The indoor powered clothes line.
 

If I put clothes on the clothes line in the summer during the day with a breeze shirts dry in like 20 minutes.
During fall/winter and at night not so much.
I told my wife would wash and dry her shirt for work.
But I didn't.
It was washed, but still wet.
So I took the shirt hung it over my kids little trampoline. Just hanging there wasn't doing anything.
Then I tuned on the high volume air filter, that just made the fabric cold.
Then I took the 10,000btu propane heater and 40lb tank and had the radiance from the heater pointed to the shirt and the high volume air filter blowing over the propane heater directing the heat rising off the heater also on the shirt. That was working.
Setup and testing had the shirt dry in about 20 minutes.

No dryer there?

My natural gas dryer can get it done in 20 minutes and costs beans to operate.

I was thinking a vacuum chamber.

Just an electric dryer.
I have a natural gas dryer but I would need to swith over to propane.

Now I'm wondering what a bag and a vacuum would do. I could test that with my shop vac.

There's a reason why dryers tumble, and why the blower doesn't make an insane amount of noise.

I do like the idea of creating a vacuum to evaporate the water. I wonder if that would be more energy efficient? Should be I suspect, and detecting "dry" would be more reliable. When water stops converting to gas and ruining the vacuum, that's when it's dry.

I wonder if the vacuum method would eliminate the problem of shrinking wool sweaters too?

The best solution depending on your local electricity and natural gas prices is a clothes line for the summer and an electric dryer with one of these for the winter.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MQYPG34...roduct_details
Surprisingly I just got mine today and just hooked it up with mesh filter on the staight end out of the laundry room to just below the central air pickup, and it worked great. I didn't have any lent problems and the water all evaporated pretty well.
Clothes lines are cool but even in the summer i have to dry them for the last 20 minutes in the dryer or they look and smell bad. In the winter clothes lines just don't work.
Suprisingly for me the diverter with the electric dryer comes out just ever so slightly cheaper than a natural gas dryer here since the unit price on natty vs electric is a lot cheaper.
Cool part though is im saving money and i have also solved my total home humidity problem in the winter lol. I usually get a 20% rise in humidty to around 50% when i do laundry. lol

$25 flapper valve?

When the thread title came up, this popped into my head:

https://secure.img1-ag.wfcdn.com/im/...lothesline.jpg
https://secure.img1-ag.wfcdn.com/im/...lothesline.jpg

Put one of these on a rotating Christmas tree stand.

Don't think freebeard can generate enough vacuum with the shop vac to get significant drying. Also the best dry you can ever get is slightly above ambient humidity which is why dryers are hotter than ambient. Theoretically I can put clothes into my convection oven and get them dry fairly fast but at 3kw the electric dryer is cheaper to run.

When I lived on Maine and was poor our clothes dryer broke and so were we so we used the clothes line in the middle of Maine winter. The clothes froze and the ice eventually phased to vapor after about 24hr. Seemed like the colder it was the faster they dried.
I like the electric dryer because I vent it inside during the winter, learned to do that living in Maine also, laundry day was about the only time the house got above 60 degrees F during the winter.
Probably why I have a dryer, a back up dryer and a heater, secondary heat and a third emergency backup, no batteries or electricity required.

Yup just a premade two way flapper valve

I'm still willing to buy a clothes dryer, as it may allow me to wash clothes even in a rainy day. Even when I resort to an electric heater to speed-up clothes drying indoor, it's still too slow, even when I do it inside the bathroom which is the smallest part of my apartment and would get a higher temperature quicker with that heater turned on. Since that heater doesn't have a fan to spread the heat further, this may also be a reason why it takes too long to dry clothes indoor...

What do I spend on natural gas to dry my clothes in a year, $25?

I spend more on avocados than drying clothes.

I had a circuit recorder on my dryer in my old house of 1450sqft and it had me at around 1/3 of my energy was the dryer in the middle of summer. Biggest one was AC. Third largest was the fridge. I'm also working on my fridge, recording usage for a week and then going to try to insulate it in a non terrible looking way

I think you'd have better results with a different refrigerant, perhaps (gasp) butane and higher pressures.

thats probably above me. Plus these refrigerators are bulletproof. I its already almost 20 years old still fully functional. I don't want to risk making it unreliable lol

Looking at my bill in the summer when the only natural gas use is the dryer, hot water, and oven (oh and the BBQ), I use 10 therms in a month for $9. There's another $9 in meter fees and taxes so the actual bill is $18.

With at least 1 shower per day, the hot water is going to be the bulk of the use. No idea what it would be, but my guess is the dryer is using about $2 of gas per month.

Put an energy meter on it and do the math.

My dad gave me an old deep freezer, and I monitored the energy use. It uses 3x more electricity than a cheap $120 new one. Doing the math, I will recoup the cost of the new freezer in 3 years just in electricity. Will it last 30 years? I don't care, because if it lasts more than 3 then I've saved money.

