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.

I can’t find its wattage or any info on KWh per load. All I’ve found is 194 KWh per year to run, but that’s obviously based on a set of assumptions…number of loads per year and certain cycle of many used. So sorry nothing really to crunch for you
😞

I should have known to start with John Lewis. I could have saved myself 15 minutes of arithmetic. Good tip for all the people I’ve accidentally worried.

Right time to work now.

Yes I was in bed having an afternon nap. I never bloody nap but this day I decided to. Only that my dog ( a very very clever collie) kept coming in to the bedroom and pawing my face and eventually jumping up on to me and licking my face, I don't know what would have happened and I try not to think about it. The smoke was awful. Very scary.

I get all my appliances from AO
There's usually a promo code knocking around

On the ao.com search page they have kWh and other info on a pop up tab for each model ( it must also be accessible from the product page but I haven’t figured out how yet).

Just a sec & I’ll screenshot it.

For anyone without a tumble dryer, or anyone wanting to reduce their reliance on one, I discovered a very weird trick with a clothes airer purely by accident.
If you get one of the tall airers, hang everything on it, and then put it beside the radiator and hang a sheet over the clothes airer and over the radiator, it creates a little heat bubble inside, underneath the sheet! It's possibly the most obvious thing to a lot of people, but for me it was like I invented the wheel. Everything was dry within about 2 hours! If you're going to have the heat on, you might as well kill two birds with one stone.

I know that there are people currently rolling their eyes in back in their heads that it has taken me 50 years to discover such ground-breaking use of the laws of physics.

Something else I discovered by accident was having put a bottle of water in the freezer to chill and then tootling off to bed and forgetting about it that when you take it out, all the condensation in the air becomes condensation on the thawing bottle of water and putting a bowl under said bottle, collected the water from the air, which you can throw down the sink, thus acting like a dehumidifier.

I'm pretty sure that The Journal of Science is not going to take up my inventions, but I just thought I'd throw it out there haha.

*Takes a bow and awaits my nomination for the Nobel prize for Science (or a Darwin award 😂)

OMG, you are right they have it by the A+ a product data sheet link.
So it says 2.07Kwh per full load. So currently about 60p per load? (Don’t know what your tariff is).

You click on the energy saving figure banner to get the first view and then the question mark to get the detail, if anyone wants to try it for other models.

I've never heard of a heat pump tumble dryer. My standard tumble dryer is 16 years old and used 2/3 times a year these days. I won't be replacing it when it dies as I line dry all year round (Yes, uk, it doesn't rain every day).

rolling their eyes back in their heads
all the WATER in the air becomes condensation

Yes my electricity is (thankfully) slightly cheaper than most for a while yet.

They're not the main cause of house fires - mobile phone chargers are.

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

Dehumidifiers are heat pumps too.

Doh! The full data sheet is what’s available on the product page. Of course it is.

60p a load is still pretty good compared to what the average condenser must be costing by now, of course.

Right I’m really going now. 😁

OP, they also have this as well. You click on “product data sheet” over by the energy rating, and you get a sheet that shows how many KWH per load and how long the cycle takes in minutes. Screenshots.

My 3 year old Hotpoint condenser dryer has a pipe at the back that drains into the outside drain.
I didn’t know it was there until we had a new kitchen fitted last year and the fitter connected it to the washing machine drain.

I gave up on tumble driers after buying a combination washer /drier, thinking I would be living the dream and getting clean dry washing after a couple of hours. The drier took several hours and things still seemed humid. I don't think they even market those combination machines any more. Are separate tumble driers any better?

Disocovereads it may well be that a heat pump puts out hotter air than a dehumidifier, however it is nonetheless the case that a dehumidifier puts out air warm enough to heat a small room to comfortably toasty with no other heating source in the dead of winter.

I've done it often enough. Stick a load of laundry in the smallest bedroom, dehumidifier on and door closed, enjoy the warm gust as you open the door.

Due to having very hard water I do like to tumble dry my towels or it's like trying to dry yourself with a rice cracker. But by gradual trial I have worked out that just ten minutes in the dryer is enough to prevent crispiness, so they get that and then airer dried.

Yes sorry I was being dense and looking for the same thing I’d seen in the product search. Pay no attention!

Yes but they use heat pump technology to cool air, not warm it up. Do the byproduct isn’t warm air. It’s ambient temperature air.

I had a heat pump dryer and it was terrible. It took a load 2 hours and 45 to dry a load.

Got a quality gas dryer(they need ventilation) and it dries super fast and more economical.

The big problem with washer driers is that the washer can take xkg load while the drier can only take x-3kg load (ish).
So, the idea of just setting it to wash and immediately dry only works if you don't fill it up. And ensure all fabric is the same weight. Or, you sort it after the wash and take half out.

For space saving, and small families, they are still good if it's that or no tumble drier I think.

Stand alone ones are about a million times better.

I’m disabled and have a stoma. Stomas leak, frequently! Today I have to wash pyjamas, sheet, mattress protector and quilt! I also have to dry them.
Id just like to know a couple of things please.

1. Is it plug and play or do I need to have it plumbed in. Or in fact anything else. I need something that I can just plug in and programme.
2. If not plumbed in is emptying easy and can it be done from the front? 3)Does anything need to happen at the back.

My appliances are upstairs in what was a defunct airing cupboard and are stacked so I can do nothing at the back. Condenser dryer is on the way out.
Many thanks for any information.