Cut Back on Energy Use from Your Dryer
by Union of Concerned Scientists on 05.10.07
Electric dryers are often among the top energy-uses in a home, right behind refrigerators, lighting and water heaters. Because the average dryer uses 875 killowatt hours of electricity a year, it's a prime target for reducing global warming pollution and saving money on your utility bill.
The best way to cut dryer use is to hang clothes to dry whenever possible, either outdoors or in the home. However, there are other ways to operate a dryer more efficiently that can cut its total energy use:
Type of Dryer
Some dryers have a moisture detection feature that will shut the dryer off after the clothes have dried. However, you should know that the Environmental Protection Agency does not award Energy Star labels to dryers.
Location
A dryer should ideally be in a warm location in the home so less energy is needed to heat the air inside.
Use
Cleaning the lint filter after every cycle is important for keeping hot air moving efficiently through the dryer. Drying full loads will get the most of out of a dryer, but not so full that air is unable to circulate around the clothing. You can also dry two loads in a row to take advantage of retained heat. Using your washer's spin cycle before loading the dryer can also help reduce the amount of moisture in your clothing. The average washer only uses 99 killowatt hours of electricity per year.
Amen...switching to line drying my clothes was one of the only conservation efforts I have done that made a big, easily tangible difference right away in my electric bill.
In the winter I tried ventilating my dryer *inside* the house.
I didn't understand why I would heat all this air, then shoot it outdoors.
So I bought an attachment that filtered out the lint with water for about $10. (not a good idea for gas dryers, I read) . It worked OK as long as the room was well ventilated -- If I closed the door to the room with the dryer it ended up making everything very warm an very wet.
but, hey, in a cold, dry house, that's pretty nice!
In Germany, every apartment has a clever A or H shaped rack for hanging clothes to dry. Space efficient, free. Folds out of the way when company comes. Works great in winter and summer. Almost no one even owns a dryer!
It's tips like this of which people constantly need to be reminded. I live at a residential arts high school with two hundred other students, all of which are willing to make efforts to greenify our campus and doorms -- they're simply uneducated about simple, everyday ways to do it. I believe I am one of few, if not the only, who hangs clothes up (...you get creative in such cramped living quarters) instead of paying $1 for the inefficient dryers.
We found a novel way to cut back drier use - it's kept in my office. Nobody is keen to use it unless it's absolutely necessary as it disturbs my concentration :).
ahh but I live in an area where by law line drying my clothes
inside my condo or outside my condo is illegal we are fighting this law but it's a big uphill battle with the corporate owners of the land
Of course, this time of year your cloths can end more dirty then before you washed them with all the pollen falling. \
Oh, and while venting electric dryers into the house is OK, combustion gases could build up very quickly if you vented a gas dryer like that.
So is drying a half load for half as much time not actually saving much energy? I've been taking out the big things like jeans and towels and putting them on a drying rack and (pending having enough drying space set up) drying socks and stuff in the dryer. But if most of the energy is going into getting the machine up to speed, I might as well dry all the laundry in the dryer until we figure out how to set up the clothesline in the basement.
Also if you do use a dryer be sure and occasionally wash the lint trap, fabric softeners add a layer of wax to the fine holes and clog them up. seriously clog them... you can pool water in one if it's been long enough, but throw a bit of dish soap on it and rub it in with water and you'll see a big increase in efficiency.
We dry the clothes in the dryer for only 10 minutes (as opposed to the 50 or so minutes to dry them completely), then put them on hangers and hang them from the rafters in the basement (the dryer is in the basement). The 10 minutes in the dryer gets them drying on their way enough to keep them from getting "crunchy" (i.e. the clothes come out all stiff as a board if we just immediately hang them up and air dry them in the house). The air drying saves wear and tear on the clothes so they last longer. And we run the dryer at the low setting which keeps the clothes from getting static; we haven't had to use any of those fabric softener sheets, even in the winter. This made a decent and noticeable reduction in our natural gas bill too. We do this in the winter, but you could do this year round if you didn't want to/can't use a clothesline in the summer.
In the summer we put them on a rack outside. The rack is inside a "closet" with walls that have small slots for air (more like a fence then a wall I suppose), and the walls of the closet are lined with window screen. This allows the air to circulate and dry the clothes, keeps out the bigger junk (like bird droppings!) and we don't have to have our unmentionables flying around for all to see!
One of the biggest ways to save energy for a clothes dryer (aside from hanging up clothes on a line) is by choosing an efficient clothes *washer*. The amount of energy that a dryer does is proportional to the amount of moisture in the clothes. Horizontal-axis clothes washers are much better at reducing the amount of moisture in the clothes (they have an additional benefit of requiring much less water input compared to vertical axis clothes washers).