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Old 03-06-13, 09:36 PM   #11
Ryland
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Furnace blowers can draw 600 watts if you get a regular sized one and for drying cloths you don't need that much air movement! a few little computer fans would speed up the dry time, I have a 20 watt solid state dehumidifier that I set under my cloths drying rack and it seems to help a lot, it moves a little air, makes 20 watts worth of heat and spits out dry air!

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Old 03-08-13, 10:56 PM   #12
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Originally Posted by AC_Hacker View Post
Somewhere on this forum (you'd have to search to find it), there have also been some ponderings of making a dryer using a dehumidifier instead of a heating element. I don't think anyone has yet actually tried it.
Not only has that been tried, LG actually makes a dryer that works that way. Out of the 8 or so years of owning one, I've only had minor issues with it (bad drain pump and a cracked hose caused by handling during replacement of that pump) and it's still very efficient. (I do use a clothesline when the weather permits since it's still infinitely more efficient...)

What might be interesting for hot climates would be to use a heat pump to extract heat out of the room while drying the clothes...
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Furnace blowers can draw 600 watts if you get a regular sized one and for drying cloths you don't need that much air movement!
If you only need to heat one room, it can easily be more efficient to just leave a desktop PC running in that room. If you're unlucky enough to have electric central heat, it would be more efficient to leave PCs running (since they do other useful stuff like Folding@Home, as well as no duct losses) no matter how much of the space needs to be heated. Solar thermal is unmatchable for efficiency, and a heat pump is not too far behind if natural gas is unavailable. (If natural gas is available, CHP can be viable in colder climates.)
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Old 04-08-13, 01:11 PM   #13
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So if you really have a thing for softer clothes, take the line-dried stuff and tumble it (no heat) for 20 minutes.

-AC
I've done that. At this house though, I have neighbors practically in my back pockets, and they smoke, which they step out of the house to do as a favor to their landlady (nice lady, go to church with her). The downside of that is the prevailing winds make me the first recipient of their secondhand smoke, and I don't want my clothes smelling like that. My wife is a "super smeller," and she'd rather I set the clothes on fire than bring them in smelling like cigarettes.
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Old 04-08-13, 03:11 PM   #14
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...the prevailing winds make me the first recipient of their secondhand smoke...
I'm genuinely sorry to hear that.

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Old 04-21-13, 10:33 PM   #15
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I'm genuinely sorry to hear that.
^^^I second that thought, as my wife is severly allergic to smoke, she breaks out in hives.

I haven found that a 20W multi-crystalline PV panel can be coupled to quite a collection of surplus muffin fans. I recently acquired some muffin fans that move 120CFM while consuming 6W, and I am able to run 3 fans off one 20W PV panel. Works fine if you're home when it is sunny, but what if you work?

Put a 12V charge controller on the panel, charge a 12V 5Ah battery. Now you can run the system after the sun goes down. If you use a charge controller with a low voltage cut-off, your drier will stop before it damages the battery. I realize the 5Ah battery is rather small for the 20W panel, but you can parallel the batteries for more storage capacity, especially if you don't run the system daily.
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Old 11-09-13, 08:20 AM   #16
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If you have gas service consider a gas dryer. They run for 1/4th the cost of electric in our area (every area is different depends on rates). During the summer our water heater, stove, dryer, and gas grill uses about $10/mo worth of gas for a family of 4.

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