I confirmed the savings too by monitoring energy use in the new unit.

My newish LG fridge with french doors is consuming 738 kWh in a year for a total cost of $92, or $7.66 / month.

As an aside, I sold that old freezer for $20 to someone that came and picked it up. Little do they know it would be cheaper to just buy a brand new unit.

I actually forgot to mention i put an energy meter on my fridge around 42 hours ago. So far we are at 1.3kWh/day. I'm just afraid of the new fridges as something is always wrong with them especially the french door fridges that all of the new houses come with.
Looks like this fridge is
Total volume: 21.9 cu. ft.Refrigerator volume: 14.5 cu. ft.Freezer Volume: 7.4 cu. ft
Redpoint what is your fridge using?

You can still purchase barebones fridges these days. If top efficiency and reliability are most important, a top freezer / bottom fridge is the way to go. Of course, with no water/ice.

The icemaker is going to be the biggest cause of issues.

My fridge consumes right at about 2 kWh per day. I put in the house contract that the fridge stays, so I inherited it from the previous owner. Figured the owner wouldn't want to move it anyhow (same thing with the pool table).

It had a broken Mullion (center flap seal between french doors) when I got it, but I didn't realize it. That caused the door to appear closed but it was cracked open slightly. So, initially I was diagnosing an ice block, but then realized it was really just the door not always shutting properly. $45 Mullion fixed it. Usually what breaks is the springs because they're only good for so many flexes, but those are even cheaper and easier to replace. In my case, the plastic that held the springs was broken, so I had to replace the unit.

Looks like 1 kWh per day is about as efficient as they come these days.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Frigidai...25VV/310378589

I honestly prefer to buy proven models. New is usually going to involve you as a product tester asbout half the time.
Wow so it looks like its pretty good. I wonder if i can find some free insulation to throw on it for fun now. Gotta maintain the cabinet gap though.

I wouldn't just randomly add insulation unless it's very obvious where it would benefit, especially if it cuts down on the breathing room around the coils. In fact, best mod is to just clean the coils (reminder to self to clean the coils).

I've got a cheapo FLIR camera that I'd use to find cold spots if there's a good way to insulate it.

Me too. It didn't have any bad spots out of normal. But my mini fridge sure did lmao.
Coil is clean so thats already not a factor. Breathing room wise i shoud be good the cabinet opening is for a premium fridge and this is a lot smaller than that lol.
The owners manual recommends 1/2" at the top and 2" on the sides and it says 2" on the back side IF the door opening is a factor. lol
I'll have to go measure all around what i have. It looks like i have like 4" on both sides and like 6" up top.

Mini fridges are the worst. Mine's unplugged.

Mine too.

AFAIK the laundry shop one block away from me still uses propane for clothes drying, even though there is a natural gas pipeline available. Well, maybe someday I'd consider natural gas for the stove, and getting a water boiler which may require fewer maintenance than the shower with a built-in electric heating element which has to be replaced once in a while. Replacing the heating element is not as dumbproof as it would be supposed to, and something could go wrong if I had forgotten the ground-wire.

We hang laundry in the guest bathroom on a rack and on hangers on an expansion rod, and then use a dehumidifier as needed in winter. I shoot for ~50% humidity in the house. It's win because the 5 amps of heat it makes goes into the house, and not out the dryer vent hose. I also keep the tank clean and re-use the water, you guessed it, in the washing machine. Like a leetle space station :D

I'm blown away you can get humidity above normal and need to use a humidifier in the winter. The acceptable range for me is around 35-55%. House typically sits around 30% even. Besides being hot and/or muggy above, I feel like im gonna die in the winter from lack of humidity.
Speaking of those electric heating elements. I just replaced the sacrifical rod on my water heater of 18 years. It was half way broken off and 3/4 of the total rod was gone! You could see the inner anode wire in most spots.
I assume the broken off piece will be in the water heater until it dies but no big deal lol.
My natural gas unit seems to be doing good. I endoscoped it and it was pretty clean, had a bit of muck on the inside walls so yum. A bit if sediment and rod flakes at the bottom but maybe a couple mm's. Went ahead and flushed it well, did a soak with vinegar, wire brushed all the threads and connections, and ordered a new 0.9" thick magnesium rod like the original. Trim to fit for $33 and i will have a full 40" rod of connection and not like 1/3 thickness of 23" with galvanic corrosion insulating the threaded connections every where. Maybe it will go 18 more years. NG water heaters seem to be pretty simple and repairable.
I also made a NASA grade R-19 water heater blanket and hat for it. Its almost 3 feet round now lol. I wonder if my extreme case of insulation will help much. I think the water heater bare is r-16. My insulation at actual fluff is around R17-R18. So possibly R33ish total now.

I regret having not bought one while I spent some time with my mother :turtle: