There's no doubt about it, winter causes problems for people who like to hang their clothes out to dry, but as John Elliott, Chairman of Ebac, which is the only British manufacturer of dehumidifiers explains, there is another more cost-effective and ‘greener’ solution.
Drying clothes in the cold and wet of winter is a problem faced by many homeowners. Pegging washing outside isn’t often an option and whilst tumble driers are convenient and effective, they are expensive to run and even putting clothes on radiators often creates condensation problems.
If you currently dry your clothes on a radiator or clothes horse, as the washing dries the moisture contained within them is transferred to the surrounding air creating more moisture in your home. If the excess moisture in the air has nowhere to escape to it will condense on windows, walls and other surfaces leading to problems including mould, damp and unpleasant odours.
So just what can you do, especially during a winter which drags on?
If this wetter than average year is anything to go by, the hot sunny days of summer don’t offer too many opportunities to hang clothes out, either. And let’s not forget that many people now live in flats or apartments where internal space is often limited and who simply don’t have an outdoors option.
There are products on the market designed to pass warm air over laundry, but they only solve half the problem. With these devices, the evaporated moisture, unlike a dehumidifier, is not collected and remains trapped inside the home.
Using a dehumidifier ensures that as the clothes hang on the clothes horse, radiator or airer, the evaporating water is completely removed from the air by the dehumidifier. This also means drying times are much reduced, especially when the “laundry-boost” setting is used.
Additionally, because this process uses dry air, rather than heat, it removes the problems of rough, stiff clothes at the end. By actively extracting such moisture from the air as it occurs, a dehumidifier a great laundry drying system while eliminating the dampness problems that drying laundry indoors creates.
The cost of purchasing and running a dehumidifier are also significantly less than that of a tumble drier so it's a good option if you don't have the space for a tumble drier or want to keep your expenses down. All too often this simple, but highly effective, use of dehumidifiers for laundry drying is overlooked and problems are, unwittingly, created in the home.
Dehumidifiers were originally developed to deal with floods and leaks, but new variations of these products offer powerful laundry drying performance. So next time you plan to dry laundry indoors think about using a dehumidifier or damp problems may already be on their way to your home.
John Elliott, chairman of Ebac – the UK’s only manufacturer of dehumidifiers. John invented the UK’s first dehumidifier which was specifically designed to operate in the UK climate of lower temperatures and humidifies.