£6 for a load in the tumble dryer?

[whereisthejasmine]

someone on the news just said that it will be £6 per load to use the tumble dryer? is that right? I am searching online and the rates I see are more like 37p per hour a year ago - if that doubles its still less than a £1/hour.
Be grateful to confirm the realistic cost for 2022 as if it is £6/hour I will have to abandon it.

I give everything a second spin in the washing machine before hanging out - it takes hours less to dry then.

Firstly, the OP didn't even ask for advice on how to dry clothes.

Secondly, all the self-righteous posters saying they have never had need of a tumble drier so why should anyone else are showing an appalling lack of awareness of how others live.

I live in a one-bed, upstairs, rented flat. I have no garden for a washing line. I have an incredibly narrow kitchen and my bedroom has just enough room for a chest of drawers and a bed.

I can fit an airer in the bathroom but I have to move it in and out when I shower. There's no window in the bathroom so we already have to manage mould in there.

A full load of washing does not fit on that one airer, let alone dry efficiently. DH has uniform at work. Sometimes that needs to be washed and dried overnight.

What's the solution without a tumble drier?

We don't have a tumble dryer, we just dry ours on a clothes horse in winter and on the line in the summer. We haven't had any issues with damp but I do air out the house every so often.

I have a wash on at min and will tumble it afterwards. Will let you know what my smart meter says about it OP

@whereisthejasmine

Octopus are now charging 42p per kw, a 9kg load to store dry uses 5.6kw, so about £2.35

However, if you never used any Electricity, you 'll still get charged 52p per day standing charge, so £185 per year, so no matter how careful, they'll keep their profits.

Its an absolute rip off.

@Moaningturtle

An extra spin in the washing machine cuts down drying time a surprising amount, but I have no idea if an extra spin cycle uses more or less energy than the 20 minutes it saves in the drier? I need a much better grasp of maths to be able to work these things out.

I always do this, the eco wash on my machine spins at 1200, but a spin cycle on its own is 1600 so makes a huge difference to drying times.

@AChocolateOrangeaday

TBH £6 an hour would be worth if for me as it means I don't have to iron!

I only wash and dry once a week though for a family of 3.

You do ONE washing load and ONE drying load a week??!

A week?!

I do one wash load and one drying load A DAY! Family of 4.

My dehumidifier uses 650w on full whack. I never had it on the max setting though so that puts it at 330w or about 10p per hour on my tariff.

I was told by a damp specialist that every house should have one. So many of his investigations are rooted in condensation and poor ventilation.

Its sometimes quite shocking how much water it pulls out of the air - and all that water is perfect for the iron and my more delicate house plants that hate tap water.

Our tumble dryer is currently on and our smart metre says it's costing nothing. It's because we have solar panels. Game changer.

Drying indoors is one of the biggest causes of damp. We abandoned this many years ago (asthma/eczema) after a mumsnet thread allerted us to this!!

Yep. And it tends to be poorer quality homes which are already prone to damp where indoor drying is used, leading to poorer health outcomes. Another unintended consequence of all these energy / planet saving tips. We need to do something to provide better quality homes for people on low incomes.

@oakleaffy

FRANCE have capped electricity increases at 4%

The French have a great reputation for protest and direct action, I do respect them for that.

How can the French keep electric prices so 'Low' whereas ours soar??

Nothing to do with direct action, Macron taxed EDF over 9 billion Euros on their windfall profits and gave it back to the "people"

This sort of thing has happened across Europe.

Boris Johnson choose to protect shareholders instead of us, remember that at the May elections and beyond.

How do you think people managed before tumble driers were invented?

But they were invented to get round the problem of drying clothes effectively. People may have ‘managed’ but there was obviously a need, otherwise they wouldn’t have been invented.

@MrsArchchancellorRidcully

Our tumble dryer is currently on and our smart metre says it's costing nothing. It's because we have solar panels. Game changer.

If your struggling with the costs of a tumble drier, i doubt £10,000 on Solar is top of ones spending priorities but a 10/10 for smugness.

To be fair ours is a family of three in a two bed flat (see my previous post) but if we were a bigger family we'd probably consider investing in a tumble dryer despite the cost. It also depends on how you pay for energy. I'm on a monthly DD (can't get a smart meter) which will be less expensive than prepayment but more expensive than a meter. My mum used to dry outdoors as much as she could to reduce costs. If I had outside space I'd do the same.

We’ve got a heated airer and a really good dehumidifier. In emergencies we run up the road to the launderette and use the driers there, but it’s £1 for 10 mins of drying time so not cheap!

