£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 always do an extra spin if tumble drying . Our quick wash setting as a 800 rpm default so I put it on as a an extra 1200 rpm spin .

We have non-electric dehumidifiers in a few rooms in our house - they are plastic things which you have to put moisture absorbing discs into and they then collect the water up .

It’s machine dependent and a typical energy consumption per option is included in the manual. You could try Googling your machine's product code to find the manual? I did this for both washing machine and dryer after reading on mumsnet that “quick” cycles use a lot more energy. I learned a lot!

A perfunctory flick through a retailer's website reveals that the energy use for a 8kg Bosch condenser tumble dryer is 4.63kWh on a standard cotton cycle at full load.

At the 42p per kWh quoted upthread from Octopus that's £1.94 before VAT, so nowhere near £6 at any conceivable price which does not result in the breakdown of social order. And it's worth pointing out that 8kg would be a very full load. Most 'loads' are nowhere near that - we actually completely fill our drum with about 4.5kg of mixed cottons.

However, an 8kg Bosch heat pump tumble dryer would use 1.86kWh on the same cycle - i.e. the thick end of 60% less. That's 78p per load before VAT - a saving of £1.39 after VAT at 20% on every standard cycle.

The price difference between the two machines (from John Lewis) is £220 (£429 vs £649), so if you did just one full load a week you'd be ahead in just over three years at current electricity prices if you bought the more expensive heat pump machine.

Obviously, much cheaper machines are available.

See my post before yours, I’d just get a dehumidifier especially if you’re finishing off the drying in the living room anyways.

I'm so glad you asked this @whereisthejasmine it's been on my mind all bloody morning since seeing that!

Yes, last time i went into it it was 60p or something for a load. I've have spent the morning wondering if i was wrong but been flat out so no time to google.

I've literally just hung a wash load over some airers in a sunny bedroom muttering ''six quid??'' and sat down to check lol

Doesn’t anyone else find that tumble drying reduces the lifespan of clothes? I really don’t like tumble drying, apart from towels which the dryer makes lovely and fluffy.

I wonder how many women people all over the country spat their tea out at ''£6 to do a tumble dryer load'' at half 7 this morning?

As an experiment I've just done a wash (5kg - I weighed it!) on the auto setting - 1h 29 mins, 1200 rpm spin, 40 degrees; and a tumble dry in a condenser for 50 mins. Total cost on new tariff was £1.00 (smart meter).

According to manuals, the wash used 0.52 Kwh and the dry 2.70 Kwh, 3.22 Kwh in total. I pay 29.48p per Kwh, which is 95p. Difference in smart meter reading is I've a lamp on to read by (& just turned on PC, hence this post)

Couldn't dry outside as its windy and about 4 degrees.

[quote JustPlainKnackered]@0ats
I'm always interested when people say this. May I ask: how many people are you washing ( and drying for)? And what do you do when it rains for weeks and it's too warm for the heating to be on inside?

[/quote]
5, including 3 neurodivergent DC who still have accidents and wet the bed/themselves occasionally.

One DD gets upset if she can't put a fresh school uniform on each day and change afterwards into clean clothes.... They all have clothes from hobbies ie football, dancing etc

Towels are reused, bedding done weekly if not needing to be done due to incontinence....

We use 2 clothes horses for the larger items, and tumble dry smaller items.

If we slack even slightly we end up with a mountain of dirty laundry!

@TheOldLadyOfThreadneedleStreet

Doesn’t anyone else find that tumble drying reduces the lifespan of clothes? I really don’t like tumble drying, apart from towels which the dryer makes lovely and fluffy.

I spent 20 years with 3 kids 2 years apart with no tumble dryer and managed. Just. Last 4 years i've had one (yay) and honestly it's not made a difference to lifespan of clothes IME.

The cheaper ones do shrink a bit ... but i factor that in. And NEVER tumble dry DD4's clothes.

I’d say about a £1 a cycle for a non heat pump dryer as the figure quoted always used to be about 50p. People come out with all sorts of rubbish!
Surely you generally need to turn the heating on to dry inside? It would take ages and go smelly with no heat? I’m all for line drying whenever possible but if it’s not an option I think you need to factor in the cost of heating and dehumidifier or cost of heat loss if you’re opening windows. I think I wash too much, especially the kids and the best economy will be re-wearing a bit more!

