After much internal debate over the plusses and minuses, I finally decided to break down and purchase and install a new clothes dryer. I did some searching and found a model that not only runs on green energy, but two sources of green energy! It was very inexpensive, and the money spent will pay for itself in savings on the energy bill in no time. You may ask “Where can I get one of these amazing new dryers?”
The answer is simple, you can make it yourself. I didn’t purchase the latest “Energy Star” model from my local appliance store, in fact I bought it at my local lumber and hardware store. If you haven’t put two and two together yet, I built a clothsline in my back yard.
For about $30 in lumber and hardware, and a bit of manual labor to build and install it, I have a new clothesline that can hold 3 loads of laundry at a time. It costs me nothing in energy to use since it is 100% solar and wind powered, and there are no expensive parts to wear out over time. I could replace the whole thing for less than the average cost of a single part on my traditional dryer.
I sat down and did some estimating the other day and figured my electric clothes dryer is costing $.71 or more per load of laundry. Now our electricity rate is fairly cheap here, but several things factored into this estimate. To start with, here are some facts used for my calculations:
The clothes line cost me about $35 to build between the lumber, hardware, and supplies (clothes pins and a clothes pin bag) to get started. At $.71 per load of laundry, that will take 49 loads to break even. At 7 loads of laundry per week, that is only 7 weeks until it starts leaving money in my pocket. I estimate if I can use it for 6 months out of the year, that $35 investment will return around $110 in savings. For those of you doing the math, you may say “Why not $130?” Well the reason for this is it is only $.71 per load during the hottest summer weeks, typically most of July and August, when we use the air conditioners. When the temperature is under 78 degrees or so, we just leave the windows open at night to cool the house and close it up during the day. The house stays nice and comfortable without any additional cooling except for a couple of fans to keep the air moving around a bit.
My only concern so far is that I used the cheap plastic clothsline cord. It seems to sag a bit under heavy load, and I’ve already had to tighten it once as it has stretched. What I may end up doing is replacing it with the plastic-coated steel cable. It’ll only cost another $5-6 dollars to do so, and I probalby should have used it to start with. I used the plastic cord to start with as it was easier to work with. Just cut it with a knife and tie it to the eye-bolt instead of needing bolt cutters to cut it and special cable clamps to secure it.
I’m considering investigating something to keep the savings (and environmental friendlieness) going in the winter. Essentially this would mean a drying rack or line inside for the passive drying, or venting the electric (never try this with gas!) dryer indoors. The drying rack or line would give the benefit of no extra heat required to dry the clothes, though it would be much much slower due to the lower temperature and less moving air. Venting the dryer indoors (with proper lint capturing measures taken) would still use the extra energy to heat, however that heat would be used indoors, lessening the load on the main heating system as well as eliminating the intake of cold air to replace the hot air being vented outside. Both of these systems however have the disadvantage of adding the extra moisture to the air. This can be good in small quantities, but I’m concerned that it could be too much for my family’s laundry load. While I haven’t weighed a load of laundry pre- and post-drying, I’ve read it can be a gallon of water or more per load! That would be a lot of extra moisture in the air. I have read about “spin dryers” that work like the washer’s spin cycle on steroids and “throws” out most of the water. From there it only takes a little while on a drying rack or under half the time in the traditional dryer. I’ll have to post more as the winter approaches.