Money Saving Expert founder Martin Lewis is urging households to use a dehumidifier to dry their clothes – instead of a ‘demon appliance’.
As the cold January days begin and the clear and dry days vanish, households are battling with drying clothes indoors and all the many problems that come with it, from mould and condensation to mildew and stale, poorly aired garments.
But the money man has warned that tumble dryers are not the answer if you have one eye on your energy bills because the ‘demon appliances’ are actually very expensive to run.
According to Ideal Home, the cost of running your tumble dryer also depends on which type you have.
It said: “An example 9kg vented tumble dryer uses 5.34 kWh for a full load cycle and approx 636 kWh over a year (if you use your dryer around two times a week). This means that this vented tumble dryer costs £1.33 per cycle and £158.11 per year on average.
“An example 9kg condenser tumble dryer uses 5.2 kWh for a full load and approx 617 kWh annually. This means a cost of £1.29 per cycle and £153.39 annually – that’s almost as much as a vented model.
“An example 9kg heat pump tumble dryer uses 2.16 kWh for a full load and 259 kWh per year. This means that you’ll be spending just 54p per cycle and £64.39 per year.”
Martin instead suggests that people use dehumidifiers instead, which are significantly cheaper to use and will dry your clothes out quickly and avoid mould, damp or condensation.
Speaking on an episode of The Martin Lewis Podcast on BBC Sounds, Spotify and Apple Music, Martin said: “Many dehumidifiers have different wattages – the one I checked out was 200W.
“Once we know it’s 200W and we know a kilowatt is 1,000W, which is how electricity tends to be priced, we know this is a fifth of a kilowatt.
“And you pay roughly 34p per kilowatt per hour. A fifth is 7p, so you’re going to pay roughly 7p per hour to run a dehumidifier at 200W, assuming it uses full power the whole time.”
Energy costs are slightly down since those calculations, meaning it will only cost about 5.5p an hour now based on 26p unit prices this winter.
By contrast, energy supplier Utilita reckons that a tumble dryer costs as much as 53p to £1 an hour to run, which is ten to 20 times the amount.
