to ask your clothes drying arrangements ... and what I should do

[Dieu]

Sorry, a ridiculous topic for AIBU I know, but I find the replies on here very helpful and speedy.
We moved into our flat a couple of months ago, a Georgian basement. It's all very nice but the Edinburgh summer seems to be coming to an end, and I'm eyeing my 2 baskets of wet washing rather nervously.
I thought today would be glorious like the last few days, and that I'd be able to get it out on the line. Wrong, as it's pissing down.
Now that winter is approaching, I need to have a think about the best clothes drying option for us, and was hoping you nice folks might have some suggestions.
Points to consider:

• there are 4 of us, myself and my 3 children.
• unlike my neighbours above, we don't have the ceiling height for a pulley ... much as I'd love one.
• the flat has had damp in the past, so I'd rather avoid draping clothes all over the radiators. Heating is on the blink right now anyway! Aah, the joys of the older property ...
• we have a drylined outdoors utility cellar, which is where our washing machine lives. There is space for a tumble dryer but when we had viewings here with the previous owners, who had a tumble dryer in there, it smelt of damp. It no longer does. I've never had a tumble dryer, so want to do without one if possible. I guess I don't miss what I've never had. Our bikes and scooters are also in there, so there wouldn't be much space for anything else.
• I have a standard sized clothes airer, but it's too small and the clothes take ages to dry in here. We're in a conservation area with single glazing, so the condensation probably doesn't help.

My thought is that it might be best to get Lakeland's heated clothes airer. Plenty of space for all our clothes and it dries the clothes fully as heated, albeit over a longer period than a tumbler. It can't take as long as a standard clothes airer though. Reviews are good on the whole, some mixed and not brilliant. Does anyone here have one and would you recommend? Or should I just bite the bullet and go for a tumble dryer? Any info or recommendations would be appreciated as, like I said, I've never actually owned one (previous house was a new build with loads of indoor (dry!) space to hang up washing.

Many thanks in advance.

Love my three triered lakeland heated clothes dryer....as someone who always lived in flats its the only thing i can do. Sister who lives in a house uses one too.

Does a dehumidifier warm the room at all?

not the ones I have seen. Generally, the way they work is they have a little fan and blow the air over cold rods. the water condenses on the rods and drip into a receptacle. Pretty simple.

So, no. You'd have to get a separate space heater.

The one interesting I found is how effective a fan is. Even if the air is cold, air movement can do wonders. so, if you have a shed or other sheltered unheated place, a fan is a cheap way of drying clothes.

But take note of what someone said above. All these dryer replacing gadgets will likely be less good at drying clothes than an actual dryer, especially if damp is an issue. Also, per kilowatt, if you are going to do something like a combination of dehumidifier and space heater, that's going to get expensive. A tumble dryer is fairly inexpensive, though obviously large. if you can split the cost with some of other flats and put it in that common room it can really be cost effective.

I live somewhere it rains all the bloody time.

We got a very good condenser dryer with a 9kg load. No damp whatsoever, very energy efficient and very quick to use.

Can't recommend it enough.

Rains constantly where I live.

Condenser dryer with good energy rating (I have a Beko), preferably with a sensor function so it will automatically stop when clothes are dry.

I've done plenty of permeations of drying racks and dehumidifiers in the past. All are a faff and still lead to a damp house. A new efficient sensor condenser dryer is a no-brainer. I was v sceptical initially but I love it now. Always do laundry on fast spin so there's minimum water left in clothes.

We live in Edinburgh too, in a ground floor flat by the Water of Leith. We have issues with damp on Winter.

Thankfully we have an outdoor love which we use as long as it isn't raining or the Edinburgh haar out on force. When it is wet we hang washing inside overnight and run the dehumidifier. It's brilliant. The washing gets dry, the walls are not as damp and the room gets a little warmer as well. It's very snug with the heating on too.

Got the dehumidifier from Amazon. It's an Eco Air.

Dehumidifier does indeed warm the room slightly. It uses a heat pump - fridge technology - to cool the damp air and condense the water out of it. So it puts out heat like the back of the fridge does, but with a fan to actively circulate the air.

You may still need other heating if your room is very cold. And the dehumidifier is less efficient if the air is very cold.

I'd definitely go down the dehumidifier route. We got a great bargain on Groupon some years ago. Really efficient to run - or at least better than a tumble dryer - and especially if you put on over night.

Be warned though, it sucks moisture out of everything! So your house plants will need more frequent watering! I also wouldn't use it in a room you sleep in and if you do put it in the kitchen/bathroom put the plugs in the sink/bath and close the door. Much quicker that way!

