Mr. Electricity is your guide to saving energy in your home.
|
If you like this site, you might also like some of my
other sites:
Battery
Guide
Which battery is best? We cover
rechargeable and alkaline batteries to show you what's hot,
what's not, and the best way to charge them. (visit
now)
|
The
Military Budget as Cookies
This excellent animation from TrueMajority shows in
graphic detail (using Oreo cookies) how ridiculously, large
the military budget is, and how we could solve many domestic
problems with a modest 12% cut. A must-see. (watch
it now)
|
|
Cost
Per Load - Electric vs. Gas
Dryers
|
|
|
Electric
|
Gas
|
|
Electricity cost
|
$0.36
3.3
kWh
|
$0.02
0.21
kWh
|
|
Gas
|
|
$0.31
0.22
therm @
$1.42/therm
|
|
Cost per load
(assumes 45
minutes per load)
|
$0.36
|
$0.34
|
|
The table uses
average energy rates; use
your actual energy rate
for a valid
comparison.
Electric
dryers. Electric use figure
from the Multi-housing
Laundry
Association
(MLA). Note that you can't use
the label on an electric dryer to
figure the amount of energy used,
because the heating element isn't
on the whole time during the
drying cycle.
Gas dryers:
Electric component from my
own measurement of a
standard-size Kenmore gas dryer
for a 45-minute cycle. Note that
the Multi-housing
Laundry
Association
(MLA) gives a higher figure, 0.5
kWh, which results in a 3¢
difference per load.
In my test, the
load dropped from 325 watts at
the start to 260 by the end of
the cycle, because as the clothes
got drier they got lighter and so
it took less energy to spin the
drum. Gas cost per load from
Lawrence
Berkeley
Labs.
MLA gives 0.17 therm for a gas
dryer cycle.
|
Tips
on saving money on clothes
drying.
  Air-dry
your clothes instead of using a
dryer. If you don't have
anywhere to hang a clothes line, you
can still use a clothes-drying rack
like one of those pictured. Tip the
Planet has an excellent
article about air-drying clothes,
covering every possible angle,
including clever things like
retractable clothes lines.
- When
replacing an electric dryer, get a gas
dryer if you already have a gas line
and gas service. Gas dryers
save about about 15% (6¢ per load)
vs. electric. For eight loads a week,
that's a savings of $25/yr. The savings
aren't big enough to justify having a
gas line installed and getting gas
service if you don't already have
these, unless you do more than eight
loads a week, or if you don't mind a
longer payback time.
- When
replacing a dryer, get one with a
moisture sensor. That way
you'll never run the dryer longer than
you have to. Make sure to clean the
sensor occasionally, too, so that the
waxy buildup from dryer softening
sheets doesn't impede its ability to
sense moisture.
- Get a
front-load washer.
Front-loading washers tend to leave
less water in your clothes than
top-load washers. (They use a lot less
water, too.)
 Use
a spin dryer. A spin
dryer is a little machine that
spins your clothes around really fast
to remove excess water (and detergents
bonded to the water). After a couple of
minutes in the spin dryer, you put your
clothes in a regular clothes dryer,
where they dry in 30 minutes less time
than usual. Based on 8 loads a week, 30
minutes of drying time instead of 60,
and 10¢ per kilowatt-hour, a spin
dryer saves about $97/yr. ($100 less
the $3 cost of running the spin dryer
itself.) A spin dryer costs about
$130.
 Clean
the lint filter after EVERY
load. Your dryer takes
longer to dry when it's trying to push
air through lint.
- If you use
fabric softener sheets, clean your lint
screen with a toothbrush and water
occasionally. Dryer sheets
can cause an invisibly waxy buildup on
the lint screen which makes it harder
for the dryer to push air through it.
(Snopes).
- Wash &
Dry very early in the morning, or at
night. If your utility
imposes a demand
charge, then do your laundry in
off-peak hours.
- Close the
door in summer, open it in
winter. Closing the door to
the room the dryer is in will keep it
from heating up the whole house summer.
In the winter, keep the door open, to
grab some of that extra heat.
- Add a wet
towel to remove wrinkles.
According to CompareIndia,
if you leave your clothes in the dryer
too long and they become wrinkled, you
can easily cure this by throwing a wet
towel in the dryer and drying again.
This saves you from having to either
iron all your clothes, or wash them and
dry them all over again.
- Run around
the house naked. Then you'll
have less clothes to wash.
Below are questions
I've received and answered
about how saving on the use of clothes
dryers.
|
|
Ask
Mr. Electricity about saving on dryer
costs
Our dryer just quit
working today. My husband says if he puts up a
clothesline and irons the clothes to remove the
wrinkles that it will be much cheaper than using
the dryer. Is this true? I know line drying is
cheaper, but what about running an iron? I have
been researching this all day on the net and could
not find anything even remotely close until i found
your site. Very informative, glad it is there.
-- Wendy
MacQueen, May 2003
You didn't tell me whether you have a
gas or electric dryer. Either way you can
estimate this difference yourself:
(Dryer wattage) x (Time used) =
(Total Dryer Energy)
(Iron wattage) x (Time used) = (Total Iron
Energy)
You can find the wattage of each appliance by
looking at the label, but this is not so
effective for dryers since the rating on the
label is the maximum the dryer will ever use,
and it typically uses a bit less than that. To
find the electrical consumption of your dryer
more accurately, see the table above that I just
added.
Anyway, when you do the calculations you'll
find that using the iron is cheaper. The iron
uses less electricity than the dryer, and you
probably won't run it for nearly as long as
you'd run the dryer.
There's another factor to consider: You're
also saving the cost of a new dryer if you don't
replace it. So using a clothesline and an iron
instead of replacing and using a new dryer will
save you money.
Everyone says to run
appliances like washing machines and dishwashers at
night to save money. Is electricity cheaper at
night? --
Melissa,
Appomattox,
VA, Mar. 2003
Not usually, but it depends on how your
utility company charges you for power.
Some utilities charge less for evening
use, and you can check your electric bill or
call your utility company to find out for sure.
It could also pay to run appliances in the
evening when the air conditioning is off if your
utility company has a demand charge. See
the next answer.
Does it raise your
electric bill to run two appliances at the same
time rather than one after the other? Like, say,
the washer and the dryer or the oven and the dryer?
We have an all electric house and were trying to
save money on our electric bill.
--Christie,
Jan. 2003
It depends on whether your utility
company has a separate demand charge in
addition to the consumption charge. The demand
charge based on the maximum amount of
electricity you draw at any one time. The
following chart from Wisconsin
Electric illustrates the concept. The shaded
area is how much electricity you used, and you
know you get charged for that. But the black bar
on top is the demand, how much energy you
"demanded" at any given point throughout the
day. If your utility company has a demand charge
(ask them), then you can save money by spreading
out your electrical use throughout the day.
Running appliances one after the other rather
than at the same time would reduce your demand.
And better yet, running them when you're not
using much electricity for other purposes (such
as at night when the air conditioner is off)
will reduce your demand even more.
|
|
