[BabyPeanut]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'T')hen the wind picked up and blew the stand over, clothes and all.

[eastbay]

Bungee cords?? lol... it's now 1230 and no wind yet... rather than pound nails into my house stucco I'll live around the wind... yesterday was unusually windy and stormy.

EastBay

[gg3]

Those drying racks are designed for use *indoors*, so try putting it inside, next to a particularly sunny window. And/or opening the window slightly to provide a light breeze around the rack. Added benefit of indoor drying racks: the drying clothes put a little more humidity into the indoor air, which is helpful in the winter months when indoor heating can otherwise cause the air to become uncomfortably low in humidity.

Interesting that the drying-rack is about the capacity of one washer-load. That's good industrial-process design, where every element in a system is of compatible capacity.

For outdoors, there are outdoor clothes lines including one that consists of a vertical pole with a rectangular frame at the top, and around the frame are the actual clothes lines. An outer sleeve for the pole gets mounted in concrete in the same manner as a basketball hoop, the main pole slides into that, and it can rotate so you can hang the wash from one standing position.

When not in use drying clothes, one can always hang some potted plants from the corners of the frame, thereby pacifying any neighbors who might be more concerned with what's going on in your back yard than they rightly should be:-). Though, you do not want to encourage birds or squirrels to think of this as a place to hang out. Bird poop carries cryptosporidia, and squirrels carry fleas which in turn carry bubonic plague (both of which are easily enough sterilized by normal sunlight).

Outdoor clothes lines also entail re-gaining the old skill of properly using clothes pins. It's not as obvious as it looks; the key here being, use lots of clothes pins in order to keep the wind from pulling your stuff off the line.

--

At present I'm waiting for a few more components for my graywater system. At that point I'll be able to split the laundry into a Wednesday wash and a Saturday wash, saving the final rinse water from each to use as the first wash water for the next (and then using the used wash-water to get all the toilet-flushes I need during each week). Early experiments indicate that saving rinse water for over a week (plus a little bleach) does not lead to any "odd smells" in the stored water that would indicate the water is going bad, so saving that water for a half-week will not be a problem.

Splitting the laundry into two separate days' washes, will also make better use of my indoor clotheslines. These are now on the main floor, which makes them a whole heck-of-a-lot easier to use than the old ones up in the attic. The ones in the attic required climbing the step ladder through the trap-door to get to them, and working from a semi-crouched position to use them. The new ones on the main floor are accessible from a normal standing position.

[eastbay]

I set a load to dry outside yesterday around noon, went to work, worked until very late, and when I got up this afternoon at 1pm the rack was still standing and the clothes were all dry!!

There was moderate wind, no sun, only low clouds. This $19.95 rack is going to work just fine. It'll pay for itself in about 8 weeks or so.

Too cool.

Eastbay

[JR]

As of today, I haven't used my gas dryer in almost 2 months. And it's winter. Once weather is warmer, I'll go back to my outside line. Makes me think i should look into just selling the useless thing.




Jodi

[gg3]

EastBay: Score! And every 8 weeks you could put another $20 aside in a "conservation savings" fund; that's about $120 per year; which could go into part of an extra mortgage payment or some other household improvement or just recreation. Concrete savings.

JR: Don't ditch the dryer, there are occasions where it might be needed. For example, in the winter when someone gets sick, and you want to sanitize their clothes but cloudy/rainy/etc. weather prevents taking advantage of outdoor line-drying & solar UV. Or if your dog/cat/kids get fleas/ticks/lice/whatever and you need to sanitize their clothing/bedding/etc.

The dryer, just sitting there (presumably unplugged, and if it's a gas dryer, not using a pilot light), is innocent enough; it's another piece of household capital equipment that will be more difficult to replace later. The way I look at stuff like that is, if you've got it, keep it for limited usage, just don't over-use it.

[eastbay]

Drying clothes inside during the winter requires having the heater on at least some of the time or the clothes will hang there damp for several days. That's not a very good idea. We've kept the heater off just about all winter. We call it 'free air con'. For those who go 'ccoler' it's cheaper to simply use the clothes dryer on those 55 to 60 degree (inside) nights rather than heat the whole house to dry a load of clothes. If its sunny outside the clothes will dry fine as long as its above 50 or so.

EastBay

[ish]

We keep our house at about 60 degrees and the clothes on our drying rack seem to be drying out in about 12 hours (?) more or less. That doesn't count towels, sheets, or jeans which we still stick in the dryer.

