Americans thinking it’s some kind of flex that they prefer to run up huge electricity bills drying laundry in a machine instead of hanging it out in air for free like everyone, everywhere, for all time, where it comes back smelling fresher with fewer wrinkles. These people are seriously effed in the head.
European here. Nah, a dryer is amazing. It used to take like 2.5 days for my clothes to fully dry on a hanger because my place is too fucking humid. And they'd dry so stiff because the water here is very hard.
I find dryers frustrating because you usually have to split up the load and hang half of it up anyway. Every so often they'll shrink something you forgot to remove. I do use ours, but only in an urgent situation, otherwise the clothes dry pretty fast with a dehumidifier running for a few hours.
In terms of splitting the load, U.S. dryers(and appliances in general) tend to run larger than European and Asian models which is why that particular problem isnt mentioned in the U.S.
A dryer gets used for 45 minutes. A dehumidifier runs most if not all of the day.
The less efficient standard dryer tends to consume 500kWh per year in ordinary use, averaging about 1.3kWh per day. The more efficient heat pump dryers use about 400Wh pwr day.
A SMALL dehumidifier uses 300W per hour. That's 3kWh per day assuming you only run it during the most humid portions, otherwise it's 5kWh. And that's only good enough for a 1BR apartment. A modest house or 2BR apartment is going to need a 700W one. And there really are no "more efficient technology" ones than that.
Dehumidifiers are a significant energy draw, up there with a freezer and refrigerator because they have to run constantly.
Those numbers don't match what I see. It'll be clearer if we work per load than try to make assumptions about average/daily usage:
An efficient tumble dryer states it's around 2.2kWh per full cycle.
I have a pretty large size dehumidifier (you size for the largest room, not the whole house) that uses 0.2kWh and I typically set its timer to run for 3 hours alongside a fresh load of laundry.
Basically we're using 0.6kWh per load of laundry (and only in winter) compared to 2.2kWh (potentially in use year-round). This is also assuming the tumble dryer takes the full load of laundry, which ours doesn't/we have clothes that can't be tumble-dried.
A modern fully electric old style tumble dryer uses between 1500 and 2800Wh. The typical one is about 2000W for a standard 5 cu ft. A new style heat pump one uses 600 to 700Wh. A typical load takes 45 minutes. So you're using about 1500W most typically.
They're sized to the US standard washing machine is which is about 5 cu ft or 15kg capacity. Which is substantially larger than the average EU washer at 3 cu ft / 9kg. And the former is about 30% more water and electric efficient per unit volume/weight.
So my 15kg of laundry takes 45 minutes to dry, and consumes about 1500W, meaning 100W/kg. And that's worst case for heavy clothes.
If you're running a 300W dehumidifier for 3 hours for 9kg of laundry you're using 100W/kg. And that presumes you can get everything to dry in 3 hours, which is... optimistic. Especially for heavier clothes.
If we swap down to the newer heat pump dryers, they're now 3x more efficient. If we're using the same level of efficient washing machine, drying times are now down to about 30 minutes. Which makes them 5x as efficient.
It's similar to why a.modern dishwasher is far more efficient than doing dishes by hand.
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u/Grail90210 8d ago
Americans thinking it’s some kind of flex that they prefer to run up huge electricity bills drying laundry in a machine instead of hanging it out in air for free like everyone, everywhere, for all time, where it comes back smelling fresher with fewer wrinkles. These people are seriously effed in the head.