Heater or dehumidifier to dry clothes in small unheated utility room?

[Notcontent]

I have a very small utility room at the top of my house. It has no windows and is not heated. In the summer washing dries there quite well but not in the winter. I am tired of having washing drying in other parts of the house and hate tumble driers.

So I was thinking of getting a small fan heater to help dry clothes in the utility room. But then I thought a dehumidifier would perhaps work better.

Advice please!!!!

Lakeland do a heated clothes airer. i love mine and it adds a bit of warmth to the room

and the airer only cost about 4 pence an hour to run

If you dry clothes indoors, then the water will go into the walls/air and make the house damp. It will make it feel colder and encourage mould, and in an unventilated space, that's a lot worse.

A dehumidifier alone won't dry the clothes, and while a heater may, it won't remove the water. You'd need both, and they would cost an absolute fortune to run - in fact a dehumidifier alone costs more to try to (ineffectively) dry than a tumble dryer (efficiently) does, as someone on MN did the maths. We have an [[http://www.ebacdirect.com/ Ebac dehumidifier as we live in a damp Victorian house, it's a top of the range (Powerpac) model and it removes a lot of water - as in, about 2 or 3 pints per running session - ... yet we still have condensation on the windows in winter, even running it and the central heating simultaneously. We have a tumble dryer because the idea of adding more damp into the building slays me.

Having said that, if it's not the environmental aspects that bother you (it's a greener option than dryer plus dehumidifier) then Lakeland's dryer plus the dehumidifier to remove the water from the air would get things really dry, and might be the best option?

Sorry, tags fail, was meant to say:

If you dry clothes indoors, then the water will go into the walls/air and make the house damp. It will make it feel colder and encourage mould, and in an unventilated space, that's a lot worse.

A dehumidifier alone won't dry the clothes, and while a heater may, it won't remove the water. You'd need both, and they would cost an absolute fortune to run - in fact a dehumidifier alone costs more to try to (ineffectively) dry than a tumble dryer (efficiently) does, as someone on MN did the maths. We have an Ebac dehumidifier as we live in a damp Victorian house, it's a top of the range (Powerpac) model and it removes a lot of water - as in, about 2 or 3 pints per running session - ... yet we still have condensation on the windows in winter, even running it and the central heating simultaneously. We have a tumble dryer because the idea of adding more damp into the building slays me. Having said that, if it's not the environmental aspects that bother you (it's a greener option than dryer plus dehumidifier) then Lakeland's dryer plus the dehumidifier to remove the water from the air would get things really dry, and might be the best option?

Thanks very much for the comments.

Yes, I am also in a damp cold Victorian house! My issue is tumble dryers is that in my opinion they are only suitable for towels, and really ruin clothes.

Hmm, I may have to rethink this...

My dehumidifier dries my clothes perfectly adequately. We have a ceiling airer with dehumidifier underneath and it dries everything in a day and a half even in the depths of winter.

perfect are you sure your dehumidifier is not dragging water out of the bricks of the house?

Ours collects 5 litres at a time and can extract that from a load of washing in 24 hours.

Duchesse - be odd if it was, and left water on the windows though! (Do you use it to dry clothes in an unheated room?) Having said that I'm lending it to a friend with a condensation problem in a modern house, and I'm pretty sure there is no systemic damp in her place, just lack of adequate ventilation, so maybe it is pulling water from the masonry!

OP we use the tumble for sheets, basic tees/jeans/sweatshirts/underwear etc, but not the fancy stuff which I dry flat on towels in a warm room, and yep then I do run the dehumid as I don't want avoidable exra damp. And we tumble dry everything under the synthetics setting, as that's gentler on them than the cottons. I also wash clothes other than underwear/socks on the very delicate wash setting, which I think/hope preserves them. DS is allergic to almost all detergents so we use Surcare which is really gentle, and always use fabric softener which I'm told also helps protect clothes from damage.

It's a bugger. I want to live in a better climate!

I should probably add that my child is very asthmatic, hence the worry with damp. If you're all robust and not prone to respiratory problems then it might be fine? We have to have an electric blanket on the hottest setting for him through the winter, too, poor kid, so his lungs are kept nice and warm and the ambient temp immediately around his bedclothes a little warmer (or at least that's my theory).

Yes, is is a bugger..

I am originally from oz where you can dry stuff outside for 90 per cent of the time.

I do use a dehumidifier in the same room as the airer.

Yeah, same originally (decades ago tho'). Queensland. Bit different, hey!

Well, there is a radiator in the room it's in, but it's only on a few hours a day. There's also the fridge/freezer and another freezer in the same room- they must chuck out a bit of heat. This room is we suspect built over a well, and it faces north so it's usually cold and damp. The dehumidifier makes it almost pleasant. Having said that, it's a big house so we got the 5 bed version of the dehumidifier (also Ebac) and it's usually in the back kitchen with the door shut, so very over-powered for the size of the room.

Can really recommend the Dribuddy

I put everything in my tumle dryer apart from pure wool clothing. Nothing's been ruined yet. I'd bite the bullet and run a dryer.

We use a dehumidifier with a heated Lakeland airer but the room we use also has a radiator. Works really well.

We had a problem with condensation when we lived in a flat with solid walls and metal framed windows. We tried running a dehumidifier, it gathered buckets full of water every day and had no effect whatsoever on the condensation.

I would buy the most efficient heater I could find - not necessarily one which blasts out a lot of heat, but one which emits a steady low heat - and hang the laundry as high as possible. I have a very tall airer (Lakeland, of course) and it is noticeable that the laundry on the top level dries much faster than that on the bottom level. In a Victirian house you could really take advantage of the high ceilings with a maiden. Warming the room would also help with condensation.