The key is our super washing machine which spins the clothes until they are only slightly damp when they come out. It is a Fisher Paykel, got it at Lowe's, it was highly recommended and cost much less than super efficient washers of other companies. It is highly water and energy efficient.

[gg3]

EastBay: Good going there with the rack staying put all day!

I keep geek-hours, which means up late enough every night that the place gets quite cold and it becomes necessary to turn on the heat for a few hours. On laundry nights, that does help dry the stuff quickly. Once the weather gets decent I won't need to do that. I'll just run a fan to keep some air circulating, and that's 60 watts on high speed, so a few hours of that = maybe a quarter of a kilowatt-hour for drying a load.

A week ago, my bed sheets came out of the twin-tub so dry that they only took three hours on the indoor clothes lines before they were absolutely bone-dry and ready to put back on the bed. The longest drying time I've had with this machine and the indoor lines was a little over 24 hours, i.e. hang the stuff in the evening, it's dry the next evening. And that was when it was damp & rainy outside. I recall pretty clearly that when I was using a standard washer, it always took longer because the laundry never came out as dry as it does with the machine I have now.

I'd rather have an outdoor clothes line because I like the idea of using solar UV to sanitize. However there is no way to do it where I live, without having to worry about a) soot and dust in the air, and b) opportunistic theft by homeless scavengers.

Ish: Fisher Paykel has a good reputation; presumably a front-loader. Given that you keep the place at 60 all the time, chances are we're both getting simlar results in terms of spin efficiency. I hang my jeans and towels above the floor-heater, so even if it's off, there's a slight current of less-humid air coming up from the pilot light area, and that helps get the jeans dry, overnight.

On the other hand, if I were also a "we" i.e. had a partner or other housemate(s) of whatever kind (not to mention kids), we'd have that much more laundry to do, and either a) have to wash a couple loads each night due to space limitations on the indoor clothes lines, or b) have to use the dryer for large or heavy items.


Wearing clean clothes, sleeping between clean sheets, curling up under clean blankets, and drying off after a hot shower with clean towels, etc., are among the wonderful benefits that go along with civilization. And like most civilized values and their modes of expression, not hard to preserve in a world of growing scarcity. It only takes a bit of thought and foresight.

[Doly]

I have a clothes airer - basically a foldable metal rack where I put my clothes to dry. It occupies little space and does the job nicely. Clothes are dry in a day or two.

[eastbay]

gg3,
Hang your jeans from a door jamb, crack a window and they'll be dry in no time. You live in the EastBay too so you should be ok with not running the dryer until at least November.
We can unplug ours. My wife and I have decided we can simply do without it. That's one less issue for us.

Now how to do without the stand-up 50 gallon water heater... yikes... our 10 year old water heater may be ready for replacement soon and we need the most efficient way possible to heat water. It seems silly to heat all that water continuously.
Any ideas?
EastBay

[JBinKC]

In the heating season I think a clothes dryer is worth using if the air isn't vented to the outside. It serves a dual purposes a source of latent heat and can serve as humidifier to a cold dry home. To prevent dust/lint problems I use 3 pair of nylon leggings. Make sure the leggings are cleaned occasionally to prevent a clog in the system.

Once the heating season is over I think using a clothes drier is a total waste of energy and money.

[gg3]

Eastbay: Usually I do the washing in the evening/night hours, this time of year it's still cold out. But comes warmer weather, yeah, an open window and a fan to help with the drying. An additional benefit of which will be less ambient humidity.

Re. jeans in the doorjamb: my indoor clothes lines do just as well, here's the setup in case I haven't mentioned it earlier: In areas with door and/or window frames directly opposite each other, I've screwed two small hooks into each frame. Then I have sets of clothes line with loops knotted in the ends: each line strings between the hooks on opposite doors and/or windows. For example in the hall, I have two lines running down the hall, one of which passes above the heater; and another set in the kitchen.

Total of 34 linear feet of clothes line, which is enough for about 10 - 14# of laundry. That's two loads in the twin-tub, which is about an hour and a half's work from start to finish including setting up & putting away the washer and hanging the clothes etc. on the lines. The clothes lines get taken down when not in use, so they're not contributing any further than necessary to my "nerd's nest" decor:-)

With the heat on, and dry weather, the sheets dried in an hour this weekend. I expect similar performance without the heat on in the summer. BTW, my total use of heating is about 4 - 5 hours per day, i.e. a half hour in the morning and the balance of that between about 11pm and 3 - 4am (the latter is "Geek second-shift":-).

