Dehumidifier hack is useless?

[PlinkPlonkFizz]

There have been lots of money saving tips being discussed. One that sounded good was using a dehumidifier to dry clothes rather than the tumbler.

I tried it out yesterday using the box room. The clothes were on a clothes horse, dehumidifier pointing at th and the door kept shut all day.

8 hours later I checked them....not dry but damp. Too damp to iron.

So the 350kw dehumidifier running for 10 hours (guessing it would need another 2 hours to dry them) surely amounts to roughly the same cost as 1 hour in the tumble dryer?

In the past we were told to ADD water when central heating was on e.g. putting a bowl of water on the radiator because heating is supposed to be drying and that's not good for your skin and other things. I'm wondering about that.

I got one after redecorating as one wall gets quite damp. It's stopped the mould and keeps the room at 40-50% humidity rather than the 70-80% is usually is. It's kept the clothing in a cold closet feeling dry too. I'm not convinced the one I have would dry a roomful of washing though. We get through quite a bit of laundry so I'm still using tumble dryer for most items or large loads.

Did exactly the same yesterday, two loads fully dry, room very warm. Ours has a laundry mode which directs warm air at the clothes.

I get eczema flare ups if the air gets too dry due to heating being on, so a dehumidifier would be the last thing I'd want.

Been using our old Mitsubishi mj-e16vx since 2008. Laundry mode runs 12 hours, dries full wash load. Only time it struggles is if load is mainly heavy/thick items (i.e. jeans, heavy sweatshirts etc) when we need to run it a few more hours (to avoid musty smell when wearing)

It's 275w, tank holds 4 litres (I use this water in my steam iron). Bonus we noticed was much less wear and tear on clothing than using tumble dryer. Presently using it in spare room (4m x 3.5m) and it definitely raises the room temp too (2-3°C).

I think it depends on which dehumidifer you have.

I had an Ebac (circa £300) until recently and the difference when I first got it was very noticable. The whole house definitely felt less damp and therefore less cold but it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference for drying clothes if I shut them in a room with it. It did however sort out the morning condensation on windows for the whole house within a few days. It was usually kept in the bathroom during winter months with the door ajar and it definitely took the chill off the bathroom - not like a heater or radiator would but presumably due to the motor running in the same way that a fridge does so better than nothing when getting up in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning with no heating on. And while it didn’t dry the towels as such, it took out all the moisture that came from them while drying on the radiator.

The EBAC died a few weeks ago and I bought another cheaper (£146) Electriq one. This one doesn’t seem to give out any noticeable warmth but it is brilliant for drying the towels and if I put two airers full of washing in the bathroom with it, it is all dry within 24 hours and does not create the damp and condensation that putting clothes on airers with no dehumidifier would. This difference with this one is that it blows room-temperature air out from the top when it is operating which the Ebac never did so that will be why the clothes are drying better next to it - they’re getting a bit of a blow-dry.

I haven’t barely used my tumble drier for years and this is far cheaper to run. I only run the dehumidifer during the day and I have solar panels which runs it for free during daylight hours.

Which dehumidifier do you have?

Most of these so-called "hacks" are useless and on a par with Viz Top Tips.

The only "hack" that will work is direct action - striking and taking to the streets to demand restitution from our thieving lying government and fair wages from our billionaire CEOs and asset hoarders.

Pissing around with cellophane on windows and buying oodies, not so much.

Dehumidifiers work when the room is warm enough to allow the moisture in the washing to evaporate into the air. They can then remove the moisture. If the room is too cold, many dehumidifiers will not work very well. The water will just sit in the clothing. I read that some models are tested assuming a room temp of 20C to work efficiently - I'd have to have my heating on 24/7 for a week to get my house that warm at the moment (draughty Victorian stone house)! It's a vicious cycle - people can't afford to heat their home much, so buy a dehumidifier to prevent condensation/mould forming on the cold walls, then they wonder why it isn't doing much.

I used to have a dehumidifier and am wanting to buy another. I did find it worked much better for laundry drying when it wasn't winter, though. It definitely stopped condensation and mould from drying clothes/cooking/showering/breathing when the air was warmer - shocking how much it could extract each day!

