To not have known this about tumble dryers? (Fuel bill related)

[HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd]

Not terribly exciting subject , sorry. I’m quite excited about possibly saving £££s though.

I’ve just worked out that my (fairly new) condenser tumble dryer costs about £1.25 a cycle to run, despite the fact I’m on a less-bad fixed rate.

A good heat pump dryer would apparently cost ~50p per cycle.

So £500 now for a better machine would pay for itself in 10-24 months. Tempted.

I knew there was a difference but thought it was a small difference. It took me 15 minutes tracking down the performance data and doing the maths to come up with those numbers.

I use mine a lot due to dogs, dodgy spine etc. So that’s potentially a massive saving.

Did everyone else know the difference between condenser and heat pump dryers was so dramatic?

YANBU = I had no idea.
YABU = Doh, it’s common knowledge.

18-24months^

I know there is a huge difference, but thats only because we need a new tumble dryer.

I have a heat pump but didn't know the difference was that extreme. I feel less bad about using it now!

This is it. You normally only look into appliances when one is dead or dying, don’t you?

I’m glad I got nosey.

Heat pump dryers are ✅
Tumble dryers are awful for the environment.

Iirc heat pumps take hours to dry according to posts I've read on here,I made a mental not never to get one!

www.mumsnet.com/talk/housekeeping/3021032-Hoover-think-its-fine-for-a-BASTARD-heat-pump-dryer-to-take-EIGHT-HOURS-to-dry-a-load

Hmm. TBH mine often runs overnight (something else probably disapproved of) so I wouldn’t necessarily notice.

To people dislike the longer time because it leaves them waiting for things? Or because it feels intuitively expensive (it isn’t)?

Eight hours?! Oh!

I did not know that. I've stopped using mine die to the costs. However it's easy in this nice weather, winter is going to be a nightmare

I knew already, but voted YANBU because most people don’t. In fact all the articles on “how to cut your energy bills” are written by people are still relying on energy studies that involve old tech, in some cases very old tech. They usually talk about energy usage if tumble driers for the early 2000s venting models that are pre+condenser even! For another example, the whole “turn off everything at the switch” tip is based on a 1990s study pointing to how much energy a VHS player sucks just plugged in. Todays tech pulls hardly any energy at all when plugged in and off. Literally it’s like 60p per year.

Its the same for the tumble dryer discussion. There was a recent cost of living crisis article proclaiming “miracle hack to dry clothes indoors in bad weather” and the miracle hack was to buy a dehumidifier. Of all the idiocy. A medium sized dehumidifier that you’d need to dry clothes on an airing rack indoors actually uses more KWh than a heat pump tumble dryer….and so costs more £ to run. In addition my heat pump dryer also pumps out dry warm air and so is a passive heat source bonus…can’t say that about a dehumidifier.

Mine doesn’t. It’s 1hr per 6kg load. I think many people overload dryers. They also don’t regularly clean the filter. Both can cause the dryer to run for hours and stuff to stay damp.

Doesn’t the dehumidifier make it easier to warm the house though by sucking all the moisture out of it moving the damp and therefore what you are left with is easier to heat ?

You wouldn’t have damp if you weren’t drying clothes indoors. It’s the wet clothes putting the moisture in the air in the first place. So, no the dehumidifier is just counter-acting the condensation damp you’re creating with wet clothes hanging inside.

Interesting, thank you. You sound very well informed.

We are a big family and do around 15 × 9kg loads per week. I tumble dry due to time - I need clothes dry quickly, otherwise the quantity of clothes currently being laundered is huge and take over the house/garden

Therefore a dryer taking longer than a couple of hours to dry a load cannot be for me.

I've got a Samsung heat pump dryer - it definitely doesn't take 8 hours to dry anything! On average, for a large load on the 'mixed' setting (so you don't have to sort out different types of fibres or clothes) it's usually between 2 and 2 and half hours. For a small load it's much less than that. If you've got a small load of, say, light cottons it sometimes takes half an hour. It's also got settings for towels and bedding, which means it senses much more accurately how long it should take. No matter what setting you choose, and no matter what the 'standard' start time (e.g. it always says 1 hour 30 minutes for a bedding cycle') it will stop when the clothes are dry.

Mine isn't even the top of the range one (you can get ones which can be operated from the 'smart objects' phone app). I've had it for 3 years. Yes, it cost a bit more than a standard condenser, but this one has probably paid for itself by now (as the OP has worked out too).

Oh, and the best bit is you can plumb it into the mains drains, so you never have to empty the water container - it just automatically goes into the drainage pipes and out with the other water from the sinks, toilets etc.

I have a Samsung 'add wash' washing machine too - the one with the little door you can add the odd dropped sock through to join the wash once it's started. Wouldn't be without that now, either!

Our washing takes that long on an indoor line for all but the thickest items. We have 3 tier heated airers, so you can boost the heat for an hour for 10p maybe (used to be 6p last year, so inflate from that), turn odd and everything'll be dry a few hours later. In summer we never switch on though, we load up early evening and then unload next morning, it's always dry by then.

*turn off

They don't actually take as long as they say they do at first! When I put mine on the default cotton program, it always says 2hr 30m at the start, but it never takes that long. It revises its estimate as the drying proceeds and it usually takes about 1.5 hours. Mine's wifi enabled, so I can see on the app how long it's estimating at any point, and it notifies me when it's done.

Not heard of a heat pump dryer. I dry most things outdoors where possible and for the things I do dry in the dryer, since reading about putting a dry towel in with the wet stuff, it’s cut down the dry time considerably.

I have a Beko RapiDry heat pump dryer. It has a sensor too to stop when things are dry. But on average it takes 1 hr to do 6 kg load. My washer takes 1hr 5mins so it’s easy to get through mounds of laundry when needed.

I did. But only because we got one a couple of years ago. Definitely takes longer than a regular tumble dryer, but certainly not 8 hours long...

TBF the “eight hours to dry a load” thread is five years old now. Heat pump dryers haven’t been in the market for very long. I expect the technology has been refined since then.

Oh, and the best bit is you can plumb it into the mains drains, so you never have to empty the water container - it just automatically goes into the drainage pipes and out with the other water from the sinks, toilets etc.

I save my water and use it to water my plants.