The Clothes Dryer Experiment

So this summer, I got my urban-raised, New Yorker wife to agree to try an experiment where we would try to avoid using our electric clothes dryer as much as possible, and see how much affect it had in our electricity bills. We instead used a simple drying rack for our clothes, and left the electric dryer mostly idle.  I thought this would be interesting because I measured that our electric dryer would suck an astounding 6000 Watts of electricity when it was running.  That is the equivalent of turning on 100 of those standard 60 Watt incandescent light bulbs!

Now this is not easy to truly quantify and measure, because you can't get a clear apples to apples comparison of how much the dryer itself reduced your energy usage.  The best method I could come up with was to compare the electricity bills with the same ones from a year before.  Admittedly, factors like weather and vacation schedules (which determines whether you are occupying your home) have a significant impact to your energy usage, but this is a good start.  So what's the data show?

In summary, my energy consumption went down between 16-23% compared to the same months a year ago, while my energy bill went down 19-32% for an average of $27 less per month.  The reason why the financial savings are greater than the actual energy savings is because my utility company (PGE) bills based on tiers of energy consumptions.  It's similar to income tax: the more you use, the higher your rate.  Here are the graphs of the actual data:

Monthly Electricity Bill

Monthly Energy Consumption (in kW-hr)

Does this mean an average family will see a $27 lower energy bill by going to line drying?  Not at all.  You have to keep in mind that I have been training my family to be more energy conscious (like getting kids to turn off lights), and I have done a few upgrades like replacing halogen and CFL lights with  LED lights. There were also 2 weeks in the summer when most of my family was out of town and I was home alone, and I basically lived in the dark and used fairly little energy.

If you want to try this experiment yourself, all you have to do is buy a folding drying rack for around $30, which can be set up inside your home and does not have to be done outdoors.  A few things to know about line drying:

• Clothes that are line dried will be fairly stiff, almost like they were starched.
• For things like towels that may be painful to use when line dried, you can soften them up by first putting them in the dryer on the lowest heat setting for around 5-7 minutes.  Then line dry, and they'll be fairly soft. (this tip comes from this frugal, cooking momma)
• You can put a lot more clothes on the drying rack if you use hangers to hang shirts, and hook those on the edges of the rack.
• The drying rack's capacity is not huge, so you should plan to do medium sized loads. This may mean that you'll be doing laundry washes more often.
• Clothes will take around 8-12 hours to dry out (varies depending on thickness and material of the clothing, and how well your washer spins the clothes dry), so plan accordingly if you are completely out of underwear.
• Drying outdoors does accelerate the drying rate if exposed to direct sunlight in mild to warm temperatures.  Also, direct sunlight has the benefit of essentially sterilizing clothes since the UV lights kills microbes.
• Finally, line drying will give you the added benefit of making your clothes last a good bit longer. The heat and tumbling motion of a dryer wears out clothes, so you will be keeping your clothes in better shape by line drying.