Well the weather just isn’t being very helpful with drying the washing right now is it? Random showers and the promised forthcoming rain means that my washing is just not getting dried outside as much as I would like.
Now when we did the extension I had a plan to use our garage as a drying room as I was sick of looking at the washing whilst I ate my dinner. So I made sure that it was properly insulated, lit and even heated. In the winter this has worked brilliantly as the heating is already on for the rest of the house and so the one extra radiator in the garage hopefully doesn’t make too much of a difference. However in the Spring, Summer and most of Autumn when the heating isn’t on, I don’t want to be having the radiator pumping away in the garage just to dry my washing!
I have therefore been toying with the idea of a heated airer for a while now. Having done a bit of research and checking the energy saving class of my tumble drier (a shocking D), I have finally gone ahead and bought one. I went for The Dry:Soon 3 Tier deluxe as I wanted the inbuilt timer so that I didn’t forget to turn it off (like I do with the radiator). I also bought the cover so that it runs even more efficiently.
In theory the heated airer now only costs 6p an hour to run vs an estimated 40p per hour for the tumble drier. I have no idea how much it costs for the radiator but it has to heat the whole garage so I am guessing the heated airer is still a better option?!
I have been using the airer for a couple of weeks now (when the weather hasn’t played ball) and it works really well. Yes it probably takes about 3-4 hours to dry the clothes instead of just one in the drier, but I think if I am reading the research right it is still the most energy efficient way to dry clothes inside. Either way I have a new toy, how exciting is my life?!