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?

So the Meaco Zambezi is OOS everywhere. I have a chilly old house that is getting loads of condensation and I generally dry clothes on radiators but don’t want to this year as everything feels damp prone just now. What’s a good humidifier for drying clothes that isn’t OOS - does anyone have a reccomendation?

I don't understand why tumble dryers are universally villafied and people are spending £££ on on dehumidifiers and heated airers. My tumble dryer is on now. It costs 15p an hour according to the smart meter. A full 9kg load will be put away dry in under 2 hours so say 30p. Its a heat pump one so not as quick as a vented but has the added bonus of not shrinking my clothes.

i do a second spin which seems to help though I’ve no idea how much that extra spin costs me. I only do one load a day. It’s taking over 24 hours to dry now in the hall upstairs, got the trickle vent open on the window.

I’ve also taken to squeegeeing down the walls of the shower as well as the shower door so get rid of as much moisture as I can from the house.

Yes.
Crap tip.
If you've got a tumble dryer, use it. Then fold and stack in the airing cupboard to "finish" if needed.
I'd rather pay for dry clothes and a dry house than damp clothes and mould.

We have a dehumidifier. I never thought of it as a 'hack', but I realised soon after we moved into our terraced newbuild that we had a damp problem in winter - not uncommon in the west of Scotland. It's a good one, pretty quiet, and since I bought it last year our mould problem has gone and we get hardly any condensation. It's set to a relative humidity of 50%, it's not on all the time. It's helped with heating costs too because drier air feels warmer, so we don't have the thermostat on as high as we used to.

Yes!! I'm so fed up of people acting like tumble dryers are some kind of gas guzzling monster appliance - this is at least twenty years out of date!! Modern ones are very good, find out how much yours is costing before you run out and buy another appliance

Yeah.. I kept seeing the 'tips' on here & didn't say anything as it was seen as the new Best Thing. Dehumidifiers dehumidify. Dryers dry. Or a heated drying rack with a cover the size of an old phone box. I mean, why would you? Unless you have a BIG house. I don't.

Then fold and stack in the airing cupboard

Not everyone has an airing cupboard...

I do. 🤷‍♀️

House is under 20yo, so I would imagine most housing built over the past 100yrs will have.

We changed our old boiler to a system so we could keep the AC and because we have more than 1 bathroom.

I use a dehumidifier to dry laundry in my bathroom overnight. It’s pleasantly warm and dry in there come the morning. Added bonus is that I’m on an Economy 7 tariff so it’s very cheap to run.
I do have a tumble dryer but use it rarely, as I don’t like its effect on my clothes.

I’m another person puzzled by the use of the word “hack” when it’s not needed.

Most UK houses use combi boilers and would not have an airing cupboard as they would not have a hot water tank.

Our old house (built 2000) had a tank therefore an AC. This one (built 1960's) now has a combi boiler and therefore no tank. The original AC is storage only.

So, when and where have you organised it for and people can join you?

Not washing bedding for three months is extreme even for a slob like me!

Sorry, the quote got eaten.

Yep it is not a hack as such, just useful for those of us with small houses/flats who do not have room for a tumble drier or airing cupboard.

Victorian house, no airing cupboard, unfortunately.

I can only assume not all dehumidifiers are created equal then. We've got a fairly large Meaco one and the washing's generally dry the same day if I house both in the downstairs cloak room with doors closed. It's brilliant, and I have never seen damp or even a drop of condensation in our entire (old, damp proof course knackered) house.

This year, I've not used the tumble dryer, and heating hasn't been on as much. I have an airer and a dehumidifier in the dining room - now my WFH room.

When I started turning it on (when it became too much trouble/impossible to line dry), the humidity in the house was in the 60s on drying days, and I had to keep turning the dehumidifier on for a couple of hours to stop it climbing into the 70s. This weekend, three loads dry and dehumidifier only on for a couple of hours. Radiators on for a couple of hours every evening. Humidity throughout the house is about 50%.

It takes a while to get there, but once you've reduced the humidity, washing will dry overnight.

We've been using a dehumidifier to dry washing for several years now. Works a treat, 4 hours and it's pretty much dry.

You also have to add in the cost of a dehumidifier, and they are certainly not cheap.

I don’t have the room to be hanging clothes up to dry in my home. A tumble dryer takes up less space than any clothes airer/drying rack. And I don’t want to then need a dehumidifier to counter the damp and mould caused by drying clothes indoors. There’s no cost savings for the clothes racks and dehumidifier set up t in my situation even if I did have the room to do it, and I don’t.

Same here, I have dried all the washing 45m in the dryer cost 37p. Why would you prefer to leave your stuff hanging everywhere creating damp?

I’m struggling to even think of where I could hang a single bedsheet?!

I have a 1 year old Miele tumble. It is superb.

I have a Meaco dehumidifier

and hand on heart… I’m preferring using my Meaco.