Home energy saving tips /ideas...

[rogerzilla]

I'd never heard of the heat pump dryers until this thread. Every day's a school day.

The are notorious for taking forever to dry anything.

[Mrs Pingu]

I'd never heard of the heat pump dryers until this thread. Every day's a school day.

The are notorious for taking forever to dry anything.

I thought that was condensing tumble dryers.

[fd3]

I'd say it's "prioritising" as much/more than being rich.  Buy one top or buy 6 disposable ones from Primark?  It's a choice.  Buy cheap now or wait and buy better?  It's a choice.  Are you going to get your car on finance or your A++ rated appliances?  It's a choice.

It's only a choice if you have the money, and the financial savvy to be able to make it. If you're on Universal credit and just had your benefits cut, then saving up for a 60 quid merino top is going to take a long time, and may mean a few days being hungry.

Sure, but you have to mean only the extremely poor and you still have to qualify that with lack of financial savvy.
If you are a two person household where both of you work at the checkout in Sainsbury’s you would not count as poor by this reckoning.  You would really need to be a single parent working as a part time dinner lady in school to qualify.

[Feanor]

I'd never heard of the heat pump dryers until this thread. Every day's a school day.

The are notorious for taking forever to dry anything.

I thought that was condensing tumble dryers.

Don't think so by my experience.
Our are all condensing, and they don't seem slow to me.

[Kim]

Condensing dryers are extremely slow when you are unaware how a condensing dryer works, didn't read the destructions, and leave the condensate tray to fill up to the point where the float switch cuts power to the elements.

(This is particularly annoying when none of this gets passed on to The Person With The Multimeter, who tips the lot all over their knees when attempting to find the fault.)

[Diver300]

I'd never heard of the heat pump dryers until this thread. Every day's a school day.

The are notorious for taking forever to dry anything.

I thought that was condensing tumble dryers.

Heat pump dryers are a type of condensing dryers. The heat is pumped from the condenser to the heater. The air goes over the condenser where the moisture, unsurprisingly, consdenses. The air is then heated by the heater and goes into the drum where it heats the clothes and picks up water from them. Then it's back to the condenser. Getting the heat from the condensing of the water is the best source of heat to pump.

Heat pumps are a significant cost to build, and are why heat pump dryers are more expensive. Making them more powerful would add to the cost. Keeping the power down will probably make them more efficient, but will slow down the drying. On a vented dryer, a more powerful heater will be hardly any more cost than a less powerful one. Also, it may use less energy to dry the clothes faster, as less air will need to be blow through the dryer and heated if the process is takes longer.

Our dryer says it will take 3 hours when set to "cupboard dry" but will take much less if there isn't much in it. It's probably slower than our previous vented one. It really doesn't cause a problem for household use.

One other advantage of heat pump dryers is that they are far less likely to cause any fluff to burn. If fluff lands on an electric heater, that part of the heater will still generate the same amount of heat, so it will run hotter. On a heat pump dryer, the heat comes from the condensation of the refrigerant gas, so if one area of the heater is covered if fluff, there will just be less condensation of refrigerant in that area so less heat will be generated in that area and the temperature won't go up much.

[FifeingEejit]

It's autumn, in Scotland
The towels had to go in the dryer because after 4 hours there was no hope they were going to be dried on the line. It was dark and calm.
Had I used the 1hr cycle given the running cost differential between the washer and the dryer and the whirly, 1hr washer + 4hrs whirly + 20m dryer < 4hrs washer + 3hrs dryer

I took my towel out of the washing machine and hung it up in the unheated bathroom (it get's most of it's warmth from the Kitchen, which has the radiator on low, and primarily gets heated by me making dinner). Do that at about 2200 when I hang the washing up. It's dry when I shower the next morning at about 9ish. The rest of the laundry gets hung on a rack that hangs over the front of my bedroom door. Again, hang stuff up about 2200ish, and it's dry by morning. In winter I sometimes put stuff on the radiator, usually things that are awkward, like my cycling gloves.

Humidity in my flat currently is 47.4%, and in the middle of winter with snow on the ground it gets to about 30%.

