Is my heat pump dryer saving me money?

[ericmark]

I tried a smaller load today bit faster, but still slow, I am sure when we first got it is was not that slow, maybe different cycle, either washing machine or dryer?

As to cost, I must clearly put a value on my wife's time, how long to hang out clothes, how long to take them in again, and also remove any unwanted creases due to being pegged out, and finish off any drying, so would need putting in an airing cupboard first then away in draws etc, instead of putting directly away.

By time one adds the time to put clothes out and bring them back in even at minimum wage using the washing line is highly unlikely to be an economic option.

However when we got the old vented tumble drier there was a version which used less power and dried over night, took maybe 3 to 4 hours to dry, so the heat pump dryer would need comparing with one of those, not a rapid dryer.

 

[ericmark]

I have tried different settings, and using the mixed setting, it does seem faster, the question is how much damage does it do to the clothes? The lint catching trap does seem rather full, so it must be knocking bits off the clothes, but even on the washing line pegs can crease clothes, and it seems a long time ago since I have last seen a jumper shrink to an unusable size.

However I am wary of using cotton settings with wool items due to seeing results in the past.

The problem is the last dryer was all manual, I could select 1 or 2 kw, and the time it dried for, but no sensor to detect when complete, I know some times we needed to switch it on twice, but being such a hit and miss system can't really say what the average drying time was.

And the mark/space ratio after the first hour also means hard to work out average usage.

To my mind the main problem is the ease at which women can wash their clothes, so the generate far more washing than really they should, on average the washing machine runs once a day, there are only two of us, think I should insist she wears a bib, or other protector so the clothes don't get dirty in the first place, I can understand underwear, but one should be able to wear over clothes more than once.

The other problem is sorting of clothes, I have 4 boxes, black, white, reds and blues. But towels get washed with tea cloths, so the spin speed has to suit the most venerable clothes, bring back the twin tub, re-used the water, spin time manually selected and where required the mangle was used, as clothes transferred from washer to spin drier. But no cooked meals on a Monday, whole of kitchen used for washing.

It was very labour intensive, but a lot better for the environment, mainly as the person who generators most of the washing was the same person who did all the washing, so they were less inclined to change their clothes so often.

The last dry cycle did not have any mark/space ratio and was in around 95 minutes, so around half the energy used with the vented, however as said the results are so varied one does not really know how much it is saving.

 

[George_engineer]

Surely the main saving is not chucking the heat out of the wall.

I've got a condensing tumble dryer, but what I normally use is a a heated clothes airier and a dehumidifier (in the same small room).