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Modify your electric dryer to use free hot air and save energy.
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.
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.
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Signing UpStep 1Unplug and Inspect
Unplug your drier , remove the exhaust vent hose, and inspect your Electric drier.
Look for the slotted vents in the back.
Look for the slotted vents in the back.
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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.
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!
Actually I Certainly DO want to exhaust the warm moist air into my own home in winter.
Lint doesn't seem to be a problem at all. I have no health complaints.
There is no carbon monoxide from electric dryers.
As with all instructables, one must use their own judgment and apply their own concerns and common sense.
I'm assuming the exhaust is going to be hotter than the intake.
A heat exchanger may cause the moisture to condense, and thereby heat the cooler incoming air. But there is a moisture collection and disposal problem.
Laundry is enough of a hassle.
This project has the virtue of being simple, if not optimally efficient.
I think that this project's greatest benifits will occur when the heat is plentiful, and near-by.
But just keeping the air source and exhaust outside an air conditioned home, will save the home owner the cost of cooling outside air, and then heating it.
That is significant savings IMO.
In winter the attic temperature is much lower than the dryer exhaust. This cools the exhaust. Cool air holds a lot less moisture, than hot air. When this happens it condenses into water droplets, water droplets all over your framing and worse, your insulation.
A load of laundry can have a gallon of water in it, if you do a load every day, for 4 months when the weather is cool, you would put 120 gallons of water into your attic as if you misted it in.
you might get a way with it for a while if the temperature is not below freezing and has a lot more ventilation than most attics, however, if it does get below freezing, once it warms above after winter all 120 gallons would melt in a day or so.
Please don't do this, you can cause problems ranging from mould and rot of structure, to severe water damage of your living space.
cooking, boiling water and showers probably put more moisture into the house, and these activities might as well be more hazardous/accident prone than putting up a heating recycle system that also moisten the air sometimes.
this is a great idea to save energy with little cost, and better still when put into practice.
Kind of fun thinking out of the box (or dryer in this case).
On topic; Great idea for not only reclaiming energy, but also saving energy! Love it!
Why not take wet laundry to dry in the attic?
I find hanging cloths to be tedious, the attic is dusty, so I don't want fans blowing it around, and its 3 floors above the basement where I wash clothes...