@oakleaffy

FRANCE have capped electricity increases at 4%

The French have a great reputation for protest and direct action, I do respect them for that.

How can the French keep electric prices so 'Low' whereas ours soar??

French electricity isn't coupled to gas prices the way it is in the UK. They have a much higher proportion of baseload electricity from nuclear; they export a lot of it to us.

It also means that French CO2 emissions per head are about 30% lower than Germany, which is rapidly - and stupidly - decommissioning its reactors just in case there's a tsunami on the Main river.

I dry inside in the winter and outside in the summer. I have 2 big clothes racks. It works well, I hang clothes carefully to avoid creases on the rack every morning after folding yesterday’s wash, which is always dry.

I agree with a pp that it's the standing charges rather than the unit charge that are bonkers & will really impact people. Mine has gone from 29.450p to 53.040p.

Back to drying etc I always run an extra spin (1600rpm) on my machine if I'm intending to dry inside (be that tumble or airer) it take 15 minutes & knocks a good amount off drying time.

The lady on the news was talking out of her arse! Didn't do much research, if any at all.

I am a fairly occasional tumble dryer user (just finishing stuff off that is still damp after a day on the washing line) and according to my smart meter it costs about 60p an hour to run. So I'd have to run it for 10 hours to spend £6, which is clearly bollocks.

Even on the rare occasions I ever dry an entire load from start to finish it is dry within two hours, so around £1.20.

We were fortunate enough to be able to put solar panels on our roof using the government grants a few years ago. I know that isn't an option for everyone, but as a pp said, on some days that can mean that major appliances run for free during the middle of the day in bright weather.

To me, the most obvious saving us to reduce the washing by a load per week.

Given lots of families say they wash every day, reducing to 6 loads or 5 per week sounds viable.

I’m looking to wear jeans an extra 2 or 3 days (up from 3) and to return the sweatshirts the kids throw in the basket after 1 wash back to their rooms (not little kids with food down them). I wear a vest or camisole in winter to keep warm and it means I can wear most tops twice instead of once. Towels are washed weekly and we don’t necessarily have one each. Bedding is changed every 2 weeks. We only wash full loads.

I’d think most people could reduce the amount of washing by a load per week…or more, when you’re talking about families. That’s a saving on the cost of running the washing machine and drying that load.

Realise it doesn’t answer the question of how to dry the loads you fo have to dry, exoecaiily for people with a lack of space and options.

Spinning your clothes excessively ruins the fibres in them.

Sump post from the pp about her solar panels. We can’t afford them.

@0ats

Don't use one. Clothes horse all winter and washing line in spring summer.

Same here but there are only two of us and we have a spare room to put the clothes horse in. It would be more difficult for a family with children.

I only use the dryer once or twice each week. Towels and our bedding. The sheets are heavy. We’ve recently moved and haven’t put the washing line up yet.

I run a dehumidifier in the bathroom/hallway as have a rubbish extractor & takes forever to dry out after showers even with windows open. I dry washing indoors, have done for years also regularly open the windows & air the home, had mould previously, not had it for years since running a dehumidifier. There have been good offers on the Meaco low energy Which Best Buy on Amazon, Argos & John Lewis, £130 for a 20l, there is a small version which has also been reduced. I already have a rebadged version of the Meaco which I got from Aldi around 7 years ago, it is excellent. Avoid Ebac dehumidifiers they’re awful, they break down & give crap customer service, they’ll do nothing to help. Dehumidifier also blows out a bit of warm air, bathrooms always toasty with it on, don’t need the heating on in there. I think in UK a dehumidifier is a good investment, opening windows does’t always help with moisture problems in our homes especially if it’s damp outside.

I have an 11 year old washer dryer (i know to the month how old it is as the bloody old one broke the month I had my pfb), it's had a few bits replaced and I'm eyeing up a new one, but waiting as long as humanly possible.

My first question is - is it worth replacing on a saving energy perspective? Old one is a hotpoint wdd960 ultima, and I'd aim to replace it with a newer version of the same thing (say the ao.com/product/rdg9643ksukn-hotpoint-washer-dryer-black-77092-2.aspx )
I usually wash everything on the 40' cycle, then dry for max of an hour only. Washing then gets hung in the living room to finish drying.

Then question number two - is it worth getting a dehumidifier to help it dry? Reason I'm wondering (rather than it just being obvious!) is that there is a back boiler in our living room, hence it has a pretty "airy" (!) vent - so would that already also remove the majority of the moisture from the air?

Luckily I do have a pretty decent washing line out the garden, so from a few weeks away all washing will go out there.