Dryers only have one hose fitting. - To blow hot air out.
But this Instructable shows how to create a dryer hood with a fitting for a hot air intake hose.
Once the hood is attached, you connect the dryer to your hot air source with a dryer hose, and use free energy - hot air- to dry your clothes.
On hot summerdays , I use it to take hot attic air right into the dryer in my cool basement.
On warm days I use the air dry or the low temperature "Permanent-Press" setting.
In winter I use my dryer normally.
You can use your attic, a warm room, a solar heater, or you can use outdoor air as a source of warm or hot air. (The source of warm or hot air should be drafty, or open to a source of replacement air, like the outdoors.)
This Instructable helps you avoid consuming your indoor air, it makes your dryer more efficient, it saves energy on drying, and It can save on air conditioning cost too.
This Instructable is intended for electric dryers only, and is NOT recommended for gas models.
Modifying a gas model would present special challenges and hazards, which I have not addressed.
Material : Use a 4 foot roll of Aluminized Bubblepack plastic (Astro-foil) or similar material, a scissors, duct tape, plus scrap metal or cardboard and a dryer vent hose. Thats all thats needed. A screwdriver is optional.
Remove these ads by
Signing UpStep 1: Unplug and Inspect
Look for the slotted vents in the back.













































Visit Our Store »
Go Pro Today »




Less energy is used to tumble the clothes.
Even less energy is used to blow air through the tumbler.
Unless the air is quite humid, running the dryer without heat will save energy.
How humid is that? I can't say.
Maybe your dryer has a listing for energy consumption.
Lets say the maximum is 1000 watts, and air only uses 400 watts.
then I'd say if your air only cycle takes twice as long as with heat, then 2*400 watts per cycle is still less than 1000 watts per cycle.
In practice, my hot attic air on hot humid NYC days, drys clothes in approximately the same time as cool air from my basement when I don't use the air dry cycle.
On your electric dryer, check the temperature at the exhaust and at the locations where your material may come in contact your dryer.
Run a load and just locate the dryer's hot spots, then consider that in your design ..
Good luck.
Maybe create an off-set/space that allows air to flow over the hot spot.
That way the cardboard does not touch the hot-spot.
I don't think that 140 degrees, will be a fire hazard. And
The longer the run from the attic to the dryer, the cooler the air will get.
My dryer doesn't get hot to the touch.
I believe the main mechanism of drying is constant renewed supply and movement of -relatively dry air- over the tumbling clothes.
If heat from your attic gets to the dryer, thats great, but do not overlook the value of having the air supply and exhaust that is entirely outside the interior space.
If you dont exhause the dryer's waste air and humidity, and get the source air from outside the interior conditioned space, you risk bringing in outdoor air inside, or heating the interior space with humid dryer exhaust.
("Enthalpy" aka the latent heat in warm humid air.)
Cardboard. - Glad you asked.
I recommend going to a big box store to get it. Costco has great sheets - roughly 3x4 ft with 2 layers of corrigation. Its sturdy and a free building material. Sometimes they have lots of it. (Repurposing material !!! )
Design: The flexible hood lends itself to a curved manifold. But Cardboard is obviously flat, so you might want to consider a rectangular hood that fits around the back- top,sides, and bottom; a much boxier shape than the instructable I made.
Good luck and please keep me posted. I'd love to hear about real world experience with my invention.
Yes, I'm going with a rectangular hood design that tapers from 8 inches deep at the top down to about 2 inches deep at the bottom. The dryer that you used in the instructable had a flat back, but mine is much more contoured, so using a more rigid material lets me cut it to fit more precisely and then tape that down.
I'm really interested in the problem of measurement with this experiment, and I can't just plug the dryer into my Kill-a-Watt. As a classroom example, I want specific numbers to put to this.
I'll send a photo when it's up and running.
Whatever you do, do not EXHAUST the dryer into the attic or into the house - that's a recipe for disaster. The excess moisture in the air will rot your walls out, and with a gas dryer, the combustion gases could kill you.
It's also a good idea to replace your plastic exhaust hose (illegal in most places) with a smooth metal pipe. Less chance for the dryer to ignite the lint in the plastic and burn your house down. o_O
As the instructable describes, sucking INTAKE air from a hot area seems like a very effective way to reduce your energy consumption.
Cool idea.
You can use a filter 'sock' at the end of the hose to avoid lint dust.
Lint can be a fire hazard if you do not clean your filters regularly.
More so, if your dryer has a GAS flame!