@Ifailed surely windy is good for drying?

I don't know why people think clothes won't dry unless it's warm outside. They won't dry as fast, might need to finish off indoors but it's still money saved/moisture indoors reduced.

Just to add, I'm conscious not everyone has the option of drying outside, I'm thinking of people who can and do dry outside, but think they can only do so for half the year.

Ours is about £1.20 max and our dryer isn't one of the new super duper efficient ones. It's about four years old now. It's very rare a dry takes the whole time the cycle is set for - it has sensors so turns off when stuff is dry enough, which is always less than the estimated cycle.

@BakeOffRewatch

It’s machine dependent and a typical energy consumption per option is included in the manual. You could try Googling your machine's product code to find the manual? I did this for both washing machine and dryer after reading on mumsnet that “quick” cycles use a lot more energy. I learned a lot!

I've got the manual but I can't see the energy consumption, is it maybe a newer regulation that energy consumption has to be included?

www.manualslib.com/manual/71088/Hotpoint-Wdd960.html?page=9#manual

Thanks crispsarny re the advice for a dehumidifier :)

@MrsMiddleMother

I only use the tumble dryer for bedding and towels and will continue to do so

Me too.

If I can hang it outside, everything else goes on a heated airier I have in the spare room.
Never had a damp problem & have been doing this in this house for 6 years.

I don't know why people think clothes won't dry unless it's warm outside. They won't dry as fast, might need to finish off indoors but it's still money saved/moisture indoors reduced.

They don't dry if it's bloody raining, which is a hell of a lot of the time here in Cumbria. And even when it's not raining, the air is generally damp. If I hang out washing in the morning on a non-windy, non-warm day, I can take the clothes in at 4 or 5pm and they are still pretty damp. It often rains even when it's not forecast to, so even if I have time to hang washing out before I go to work, I can never tell if it will get rained on.

And my house doesn't need any more damp that it gets from being in a damp area. I have a large heated airer in the garage, but it doesn't really take a full load and it takes ages to dry.

I wish the media wouldnt scare monger like this. Tumble dryers (I have a heat pump one and use it very occasionally) are a nice to have.

This will be the next big thing for the news to focus on with numerous scare stories some of which are not true. My DF lived like a pauper. Wouldnt put the lights on unless necessary, heating was like gold to him. Needless to say he had pots of money. He just chose to live like this. Of course there is a big issue but can we stop with stupid stories like my tumble dryer costs £6 per load. Clearly that is a load of rubbish!

Get a smart meter and you'll find out. At this point I think it's probably worth having one, you can isolate the electricity-gobblers. Someone on this site found out through their smart meter that their fancy fridge freezer was using way more electricity than it should, they'd never have known otherwise.

They don't dry if it's bloody raining, which is a hell of a lot of the time here in Cumbria. And even when it's not raining, the air is generally damp. If I hang out washing in the morning on a non-windy, non-warm day, I can take the clothes in at 4 or 5pm and they are still pretty damp.

Precisely. I understand we all live in different regions and it makes a huge difference to the cost of laundry and how much time it takes to do it before we even consider what it's like to live in a damp house. It's similar to the extra mess caused by living in a hard water area or dealing with the extra dirt from living in a high traffic area.

Thought this thread would appreciate this old picture of my Nan hanging her washing out...

It's about four quid down our local laundrette.

A simple electric fan pointed at your clothes rack will speed up the drying time massively and is HUGELY cheaper than anything that involves generating heat. A dehumidifier is also a great idea but cost a bit more to buy than a fan.

Our old one broke so I fairly recently replaced it with a super energy efficient one and only ever put it on at night (economy 7) when we can’t dry outside. 3 kids, tiny house and no space = no choice.

We do produce too much washing though so will try to limit that plus the kids will have timed showers from now on.

[quote whereisthejasmine]ah ha I have foudn something. This is what I wanted to know, link here in case it is helpful for others. Looks like a dryer load is going to be over £1 a load, but not £6 as per the lady on the news earlier this morning. So I can still use it but will use it sparingly (ie finishing off the washing that I have had out on the line)

www.nea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Electricity-Consumption-Around-the-Home.pdf[/quote]
That's useful to know. I would have had to abandon mine at £6 a load too. I'll just be a bit more sparing with it now.