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.

We went for a HP beko a couple of years ago and it's amazing. We were told the heat pumps take the heat from around it rather than use energy to create that heat (which makes condenser/tumbles much more expensive) and recycles that warm air whilst taking out the moisture to dry clothes at a lower temperature so definitely can't be placed in an outbuilding/garage or it'd take forever to dry which may be why some people don't like them?

Mine can take 1.5-2 hours on a full mixed load of clothes or about 40-50 mins for bedding (king and two singles) but it sets a time and adjusts itself so we've never had it run as long as the setting says at the begining. We used to have a washer dryer in one (LG I think) and that was an absolute joke. I was happier to pay a little more for this one knowing I don't have to feel guilty using it because it's low cost to run going forward.

One way to reduce the time it needs to dry is pop your wash on another spin before taking it out of the washer. Swear by this!

Eh? Pumping out dry warm air is exactly what a dehumidifier does! Warms a room up nicely

That's a humidifier ,surely? A de humidifier does the opposite.

I have a heat pump. It is maybe a bit slower than my condenser but not loads. Also I notice that sometimes when you first take it out it feels like it is still damp but actually once it has cooled it's dry.

For anyone else who wants to crunch the numbers, this is the model I’m looking at;

ao.com/product/h8d94wbuk-hotpoint-heat-pump-tumble-dryer-white-88927-126.aspx?_gl=11u7i8q6_gaMTkzNjk5MDEzMC4xNjYxMTIxNjkx_ga_4DSXGNC1RH*MTY2MTE2NDQxOC4zLjAuMTY2MTE2NDQxOC42MC4wLjA.

A humidifier pumps out moist air. PP is right that a dehumidifier throws out dry air once it’s taken the moisture out of it.

I've got a washer/dryer and I only use the dryer part when I really have to, nine times out of ten I hang it out to dry in the garden or put them on the radiators, however, if the damp washing has been hanging around for ages (usually in the Winter) I will then run them through the dryer for 15 minutes or so, I try not to though!

But they’re money saving on energy and because they protect your clothes better. You can dry delicates in them, they don’t cook your clothes.

They dry quickly if you use dryer balls and load so that it turns and airs quickly. So I put our heavy brushed cotton winter duvet cover in on its own and then do the other bedding - less time than both together.

@HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd I’ve had my heat pump dryer since 2019 and love it. I did a lot of research and avoided Candy and Indesit completely, at the time of purchase there was a big news story about recall on their products. I used ao.com and www.bootskitchenappliances.com, which is owned by AO. If you’re buying multiple I think it’s worth buying from the boots site for combined delivery, you get boots points. They were really helpful on the phone, I wanted to stack mine and they matched two different brands for me that could do wool and delicate. My dryer is Hoover and washing machine is Haier - have had a Haier fridge since 2016 and really happy with it too so went for that brand again.

Not really. A dehumidifier sucks in air, strips it of moisture and pumps out dry air only very slightly heated by the electrical residual heat of the appliance itself. The warmth of the air is far far below that which a heat pump dryer puts out.

The comments on space is more related to the fact if you’re going to use a dehumidifier to dry wet clothes, a clothes rack or horse is also needed and so the whole set up takes up far more space than a single tumble dryer.

I too have read that drier air makes the house easier to heat. The theory is that in order to raise the temperature in your house you have to heat all the water vapour in the air as well as the air/walls/furnishings, etc. Because water has a high specific heat capacity, it takes significantly more energy to raise by 1 degree C than dry air. So less water vapour = less energy required.

This is true if you’re just running a dehumidifier in your home. But if you’re running it specifically to dry wet clothes, you’re not actually lowering the humidity % in your home (thus saving on heat energy costs), you’re just counter-acting the humidity increase caused by the water evaporating off the wet clothes.

Interesting about the temp, I didnt know that. Our kitchen gets pretty cold in winter so will have to do a bit of research on that.

I line dry. It doesn't cost me anything. And I have cut down on laundry hugely. Towels are changed every second use and leave bedding on an extra week. Saves a fortune, less wear on the clothes and hugely better for the environment. So I'm down to 2 or 3 loads a week in the winter plus a bit of handwashing laundry.

Wrong. Even just breathing, cooking and taking showers, I. E. essential stuff, creates lots of moisture.

Thanks @BakeOffRewatch

I have a heat pump - cheapest I could get, from Beko - and it always says it will take 4 hours to dry a load, but actually it stops after about an hour and a half and is bone dry. I really rate mine.

@HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd I've got the engineer coming to check mine because it's getting longer.

But a very small amount in comparison to drying clothing indoors.

What is a heat pump?

I have a heat pump and the maximum its ever taken to dry a big load is 2.5 hours...never 8 hours!

They are great! Half the process per load at least than my old tumble.

We got one a few months ago, plus newer more energy efficient washing machine and air fryer to cut down on electricity use.

I also have a heated airer in the conservatory which we put on at night which heats the conservatory too :)

I only found out a few months ago how expensive timberline dryers are to run so I’ve massively cut down on tumble drying. It so easy just to throw it in there but at the moment I’m line drying everything apart from towels, which I put outside for a few hours them put in the dryer for a bit so they fluff up.

In the winter we have a wood-burner going, so I’ll put all washing next to it to dry.

Not strictly true. Most houses are designed to vent the day to day breathing of occupants, and code requires extraction fans in kitchen hoods and bathrooms to remove moisture from cooking and showering.

Houses are not designed to vent the moisture caused by wet clothes hanging up indoors. And so if you do dry wet clothes indoors AND have damp, it’s most likely caused by the wet clothes and not the everyday stuff houses are designed to handle.

I have a vented dryer. Always just put a load on for 60 mins. No idea how much that costs!! Worrying now.

The sensor? (Sorry - lost the thread of my own thread.)

Maybe it just has to be borne in mind that they might need attention.

It’s ironic because my hatred of my sensor condenser contributed to my awful choice of the next dryer (admittedly rushed and stupidly assuming the differences in efficiency couldn’t be too big). I just went for the first completely manual/clockwork condenser model I could from a decent brand. I think it was “b rated” at the time and I thought “that’s nearly as good as a rated”. Except there are now A+, A++ & A+++ tiers to the rating scheme. So B= E in reality.

I did but only because I’ve just bought a new drier. If yoI go onto the John Lewis website it shows you the cost of running the direr you have chosen against a more economical one and the savings between a condenser and heat pump are huge.

Sadly, some of us can't do that.

I have 2 family members who have excema and asthma and 1 with severe hay fever (His things cannot be dried outside in summer)

So. Bedding done weekly and towels are one use only.

Anyone who has excema will know how manky sheets get from all the ointment and lotions you have to use :(

We got a heat pump dryer last year, not cheap but all the heat pump ones were rated best for energy. It does take longer to dry than a non heat pump dryer, but way more energy efficient and nowhere near the 8 hrs mentioned above! It dries small loads quickly, I’ve found it better not to mix any towels with any other drying - that does tend to make it go on and on a bit. The sensors adjust all the time, so it knows when it’s done, but you do need to keep on top of de-fluffing the filters!
Also, as a pp mentioned before, the load comes out almost feeling like it’s still damp, but once the load has cooled down it is all dry.