging clothes. The fan speeds up the process, and in a high humidity area, might be necessary.
One major beneficial side effect of NOT using a tumble clothes dryer is that your clothes don't wear out nearly as fast as you are used to. That lint screen that you clean after each use? That is your clothes going away bit by bit.
I started hanging inside to stop my Banana Republic classic style cotton clothes from shrinking. A few years later, it dawned on me that my clothes were still looking good, not getting raggedy as they aged. What you don't get is the fluffy, soft feel that the dryer gives your clothes. I still use the dryer for any cotton underclothes. High tech underclothes get hung, though, for longevity, due to expense.
The three clothing eaters are the dryer, the washer, and wearing them. Other than direct damage while wearing, it appears that the dryer has the single most destructive effect on clothing.
I'm paying $1.75 to dry a load of clothes. Used to pay $1.50 but now the coin slots are gone and it is all electronic. Since it is on a timer, I start pulling things out at 20 minutes as they dry, and hang/fold rather than let them 'burn'. It slowly damages the collar.
We have a tumble dryer because the former owners of our house left it behind. In the eight years we've lived here I think I've used it twice in a pinch.
In the summer all laundry goes outside to dry, so I schedule wash days according to the weather.
In winter, the laundry goes on retractable clotheslines in the kitchen or in the TV room, both of which have a woodstove. The stove is on to heat the house so the laundry drying is essentially free and quite fast.
For anyone who doesn't like to hang laundry because of stiff, scratchy bath towels, try this: take the towels out of the washer, put them in your dryer on high heat for 3-4 minutes, then hang them out to finish drying and they'll be much softer. Trying to soften them up by putting the towels in the dryer for a spell after they've dried outside doesn't work very well. We don't mind scratchy towels so I don't bother with the dryer bit.
Something to consider when reading that article is the cost per Kwh in the UK. Apparently it's around 30P/Kwh. (it varies by season and location. There's a chart about 1/3 down the page here https://energyguide.org.uk/average-cost-electricity-kwh-uk/ ).
My provider is charging less than 7c/Kwh. (https://www.inlandpower.com/residential-rates)
Currently the conversion rate is around 1.27:1 for USD to GBP. Pence/Pound is the same as Penny/Dollar; 100:1, so 30 Pence converts to around 38 Cents.
If the average is 30 pence/Kwh, and they are citing 1.50GBP for a dryer load, then maths* says they are using approx 5Kwh per load.
That would cost *me* less than 35 cents. A full quarter of my average monthly bill is the connection fee!
*as the Brits say it ;-)
One GOTCHYA we ran into with a "sensor" setting on a dryer was that it used a 'cycle signal'... which BEEPS and BUZZES and BLARTS at every unknown change as things go (not even explained in the manual - I've read it!) but the ONE TIME it does NOT alert? When it's DONE! The only time any signal is actually desired.
This does help with the whole hose humidity in winter, just a little bit
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