Re. those disconnected dryers: Don't throw them out, they're good for sanitizing the laundry in the event of illness. As in, the regular flu season, and the pending bird flu pandemic, not to mention the regular colds and occasional stomach-bug. The energy consumption is well justified in those instances.

(And your dryer will last longer, and you'll be able to show it to your grandchildren! "Hey, come here and look at this! We used to dry our clothes in it every week. It used as much power as we use now to run the whole house for three days! Now let's go out in the garden and pick some tomatoes....")

[Keith_McClary]

A little Physics:
When you hang laundry indoors during the heating season, you will notice it feels cold.
The reason is that evaporation of water requires heat. This will cool your house. If you have a thermostat, the furnace will run more to provide this extra heat.

Theoretically, you are using the same amount of energy to evaporate the water as you would with a dryer vented inside (except for the small amount of energy needed to turn the drum).
So if your furnace and dryer are both gas fired you aren't saving gas.
(If your dryer is electric the energy is probably more expensive.)

The biggest energy savings are from high speed spin-drying.
Or you could choose attire that requires very little drying:

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', 'T')heoretically, you are using the same amount of energy to evaporate the water as you would with a dryer vented inside (except for the small amount of energy needed to turn the drum).

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', 'T')heoretically, you are using the same amount of energy to evaporate the water as you would with a dryer vented inside (except for the small amount of energy needed to turn the drum).

[gg3]

In theory house heat for ambient clothes drying is no more efficient than a dryer. However, in practice, it is.

Dryers are typically vented outside because a) the dryer would put a lot of humidity into the house fairly quickly, b) along with a decent amount of lint which would be a serious indoor air pollutant as well as a cleaning hassle, c) in the case of gas dryers, you're also venting the combustion exhaust gases that would suffocate you indoors. Also, dryers suck the air out of houses, causing greater use of the heat in winter and air conditioning in summer.

Ambient clothes drying in proximity to household heat puts the moisture into the air more slowly, does not generate lint or combustion exhaust gases, and does not suck the warm air out of the house in the winter. While there is an increase in the amount of fuel required to heat the house to the same temperature (some of that heat being lost evaporating the moisture out of the clothes), all of the heated air stays indoors.

Agreed, high-speed spin drying is most efficient. That's one of the benefits of using a twin-tub, or a high-end modern front-loader, or a separate spinner such as the SpinX. When I was using a conventional top-loader with a less efficient spin cycle, I could dry clothes in the hot attic in the summer, but in the winter I had to plan my laundry days to coincide with dry sunny days (northern California has cloudy, rainy winters) so the attic would be warm enough to do the job quickly enough (i.e. 24 hours or two days at most). With the new twin-tub, I can use the indoor clothes lines and have everything dry overnight even in cold weather, or use the electric tumble-dryer in a pinch and have a load dry in 15 minutes instead of an hour.

Note, re. quantity of laundry & indoor drying: Too much damp laundry hanging indoors can cause the air to become uncomfortably humid and also cause drying time to become too long. From what I've found, 10 lbs. is a workable amount, but 20 lbs. is too much. Results depend on your local ambient temperature and humidity, the size of your house, and how dry your clothes are when they come out of the washer.

As an "industrial design" issue, you want to match up the size of your clothes lines to the capacity of your washer, so they are about equal or an even multiple. That is, enough clothes lines for at minimum one load in the washer, or preferably two, and possibly three loads if you have the space.

[SolarDave]

I bought a small (4 inch square) 220v fan. I wired it into the heating element on the dryer (electric). Then I ran a 4 inch duct down from the attic in the closet where the dryer lives and had the end of it right next to the back of the dryer. I put the fan on the end of the pipe. I put a box with a furnace filter up in the attic at the other end of the pipe. Every time the heating element comes on, the fan comes on too, and the the air coming down from the attic on a sunny day is at about 130 degrees.

Parts cost about $20. If ll dryers had an outlet on the back for such a fan (would add little to the cost of a dryer) we could probably put a lot of hot attics to work drying clothes.

It reduced my monthly KWH usage during the summer by about 15 - payback in about a year.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SolarDave', 'I') bought a small (4 inch square) 220v fan. I wired it into the heating element on the dryer (electric). Then I ran a 4 inch duct down from the attic in the closet where the dryer lives and had the end of it right next to the back of the dryer. I put the fan on the end of the pipe. I put a box with a furnace filter up in the attic at the other end of the pipe. Every time the heating element comes on, the fan comes on too, and the the air coming down from the attic on a sunny day is at about 130 degrees.

Parts cost about $20. If ll dryers had an outlet on the back for such a fan (would add little to the cost of a dryer) we could probably put a lot of hot attics to work drying clothes.

