[Greenbuilding] energy, dryers

[Kirsten Flynn]

I commented on on the lasting longer fact in a blog I wrote about  
laundry, "Second, the clothes wear out more slowly.  Basically your  
dryer is beating your clothes to smithereens every time you use it.   
That is what lint is- clothes smithereens."

Thats basically it, and, as mentioned by others, the clothes need less  
ironing and smell good.

We have been drying our clothes both indoors and out for about 5 years  
now.  We have a cool device in our garage.  My genius husband took a  
piece of ductwork he found by the side of the road and installed it so  
one end is at the peak of our garage roof, and the the other end does  
a right angle bend towards the clothesline which is directly below the  
ceiling.  There is a fan at the bottom opening sucking air from the  
peak of the roof and blowing over the wet clothes.  This stretches our  
non-dryer days quite a bit.  In summer we dry outdoors, and the  
laundry smells great.

We actually contemplated not buying a dryer to match our new washer  
when our old washer exploded.  We caved in, and have used it, it was a  
wet winter here.  Of course we are lucky enough to have a dry climate,  
and a yard, I realize some people folk could not use their clothes  
lines that much.

In Ireland our relatives rarely use dryers, drying both outside in the  
open air, outside under a roof, and inside.  Often they will have a  
wooden cupboard around their uninsulated water heater, and have many  
clothes lines around the cupboard.  I don't know if their building  
techniques are more used to high indoor humidity situations, but it  
does not seem to be a concern.  (most houses there are masonry or  
masonry block.)

Kirsten A Flynn
Sustainable Home
www.sustainablehome.com
650-855-9476




On Mar 25, 2008, at 12:27 PM, Nick Pine wrote:

> KMJ Buckley <buckleykmj at yahoo.com> a ecrit:
>
>> I?ve been hanging out to dry for 12 years?prompted by a move to  
>> France
>> where initially we had no dryer. Eventually we realized we didn?t  
>> need
>> one, whether in a house or a condo in US.
>
> I never used one when I lived there (just north of Grenoble) either,
> while working on a Nokia cellphone IC at Thomson Microelectronics.
>
>> one thing no one mentioned?the clothes last so much longer.
>
> That mighta had something to do with the washer. Mine was a small
> Philips horizontal axis machine that heated its own water and spent  
> most
> of the 1 hour+ wash time soaking, with just a few drum wiggles every  
> few
> minutes.
>
> Lots of things were different there. We had fresh bread every day, but
> the bakery was closed on Sunday, so we bought bread on Saturday and
> froze it overnight. We tossed stale bread over the fence to the
> neighbor's mange-tout chickens.
>
> Nick