To be disappointed with my dehumidifier

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I bought a Meaco 12l low energy dehumidifier a few weeks ago to help dry our endless washing instead of the tumble drier.

Thing is, it's not drying clothes. They're certainly drier than just leaving them in the clothes airer but they're not dry enough to go straight away. I've put it on 9pm-7am and there's 10kg of washing from the machine spread out over 3 different airers.

It's cost an absolute fortune and I'm so pissed off it's not doing what I bought it for.

Am I doing anything wrong?

Sold to you, you've been mis-sold

I bought one about a year ago with a laundry setting and love it. Airer is in a small room door shut and bingo! I tend to run overnight, mine cuts out after 6 hours and most is dry by then tbh. Jeans would need more. I even dry duvet covers and towels and no problem.

I have a Meaco Arret 25l

I have the same one, I cleared out an under stair cupboard which a clothes airer would fit in, then fitted a hanging rail above too.
I can dry roughly two loads (9kg each) in around 8 hours.

I have mine underneath a hanging rail. Works the best if I have the ceiling fan on as well. 10kg is a lot of washing so maybe you need to lower your expectations as others have said.

I wouldn’t be without mine, as so many of our clothes can’t be tumble dried.

What does 10 hours of a dehumidifier cost in electricity compared to half an hour in the table drier, I wonder? When you include the cost of actually buying the dehumidifier in the first place, it doesn’t seem to save much?

Dehumidifiers only really work to dry clothes more quickly if you have them in a small room with the door shut. As others have said, they are not specifically for drying clothes, that's just a by product of their function.

The other advantage of a dehumidifier though is that they will heat your home a little bit too. If you have a tumble drier that is plumbed up to outside, then any heat is just pumping outside.

I have exactly the same model.

At the moment, I'm doing a load and putting outside in the day (on the airer).

I bring it in and run the 6 hour laundry cycle on an evening, with the door shut.

Things are then dry by morning, maybe except jeans which sometimes take longer.

I have a wall hung rack, I can hang a full load of there on hangers and a socks octopus thing, and apart from the waistband of jeans it would all be dry in a few hours.
If you could get a wall airer the difference would be huge, and as pp use in a fairly small area.

I was skeptical about the long time of a heat pump drier but I have an energy efficient one and I am able to dry a full load in just under 2 hours. We do have a spare room, but hated how that became the clothes drying room. And the room needs to be heated up a bit to allow for drying otherwise it's a 2 day nightmare per load. So you would need a spare room, some heat there anyway, a dehumidifier/heated airer to speed up - such a hassle. I would just use the tumble drier.

Our dehumidifier, on its laundry setting, in a smallish room ( bedroom with a double bed) with all doors and windows closed, dries a couple of loads of washing in around 6 hours. Overnight it cuts out because the 2 litre tank is full. It makes the room very warm. We used to use it in a room with a fireplace and it was much less effective, because of the ventilation.

Ours takes closer to 24h for a big load of washing tbh (ours is old and has no laundry mode). Other things to check:

Are you keeping the room door and any windows closed?

How warm is the room? It will work much slower if the room is cold (for this reason overnight isn't always best).

A heat pump tumble dryer is not only most energy and cost efficient, it also is a source of heat. I measured the hot dry air coming out of mine and it was 37C.
Dehumidifuer air is barely tepid, it’s not properly warm.

So there's a new "must have" that has put a claim on the ever present disposable income of Mumsnet.
Might as well tattoo a big M on the forehead.

I've heard that rigging up your solar panels to run your dehumidifiers might save the planet. 🙄

😂😂😂

I don’t own a tumble dryer or a dehumidifier. My clothes go on a rack in a heated room and dry pretty quickly. I don’t understand all the angst. Just hang them up and let the, dry. If it’s making the room feel damp, open the window for a bit while the heating is off.

We use a dehumidifier because we dry washing during the day when the heating isn't on so it would take yonks to dry and end up smelling of the camp washing smell.

we have a meaco, we only have one airer worth of washing hung up at a time though so I think that's your.issue. Ours dries the clothes closest to.it so we rotate them as they dry but it does need to be close by so three ariers are never going to get the full effect

you could use a dehumidifier in some sort of tent using polythene, not pretty, but effective.
Also using a fan directed at your clothing would speed up the drying.
found a decent post here refurbinators.com/dehumidifiers-for-drying-clothes/

I’ve got the 20 litre model and run it in Constant Operation mode in the bedroom with everything shut. An 8 kg load of various items is more or less dry within 6-7 hours. I have the thing on all the time regardless to keep humidity well below 50% and purify the air and act as space heater.

That’s an awful lot of laundry and quite a small dehumidifier. I think your expectations were too high, If you are looking at this level of laundry you need a bigger tank size.

How cold is the room you are using it in? I have the same model and it needs the temperature to be around 20 degrees to work well. If you don't have a heat source to evaporate water into the air from the clothes, it's going to take a long time to suck the moisture out of the air.

Make sure windows and door is closed
I use two airers with a large dry sheet draped over so its a bit like a tent
The dehumidifier is placed central to them. I can dry in 3 hours like that. How you hang on airers is a biggie too and as they dry make sure to take off — the more airflow the better

God sometimes you just need to sensibly use your tumble drier. Instead, we have people with loads of airers, sheets, dehumidifiers etc etc.

Far less hassle and probably cost to just use your drier

If you have one, of course

My house had a lot of condensation and damp before getting the dehumidifier. It's lovely and dry and warm now. Drying laundry with it is a bonus. My kitchen is tiny and o had a combination washer/dryer which was totally shit tbh. With electricity costs going up, if you were using a dehumidifier anyway, then it makes sense to dry laundry simultaneously and if you do have a dryer, save it for heavy things.

a refrigerant dehumidifier will work best when the temp is between 10-28 degrees. it will then automatically warm the room because as it removes the moisture and puts dry air back into the room, and repeats the cycle dependant on your machines settings. If the room is below 10 degrees, you will need a desiccant dehumidifier, but that will need venting to an external source to expel the moisture - hope this helps