I don't have a dehumidifier or a tumble dryer but I wouldn't have thought a dehumidifier replaces what a tumble dryer does. I would have thought it helps with reducing condensation if you have to dry your washing on airers.

This. I found the desiccant one we had more expensive to run than our compressor one, which costs half as much to run.

Mine works amazingly the stuff is usually dry overnight

use the dryer for the towels and bedding but all the rest of the clothes I stick on a horse with dehumidifier

Quite. There's a lot of bull about "energy saving" around at the moment. I have an extractor in the kitchen used for when I am cooking. I use the tunble drier once a week and it costs about the same as yours. I have no condensation to need to buy a dehumidifier for (how much do all these extra purchases cost!!!! And who factored in the price of buying them?)

The other one that drives me mad is that air fryers are cheaper than ovens. Air fryers (and I have one and love it for some things) are cheaper than the equivalent electric oven. Gas, however, is cheaper than electric so there really isn't a saving to mention if you have a gas oven.

Same my skin would be screaming.

Presumably the OPs dehumidifier is rated at 350 watts not 350 kilowatts. So. At 17p per kw/hr that will cost about 70p to run for 12 hours.

it may not be working, but it’s not a huge cost.

In my case, something does happen. I get dust mite allergy symptoms if my sheets aren't washed at least fortnightly. Also DP's body oil needs removing from the sheets too, and the longer he sleeps on them the more difficult that becomes (3 months? Would need to throw them away).

Will any of them work in a big room? I don't have a utility room, or spare box room, or bathroom big enough to hang a load of laundry in! (Plus bathroom for obvious reasons is often most damp room in house)

Same here. And it doesn’t bring extra moisture into your house. What a ridiculous comment!

Dessicant dehumidifiers are the ones for chronically cold spaces (10C or less). Compressor dehumidifiers vary enough to need attention to the specification and manual but, as PPs say, may need higher ambient temperature to work well.

Any application whereby the room air temperature is likely to fall below 10°C then you should be looking at a desiccant dehumidifier.
This is because the inside of the compressor dehumidifier needs to be colder than the air within the room and the colder the room is the harder the dehumidifier has to work to create that cold surface.
As the temperature starts to fall down towards 10°C then the chances are that the inside of the dehumidifier will get close to freezing, increasing the changes of ice forming on the dehumidifiers cooling coils.
This is why below around 15-18°C the compressor dehumidifiers are programmed to spend more and more of their time defrosting themselves rather than dehumidifying.

So you can use compressor dehumidifiers down to 10°C, but it is the case that the larger the compressor machine the better it will perform.

blog.meaco.com/when-to-buy-a-desiccant-dehumidifier-and-when-to-buy-a-compressor-dehumidifier/

So the 350kw dehumidifier running for 10 hours (guessing it would need another 2 hours to dry them) surely amounts to roughly the same cost as 1 hour in the tumble dryer?

Your dehumidifier is probably 350w not 350kw. So running for 10hrs would be 3.5kwh.

The tumble dryer would depend on what sort of tumble dryer you have. A heat pump one usually uses 1.8-2.2kwhs to dry a full load of cottons. A vented old tumble dryer would cost a lot more.

So, actually the dehumidifier could be as much as roughly twice the cost of a tumble dryer. It all depends on the tumble dryer.

That’s why these “hacks” are a tad misleading because there is no one right answer.

You need to make sure your dehumidifier has a laundry mode.

We don't have a tumble drier (no space) so have ling usef a dehumidifier in winter to dry clothes and prevent excess condensation that can come from drying clothes indoors.

Unless it is actually raining we always put clothes outside for a bit first, in very cold dry weather like we have at the moment clothes can get really quite dry.

On warming, dehumidifiers don't actually warm rooms but damp air feel colder so removing excess moisture from the air makes rooms feel warmer.

My tumble dryer costs £1.25 per load. My dessicant dehumidifier costs 21p per hour and my heated airer is 3p per hour. It works out roughly the same. I have not stopped using my TD.
As PP, you need a heat source to dry the clothes and a dehumidifier to remove the resulting moisture from room.

Dessicant dehumidifiers emit heat. Refrigerant/compressor ones don't.

Mine takes about 4 hours in laundry mode.

17p per kWH?

It's more like 35p per kWh now for electricity....