68% at 18.8c here according to the doohicky in the bathroom... hud on I'll move it somewhere dryer.
66% at 19.5c in the office room

Yes stuff could be hung up around the house, my one and only horse lives in the door corner of the living room in front of the radiator and is permanently covered in cycling kit.
That's the only room with space to set it up, partly due to a slightly duff layout of kitchen that sees the doors being french taking up most of the outer wall (that goes into the porch), in the middle with sink, washer and dishwasher on one side and large stove top plus oven on the other and larder and fridge on the hall side wall.  Someone has at some point in the past decided they didn't like a dining kitchen and made the kitchen spread round the walls, making a lot of useless space in the middle (similar has been done to the bathroom but it works well enough at the loss of office/2nd room space).

Heat Pump dryer is currently on in the porch, it's 10c in there with it running...

[Lightning Phil]

If you have the space and want to dry clothes with more energy efficiency then get a dehumidifier.  About 4 times less electricity at a cost of taking 4 times as long as a dryer.

[Basil]

Warm part of house is 17C in winter.  We always have the windows open in the bedroom unless rain or snow blowing in.  Don’t measure temp but prefer it cool with fresh air for sleeping.

Me too.  Has to be <-5° for me to consider trying to sleep in a airless room.

[Mrs Pingu]

I am trying to figure out the %rh in our new house. A few days ago all the meters were reading over 70%, and it hadn't been raining. Day before yesterday it pished with rain (to the extent the newly cleaned gutters were overwhelmed) in the late afternoon and this evening all the meters are reading about 56%. I'm still trying to work it all out.

[Diver300]

I am trying to figure out the %rh in our new house. A few days ago all the meters were reading over 70%, and it hadn't been raining. Day before yesterday it pished with rain (to the extent the newly cleaned gutters were overwhelmed) in the late afternoon and this evening all the meters are reading about 56%. I'm still trying to work it all out.

Outside temperature often has more effect on the indoor humidity than outside humidity does.

If air is heated, its capacity to hold water vapour increases very fast. So when cold air from outside comes in and is heated, the absolute humidity doesn't change, but the relative humidity drops. If it's colder outside, 100% humidity air has to be heated more by the house so the relative humidity drops more from the 100% than if the air had been heated less.

[fruitcake]

Relative Humidity varies through the day. For instace, colder months in towns west of the pennines in the north of England, the evenings can be over 90% RH even though early afternoons can be just 60%. This means every air change has to be dehumidified, either through capturing the water vapour or raising the air tenperature. MetOffice site is a useful resource for forecasting Humidity - you need to press the button for 'full forecast'

Thursday's forcecast for Manchester is an example of daytime humidity in the 60s, night time almost 90.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast/gcw2hzs1u#?date=2021-10-17

In these conditions, it's important to seal up the house to stop all vents, but to use manual venting (e.g. opening a window) when conditions outside are favourable. Sealing up includes closing trickle vents on windows, closing open/close vents in walls, sealing off fireplaces, and having well fitting external doors and loft hatch. Then dehumidifiers can be effective.

Daily RH variations are less extreme in the south of England.

[FifeingEejit]

Not forecast to drop below 90% her until Wednesday lunch time when the sun comes back out for a few hours.
Drops to 60% then

[Wowbagger]

I had cold feet for a good deal of last night. I shall keep socks on tonight.

[ian]

I am trying to figure out the %rh in our new house. A few days ago all the meters were reading over 70%, and it hadn't been raining. Day before yesterday it pished with rain (to the extent the newly cleaned gutters were overwhelmed) in the late afternoon and this evening all the meters are reading about 56%. I'm still trying to work it all out.

I would be bothered - if there's no obvious damp and you're not farming a herd of grand pianos or minding a friend's collection of renaissance artwork, it'll fluctuate anyway, the monitor on the machine in our kitchen spans from 30-60%.

[quixoticgeek]

I had cold feet for a good deal of last night. I shall keep socks on tonight.

I have to sleep with socks on year round. Even in the height of summer.

J

[Mr Larrington]

Wearing socks today for the first time in about six months, because I was in the Big Room most of the day.

[hubner]

I reckon the concept I'm going to call 'micro-heating' will catch on. This is a bit like the idea that you don't have to heat the entire house to be comfortable. Only, this is a step further. You don't have to heat the whole room to stay comfortable. Electric blankets are an example of micro-heating. As are heated car seats. There are companies which have designed living room chairs with heating elements.

I have an oil-filled radiator under my desk...

I'd say that's an implementation of micro-heating, because it places the heat where it's needed and the desktop here is a 'hood' to stop (some of) the heat escaping.