You may be able to identify rooms where you can get away with drying better than in others condensation-wise.

I find those with a south facing window are miles better than those with north facing windows.

Yy to dehumifier!and it doesn't warm the room much,but if its dump it feels colder so it could help.I would go for a good even tho expensive one,I believe u can search and find a few threads about it on Mon.

Och, you're a wonderful lot! Thanks a million for your help. A dehumidifier isn't something I'd thought about all that much before; having previously lived in new builds, I'd never had the need! I can see that it would be a brilliant thing for our flat. Some are even big enough to dehumidify the whole place! Bonus is that we might be able to get rid of the silverfish (they love damp) that live in our hall cupboard, in a slightly more organic way than the insecticide I've been using!
This is maybe a daft question, but must it be switched on the whole time? Or just when I've got a washing out drying? And presumably all you have to do with it is empty the water inside?

Yes to being switched on all the time and you just pour the water away or use it to water the garden.

You might want to crunch the numbers but have you considered the prices of service washes at the launderette?

Its £5 for a large load to be washed and dried in this neck of the woods.

Tumble dryers are great but what do you do with clothes that have the no tumble dry label on them...

Mine switches on and off according to the relative humidity - it has presets for 40, 60 and 80% relative humidity, and once it's achieved that target will switch itself off.

60% is realistic if you're trying to keep a building dry and healthy; 40% is marked for laundry-drying, ie it will try to create as dry an atmosphere as possible to speed evaporation from the clothes.

We only ever use 60% and it dries a full load overnight in a closed and otherwise unheated room.

super cheap option - just a normal fan - i got one from the supermarket for £10 and stand it next to my ikea drying rack. it takes a couple of hours to dry the clothes and costs v little to run BUT it does cool the house and works best if ventilation is good (open window) so perhaps not great for your situation

Yes, dehumidifier. We used a small one with about a litre tank to dry clothes in our small london flat. it had single glazed, metal framed windows so the condensation was horrific if we didn't use the dehumidifier. For a family i'd get a bigger one - may cost a couple of hundred quid but will have much bigger tank and more reliable automatic on/off.

We haven't had to use it much since we moved to a house with more room for drying, and double glazing, but it has been brought down from the loft a couple of times when the weather has been wet for weeks and the drying situation became urgent!

BTW, supposedly the dehumidifier brings down heating bills slightly; it certainly adds to comfort by making rooms quicker to heat. This is because there will be less water vapour lurking in the air you're heat (water has a fairly high specific heat capacity, ie absorbs a lot of energy to increase temp by one degree).

Not sure the leccy cost of the dehumidifier doesn't outstrip gas cost of CH, but if you're running the dehumid anyway, it's an added bonus.

you're trying to heat

No experience of a dehumidifier but I do have the Lakeland heated drying rack and a washer dryer.
I only use the dryer for big things like towels but use the heated drying rack for pretty much everything else and it's great. It's cheap to run and doesn't take up much space. I leave things on overnight and it does help if you can move things around a bit as they dry to speed things up. Not sure if this would be the best option for a family of 4 though, I suppose it depends how much you need to put on at once?

I find that my condenser dryer also throws out quite a bit of heat (as it's in a relatively confined space) so I hang anything that can't be tumble dryed above it on a rail and they dry fairly quickly too.

I have a Lakeland dryer and it's brilliant. No room in this shoebox of a house for a tumbledryer so last October I finally got one. Wish I'd bought it sooner.

A tip for you when it's pissing it down for a few days running. Just wash small amounts and put it on the dryer, don't let the washing pile up if you can help it. I find having a lot of clothes on it makes them smell well... Not fresh. They're dry but could smell better. Although that could just be our clothes! And I always hang washing out when it's really cold and it won't dry as this way it seems to speed up the drying process when I put them on that dryer.

I'm about 20 miles from you right now, and theres no way your washings getting dry this week, or winter - I advise a tumble.

I live in Glasgow and we got a dehumidifier cos last flat was damp. Then noticed that it dried clothes so quickly without adding to the damp (it improved damp dramatically and I was surprised at how much water it produced). I could hang towels up before bed and they'd be dry in the morning.

I live in a flat and I have a spin dryer, gets loads more water out and cheaper to run than most of the other options I'd imagine.

Condenser tumble dryer as you have space and dehumdifier.
If you catch the washing as it finishes drying you can also minimise ironing by folding and putting away straight from the machine.
I have had one for 18 years, they do not cost a lot to run, if you use them correctly.