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Clothes dryers are among the biggest energy hogs in a typical home*. Line-drying clothes cuts the energy use down to zero, but who has time for that? Here's how you can line-dry clothes without extra work.
The key is to handle each item as little as possible. You can do that by hanging clothes on plastic hangers once, while they are wet. Once the clothes are dry, you just grab the batch and move it to a closet, without any of the folding, hanging or sorting that takes time when you take stuff out of a dryer. A drying rack can make socks and underwear even easier to dry.
People talk about about recovering the lost art of line-drying clothes the way our grandparents did it. But after experiencing modern convenience, it's hard to go back. My goal is to make line drying almost as easy as using a dryer--low energy for me as well as for the power plant.
In addition to saving energy, line drying has lots of other advantages. It can actually work better than a dryer for busy people, because you don't have to worry about being around when the dryer finishes to avoid clothes wrinkling. Clothes can last longer because they don't get overheated--this particularly helps preserve elastic. And rather than using detergents whose chemical scents try to mimic the fresh smell (or lack thereof) of line-dried clothes, you can have the real thing!
For more about the advantages of line drying, check out Project Laundry List, a non-profit dedicated to promoting simple ways of saving energy--such as line drying.
In this instructable, I'll describe strategies and equipment for hanging different kinds of clothes with minimum work, discuss setting up a clothesline (choosing a location, etc.), and finally describe options for minimizing dryer energy use if you do use a dryer. An appendix explains the small effect that drying clothes indoors can have on heating or air-conditioning energy use.
*For more on appliance energy see this summary; dryer energy use is typically 900 to 1000 kWh per year for an electric dryer.
The key is to handle each item as little as possible. You can do that by hanging clothes on plastic hangers once, while they are wet. Once the clothes are dry, you just grab the batch and move it to a closet, without any of the folding, hanging or sorting that takes time when you take stuff out of a dryer. A drying rack can make socks and underwear even easier to dry.
People talk about about recovering the lost art of line-drying clothes the way our grandparents did it. But after experiencing modern convenience, it's hard to go back. My goal is to make line drying almost as easy as using a dryer--low energy for me as well as for the power plant.
In addition to saving energy, line drying has lots of other advantages. It can actually work better than a dryer for busy people, because you don't have to worry about being around when the dryer finishes to avoid clothes wrinkling. Clothes can last longer because they don't get overheated--this particularly helps preserve elastic. And rather than using detergents whose chemical scents try to mimic the fresh smell (or lack thereof) of line-dried clothes, you can have the real thing!
For more about the advantages of line drying, check out Project Laundry List, a non-profit dedicated to promoting simple ways of saving energy--such as line drying.
In this instructable, I'll describe strategies and equipment for hanging different kinds of clothes with minimum work, discuss setting up a clothesline (choosing a location, etc.), and finally describe options for minimizing dryer energy use if you do use a dryer. An appendix explains the small effect that drying clothes indoors can have on heating or air-conditioning energy use.
*For more on appliance energy see this summary; dryer energy use is typically 900 to 1000 kWh per year for an electric dryer.
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This picture shows a TED energy monitor when my dryer is on and pretty much everything else in the house is off. 5 kW is more than anything else in my house, unless I turn on all the burners of the stove at once. Avoiding using high power like this is my goal.
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I haven't used a dryer in five years here in Central Florida. I hang dry everything. The only problem is when it rains for several days straight..then my house resembles a chinese laundry because I am forced to use drying racks and other places to lay the clothes out.
Here, dryers are considered as lazy. But I still use it, rinsing and drying. Btw, most dryers here are spin dryers, no heating features.
People have been brainwashed into believing that clothes lines are somehow old fashioned and don't work.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The smell of fresh sheets/clothes dried in the sun is something to look forward to.
-Let the clothes dry for say 8 hours--perhaps overnight--and then put them in the dryer to finish them off and make sure they are completely dry.
-Get a good energy-star dehumidifier, and dry the clothes in the same room as the dehumidifier.
Don't expect them to get everything as dry as they get a swimsuit--cotton holds moisture a lot more than synthetics used in bathing suits. But they can still make line-drying faster or cut way back on the energy needed for a tumble dryer to finish the job.
If your laundry hangs low to the grass and you're in tick country, don't forget to check for ticks before you bring in the clothes. In Indiana, I first saw the ticks on the white sheets/clothes and I realized I needed to hang the laundry far from trees and over low cut grass. But it's worth the trouble. Nothing smells better than laundry dried outside.
Tools needed1) saw 2) screwdiver COST UNDER 5 BUCKS
I heat with a wood stove and forced air with a couple of bathroom fans (cheap to run) and my hot water is just a old gas tank heated by the stove and I live in Canada so you know its cold
My disclamer if useing electric heat make sure the rack is well above the heater so as not to cause a fire and check often to make sure your not over drying. If heating with forced air, make sure you change your filter often you save both ways your furnace works better and your clothes wont get dusty. K if anyone else trys this let me know .It works great for me
I have an ongoing disagreement with a friend about whether it is more efficient to use my gas dryer to dry a load of laundry or to hang dry the clothes inside, in a big house which uses gas heat. I feel hang drying takes advantage of the ambient heat and dry air of the wintry months, when it's raining and I can't hang dry my clothes outside. He always contends that the dryer is an appliance designed to dry clothes, so it must be more efficient, and that hang drying would cost more kWh of energy in the end, because the whole house gets colder and has to be heated more.
Any idea how one could actually measure the efficiencies of each approach?
(Actually, if it's cold outside, even if the air exiting the dryer is at room temperature, it's wasting a bunch of energy, because for each cubic foot of air blown out the vent, there's a cubic foot of air sucked into the building from outside, which has to be heated by the heating system.)
On the other hand, with the clothes hung inside, the only extra heat you need is exactly the amount of heat needed to evaporate the water--that's how much the building is cooled by having them drying inside.