It reduced my monthly KWH usage during the summer by about 15 - payback in about a year.

[strider3700]

I have an all electric house at the moment and after doing the obvious efficiency changes and being in the summer with no AC and no heat turned on I have an electric bill using 1112 kwh in a month so since I want to cut that in half at least, over the weekend I picked up a meter to measure watt usage of various things in my house.
http://tinyurl.com/agx46
to be exact.

1 kwh costs me 0.0605 cents in case anyone is wondering and I'm going with 30 days to a month for ease of calculation

I figured I'd post up some of the results here as I find them.

Cable box - This bad boy sucks down 19 Watts when turned on. Interestingly enough it also sucks down 19 watts when turned off. mine runs 24 hours a day because it loses it's programming if you unplug it. so thats about 480 watts/day or 3 cents/day which is 14.4 kwh/month or 90 cents/month

Dehumidifier - This one alternated between 200 and 350 watts when running. Running about 12 hours a day it was using 3.6 kw or 22 cents/day or 108 kwh/month which is $6.50/month, ok so thats about 9% of my usage, I'll look into replacing that beast.

Microwave - This one takes 3 watts to sit idle and tell me the time. so 72 watts/day or .4cents/day or 13 cents/month. Pretty good, BUT when running it spikes up to about 1500 watts, it moves around a bit up there. now I use it about 1 minute/day maybe 2 at most so lets go with that. that would be about 0.080 kwh used which is close enough to say that the microwave costs me 1 cent /day or 30 cents /month

Now all of my indoor lights are 13watt cfl since most of them are regular sockets I can't measure them, But I do have a floor lamp with one in it. Turns out it uses 14 watts when running. Since I always turn them off and I like it dark I would say I have 3 hours/day of one bulb running. So thats 0.039 kwh/day or 1.170 kwh/month at that level who cares about the 7 cents/month. In the winters it's different of course, I'd guess that will triple in useage. I can live with 3 kwh/month for lights.

I have a fish tank. Nothing spectacular pump, heater, light.
with just the pump it uses 12 watts. this runs 24 hours a day
with the heater on it uses 67 watts
with the light on it uses 80 watts.

I'm going to guess that it averages 40 watts ( I can and will measure this but haven't left the meter in place for a day yet) Anyways that works out to 0.96 kwh/day or 6 cents. thats 28.8 kwh/month or $1.75/month. nothing really but I will probably be selling this as soon as the last two fish take that final swim down the toilet.

My stereo, is a small shelf system that I use as the speakers for my tv. It has a powered sub that goes into standby mode when not in use.
turned off/in standby it uses 26 watts.
turned on it's power use of course is determined by volume(nothing can ever be simple can it). Normal listening volume for me uses 35 watts That includes the sub being on(which it normally isn't)
Now assuming that i listen to tv/computer/stereo 5 hours/day thats about 0.54 kwh/day. or 3 cents. 16.2 kwh/month or 98 cents/month. I thought this would be way worse. Keeper I guess, too bad I'm out of inputs...

So at this point I've accounted for 171 kw/h which is 15% of what I use in good months. so the hunt continues.

things that are active in the house that I still need to test are,
fridge (I think it's 110V) It's also older
computer and all it's crap ( this could hurt, It's always on and is loaded)
TV and vcr when running ( I unplug them when not in use)
crappy little nightlight ( if this costs me 5 cents/year I'll be shocked)
radio in bedroom
ozone generator for water system
filter for water system
washing machine (2 loads/week)

Things that I can't test mostly because they are 220 I believe and the meter doesn't do it
circulation pump ( this bad boy is a 1 hp pump running on high 24/7 I bet it's good for 500 kwh/month on it's own, and It can be replaced with something 1/30th the size.
pressure pump
stove ( I don't cook a lot anyways but it still adds up I bet)
hotwater tank (this thing is running when I get home from work on most days) I shower in hot in the morning and do dishes every couple of days in the evening, the rest of the time I'm heating the world) I want an electric on demand to replace it.
dryer (used once/week in winter once/month in summer)
Really I think thats about it. I have so little around here I'm just floored by my bills. In the winter add an extra 500 kwh to the bills to heat the place but subtract the 108 from the
Dehumidifier. I really do think changing out that circulation pump may account for 50% of my useage. It's like having a hot tub running on high 24 hours a day. for the $200 it will cost me I should do it just to see.

Anyways I hope these numbers are useful to some of you. I'll measure those other things that I can and fill you in over the next couple of days.