Cloth nappy users - is it worth getting a heated clothes airer?

[ElphabaTheGreen]

Yeah, I know. Another heated clothes airer thread, sorry

I have two boys in cloth nappies (2yo - nowhere near to potty training, and an 11wo) so I have quite a high nappy turnover. Obviously they dry fastest outside, but that's increasingly no longer possible due to the weather. The heating is not really on much yet either, but even when it will be, I can see myself running out of radiator space. The nappies take a good 24 hours to dry if not right near the radiators or outside on a warm day.

Is a heated clothes airer as environmentally/financially troublesome as a dryer or hard on the nappies in some way, or worth the outlay for keeping nappies going?

TIA!

I don't have a heated airer, but we used a couple of those round plastic peg things (used to hang a load of socks in one place) for nappies. Hung them in doorways and they dried very quickly

Oh I know the things you mean. I can see my 6ft 3in DH getting a bit pissed off about getting hit in the face with wet nappies in a doorway though

I do use a clothes horse thingy but they still take a while to dry unless they're close to something warm.

Yeah you just have to put them in doorways to bedrooms during the day (or rooms you don't use much)! Or attach one of those pulley-system dryers to the ceiling...

I'm not sure they'd dry any quicker on that than they would on the clothes horse I currently use, though. They dry quickest when I can lay them on radiators, hence my interest in a heated clothes airer.

You should put a towel between the nappy and the radiator. Direct heat will ruin your elastics and PUL.

It's only the bamboo liners that I put on the radiators, not the outer shells that have the elastics - they dry very quickly so I put them on the clothes horse. The liners take ages to dry without a bit of heat, though, hence my query about the heated clothes airer.

I just got racks that enabled another couple rows of nappies etc to be hung over each radiator, and used the heating slightly more than I might have done otherwise.

We use a dehumidifier in the room with the clothes airers... It does help clothes dry more quickly. No idea if it uses less energy than a tumble drier or a heated airer, though!