Personal finance expert has told UK households to ‘switch off’ worst power hungry appliance
A consumer expert has given an alternative to what personal finance expert Martin Lewis has called a ‘demon appliance’ – and it costs just 8p an hour. Appearing on BBC Morning Live Which? consumer journalist Lisa Webb said
Martin Lewis identified the tumble dryer as an appliance that should be used sparingly owing to its hefty running cost of £1 per load. He said: “Do you know what the real ‘demon appliance’ is in most people’s houses – the one that you don’t want to use because it’s really expensive.
“Tumble dryers. You’re typically paying up to a quid per load so dry your clothes on an airer outside, to shorten the amount of time you’re using your tumble dryer, or avoid using it completely. Those who have dehumidifiers can take some of the moisture out of the air. It’s less wattage than a tumble dryer, so it can be more cost-effective.”
Ms Webb said that their research showed that using a heated clothes horse could slash costs by two thirds. She said: “One of the things, which might sound obvious, but an electric heated airer dries your clothes much quicker than just a normal, clothes horse air. They heat it up and they work quicker and they don’t have to cost a fortune either. So on average, we’re looking around 8 pence per hour to run these things, and for a sort of average cotton load, that’s about 40p to dry a small cotton load, which is pretty good. Now if you’re doing that 3 times a week across an average of a year, you look like, it looks like you’re probably spending about £62 in a year. So that’s not the biggest sum we’re ever going to see for drying clothes.
“Large loads, though, if you’re doing lots of big loads that don’t all fit in and you end up having to add loads over and over to these heated areas, you might actually be better off using a tumble dryer in those cases, because if you do repeated loads all the time, you’re looking at. More like £152 a year, which gets pretty much the same cost as a tumble dryer.
“So it’s horses for courses, you know, what do you actually need it for, and if it’s something nice and quick and small loads or easy loads to do, then you, you can make quite a big saving by using these heated dryers. “
She also explained the most scientific way of stacking clothes on the dryer to get the most out of it. She said: “So the first thing to do, you’re going to have to leave space between the garments because effectively if you’re going to stack things on top or, you overlap things, it will just take longer to dry, so if clothes are touching. You just don’t want to overcrowd.
“The other thing to remember here is once you’ve turned it on, if you’re spending an hour with it on, say, 8 pence for that hour of it being on, it’s going to cost you the same 8 pence, regardless of if you’ve got one pair of knickers drying on it on it or 2 kg of cottons drying on it. So you may as well fill it up, but don’t overfill it.”
She added that putting items like jeans and jumpers in the right place can make a big difference: “The other thing to think about is prioritising heavier items because that helps with heat distribution. Warm air rises, we’ve all got to try and remember our GCSE science classes here. So lighter items at the top, the warm air will rise and dry those quickly, and then the stuff at the bottom keeps like your jeans and your jumpers down low because then you’ll get nice consistent heat down there.
“Thicker things like your jeans, towels, jumpers, like I’ve said, low bars, that’s the best place for them. Avoid draping things over the top as well, because what will happen is the things that you drape will just get lovely and warm but stay quite moist. And you don’t want that cos it means it takes longer for it to dry.”
