[Greenbuilding] clothes dryer vents

[Corwyn]

On Mar 10, 2007, at 04:22, Chris Green wrote:
> I stated I thought it would be possible to have a walk-in
> solar drying closet, something more or less like a sunroom, with a lot
> of mass in the floor.
>
> The solar closet could be any size you wanted, large enough to hang
> sheets or blankets in if you wanted to.
> To keep an air flow passing  through the closet, one could have a tall
> pipe for an air vent and, following architect Eugene Tsui's
> recommendations, have the above-roof portion of the vent pipe painted
> flat black. The sun's heat on the pipe  would cause an updraft and pull
> air out of the closet. To concentrate more heat on the pipe, it would 
> be
> easy to add a parabolic reflector. The lower portion of the vent stack
> could have a shield around it to prevent melting any snow that falls
> against the assembly.
>
> To keep the air temps inside the closet high enough, a dedicated
> thermostat of some kind could keep the pipe closed below an adjustable
> temperature point.  As well, you could have a switch to turn the
> thermostat on or off, and perhaps shut the air flow off just before you
> started washing the clothes, or however long before that it takes to 
> let
> the heat build up inside.
>
> The air could be drawn either from inside the house, as  normal dryer
> air does, or from outside it, depending on the outside temps at that
> time of year. .
>
> I doubt the closet would have to get very warm, but the solar heated
> mass could bring the normal household temperature up 20-50+ degrees and
> this would speed up drying time compared to simply hanging them on an
> indoor clothes line.
>
> When not used as a clothes dryer, the larger space could be a normal
> sunroom, or greenhouse area, just kinda small....Perhaps one could even
> add a small heater and use the closet as a sauna if so desired.
>
> A variation on all this would be to have a separate greenhouse-like
> outbuilding to dry clothes in. Think of this as an indoor clothes line
> you put in an out building. This eliminates the problem of having
> moisture inside the house. The windows could be switched sometime in
> late spring to window screens. Of course, this would be a much more
> expensive option than normal dryers or the drying closet being 
> discussed.

Umm, why not just hang a clothes line in your sunroom? or outside?

simple problems, simple solutions...

Thank You Kindly,

Corwyn

-- 
Corwyn
Kermit didn't know the half of it...
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corwyn at greenfret.com