You can also warm the touch points. There are heated computer keyboards, and heated mice, for instance.

Heated gilets warm just the areas of the body that get cold first, i.e. kidneys and lower back. They're now available in designs that look like normal clothes, and they take USB power in (rather than the early ones which were designed specifically for builders and motorcyclists and required specialist batteries.)

I think we'll see more of this kind of stuff. Electric elements allow designs that isolate heat to an extent that's just not possible with coolant-filled radiators. And I hope we do see more innovation in this direction. A fringe benefit is that it's portable. You can set up office in places you couldn't otherwise.

OK, people are not going to change their lifestyles but the following makes interesting reading nevertheless:

Restoring the Old Way of Warming: Heating People, not Places
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not-spaces.html

Insulation: first the body, then the home
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-thermal-underwear.html

How to Keep Warm in a Cool House
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/03/local-heating.html

https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/03/radiant-and-conductive-heating-systems.html

[Cudzoziemiec]

Insulation: first the body, then the home
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/02/body-insulation-thermal-underwear.html

Modern thermal underclothing offers the possibility to turn the thermostat much lower without sacrificing comfort or sex appeal.

Rule 34 applies, but do be careful when searching for "fleece porn".

Although room temperature is hardly ever mentioned as a factor in energy use, it is a decisive factor in the energy consumption of heating systems - just as the speed of an automobile is a decisive factor in the energy use of an engine.

Never mentioned? I'm sure I've seen publicity campaigns telling us to turn the thermostat down x degrees to save y amount of money/energy. But the magazine seems to be Usanian so maybe in that context it's right.

As far as I was able to find out, nobody has published a research report on the evolution of the average room temperature in winter throughout recent history. Today, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) recommends an indoor winter temperature between 21 and 23 degrees Celsius (70 to 73.5°F). A Dutch report (.pdf, in dutch) mentions a rise in average winter indoor temperature from 20° C in 1984 to 21° C in 1992. David MacKay mentions an average room temperature of 13° Celsius (55°F) in the UK in 1970.

Fragmentary data but perhaps broadly indicative.

[hubner]

Low-tech Magazine is written by Kris De Decker (Barcelona, Spain).

Kris De Decker was born in Antwerp (Belgium) and lives in Barcelona (Spain)

[fruitcake]

Thanks Hubner. I had read the final article a few years ago and lost the link, so glad you posted it. It's very interesting to see the concept of micro-climates within a room.

[FifeingEejit]

Due to the cycling kit getting washed on Saturday (unusual timing of stuff allowed this) I have been able to put the towels on the horse next to the front room radiator.
Along with the cycling kit that turned out not to be dry after all...

So far it's still damp and tending slowly towards cardboard.
Timing imbalance also means it's only 2 bath towels that have been washed, and I own enough bath towels that I can continue this experiment for another 3 showers.

[Polar Bear]

If you live in an older property which might be subject to cold spots and even possible dampness, get a decent dehumidifier.  Not only does it deal with the dampness, not only can you dry your laundry using one cheaper than a tumble dryer, but also because it reduces humidity so your conventional heating system will be marginally more effective warming drier air.

We are happy to wear extra clothing and run the heating for less time than most as well as keep the thermostat set lower.   

Also, why do so many people wear outer garments just the once or use a bath towel just the once before washing them?   Or am I just a dirty minger?

[Polar Bear]

Hmmm. I have just realised that I am being wasteful.

I need to change my baking schedule to ensure that it coincides with the cooking of other food using the oven.  This way I don't need to heat it from cold twice a day on baking day and, if I bake bread later in the day it will have a warming effect on the kitchen which in turn will keep the radiators off and save a bit more there.

[mrcharly-YHT]

I might have ranted once or twice about colleagues who complain about the office being cold - but wear a T shirt (or equivalent). Usually it is the men.
Women might, in general, get cold easier, but my observation is that most of my female colleagues will add some extra layers (then complain it is too cold).

Modern tumble driers are heat-reclaiming pumps. I'm really unconvinced that a dehumidifier, in a slightly draughty house, is going to be more efficient.

I think there are two key factors to saving energy at home;
Wear a sweater or thermals indoors
Always have the house a bit on the cool side. If you have hot rooms, or heat it up some of the time, then your body will never adapt.