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Post by gar on Aug 5, 2023 8:29:19 GMT
The thing about having to dump water out of the dryers is so interesting…do American dryers not have that because they’re so hot that the water just evaporates? If you hang your laundry outside, do you not have to worry about pollen and dust? Anything we leave outside from March to May turns bright yellow-green from being covered in pollen. Your laundry would be dirtier after it dried than before you washed it! I guess people with allergies do have to think about pollen but only from the allergy point of view, not staining the laundry. Dust? What sort of dust? There’s dust everywhere and I’ve never thought of that to stop me hanging washing out.
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Post by rainangel on Aug 5, 2023 10:50:50 GMT
I'm in Norway and I have a condensator dryer. I empty the container of water and lint trap between each use. But occasionally I have to clean out the other filter aswell. Like another Pea said, it can get caked in fluff and obstructs proper airflow. If my dryer doesn't dry the towels properly after a normal cycle, I check the filter. The two times I've had it happen it was a lot of caked fluff I had to scrape off. A bit tricky, but wooden BBQ-skewers helped. If your rental has a lot of visitors, chances are no-one is checking this filter.
But here it is not very common to hang out clothes to dry. Possibly the older generations who are used to doing it that way, but we mostly use dryers or hang to dry inside. I have a house from 1957, and it came with 2 inch wide 'stud' in back lawn. Couldn't figure it out, until my dad in his 70's said it was to plant one of those big clothes dryers that swivels. In 1957, you HAD to have one.
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Post by **GypsyGirl** on Aug 5, 2023 15:28:10 GMT
Thanks y'all. I found the water collector and it doesn't appear to have anything in it, which makes me wonder if the dryer is working properly. Who knows. I'm so mad at the owner of this rental for other reasons that I don't want to ask. Since there is a water collector there is a chance that they have water draining into a pipe behind the machine (similar to how washers are set up here at home). Our dryer was set up that way in Paris so I didn't have to empty the drawer all the time like other places. Sorry you are having issues with the owner of the unit.
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hannahruth
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,616
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Aug 29, 2014 18:57:20 GMT
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Post by hannahruth on Aug 5, 2023 15:34:32 GMT
NZ Pea here as well. Mine's an old dryer - 29 years old now so doesn't have as many settings as newer models but I think it takes about 1 1/2 hours for a load of towels using 'cupboard dry'. I do use the dryer in winter particularly when it's raining a lot but otherwise my preference is to hang the washing outside on the line, even in winter. I could have written this other than my dryer is not quite that old! However I rarely dry straight from the washer as I line dry the majority of washing.
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milocat
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,436
Location: 55 degrees north in Alberta, Canada
Mar 18, 2015 4:10:31 GMT
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Post by milocat on Aug 5, 2023 15:45:56 GMT
The thing about having to dump water out of the dryers is so interesting…do American dryers not have that because they’re so hot that the water just evaporates? If you hang your laundry outside, do you not have to worry about pollen and dust? Anything we leave outside from March to May turns bright yellow-green from being covered in pollen. Your laundry would be dirtier after it dried than before you washed it! Since North American dryers are vented outside that hot moist air goes outside. It's so dry and cold here in the winter maybe we shouldn't vent ours! I love the smell of line dried sheets especially. Pollen doesn't bother me and we don't have much after the popular fuzz is done in May. Over an hour to dry anything is a long time. If your dryer is running st a lower temperature to be efficient how is running it for 2 hours more efficient?
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Post by jeremysgirl on Aug 5, 2023 16:07:58 GMT
NZ Pea here as well. Mine's an old dryer - 29 years old now so doesn't have as many settings as newer models but I think it takes about 1 1/2 hours for a load of towels using 'cupboard dry'. I do use the dryer in winter particularly when it's raining a lot but otherwise my preference is to hang the washing outside on the line, even in winter. How cold does it get though? Because as much as I like line dried laundry and I do hang out my clothes that can't be dried in nice weather, I've got to hang them in my basement in winter because they will freeze. So I would say line drying in winter is impossible.
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Post by anniefb on Aug 5, 2023 20:24:59 GMT
NZ Pea here as well. Mine's an old dryer - 29 years old now so doesn't have as many settings as newer models but I think it takes about 1 1/2 hours for a load of towels using 'cupboard dry'. I do use the dryer in winter particularly when it's raining a lot but otherwise my preference is to hang the washing outside on the line, even in winter. How cold does it get though? Because as much as I like line dried laundry and I do hang out my clothes that can't be dried in nice weather, I've got to hang them in my basement in winter because they will freeze. So I would say line drying in winter is impossible. Your winters would be colder. We don't get snow in Auckland although some winter mornings it can be cold with temperatures around 2-3C but usually day time temperatures in winter would be between about 7-15C. We have a lot of rain year round so that's the main issue with drying outside.
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Post by katiejane on Aug 5, 2023 20:34:41 GMT
I don't own a dryer, or do any of my friends. I line dry or use an airer. I don't think the market for dryers is the same outside the USA.
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Post by ktdoesntscrap on Aug 5, 2023 20:50:51 GMT
If your dryer does not have an exhaust vent--where does the hot air go?--back into the living quarters? How awful. I envision the dryer adding hot air and the air conditioner trying to cool the home. That must be a mistaken idea. you assume air conditioning! . not so common in homes outside of the US.
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Post by ktdoesntscrap on Aug 5, 2023 20:55:48 GMT
I want to like the idea of hanging clothes outside to dry, but where I live that would be pointless. With the humidity they’d just mildew (or fade in the sun). And I’m thinking back to the days that I laundered tons of tiny girl clothes - what a pain those would be to hang up and take down. All those little socks! Lol When i was renovating my house in the UK my ex and had many many discussions on wether to get an american style dryer or a dishwasher .. we didnt have space for both and I was pregnant. we went with the dishwasher. I came to love drying clothes on the line.. loved the way they smelt. And we just draped most things over the radiators in the winter and they dried quickly. Eventually we renovated our upstairs and put in. American style washer and dryer. BIG selling point when we left the UK.
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Post by birukitty on Aug 5, 2023 21:04:18 GMT
I live in the USA but can comment about a vacation I took to Germany when I stayed in an airbnb in Munich that had a washing machine but no dryer. The washing machine there was different from my washing machine in the USA in that when the clothes were finished they came out almost half dry. The spinner cycle must have been extra strong. I was washing a regular cycle of dark clothing like jeans and tee shirts. Because there was no dryer I just hung everything up to dry around the apartment indoors. The washing cycle didn't seem to take that long, but this was 5 years ago so I don't remember the exact timing. I learned from that trip to leave the jeans and the cotton clothing at home when I travel to Europe. Even though my clothes were dry the next morning (the jeans were a bit damp, but I was staying for 3 days), I did have a pair of yoga pants with me that were dry so I wore those. Now for my upcoming trip next May I'm not planning on taking any cotton clothing. I'll be packing yoga pants that dry quickly. Same thing with shirts. When I was visiting my distant relatives in Poland (a young family with 2 daughters) they didn't have a dryer either. The mother would dry the family's laundry on one of those fold out wooden clothes dryers indoors.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
May 15, 2024 18:37:00 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2023 21:14:11 GMT
I can answer to this. We have a washer and a dryer...but the dryer isn't even plugged in. The sun here is so hot that whatever is hung out in the morning is dry by the afternoon. In the winter, rainy season, we hang out the clothes on a covered terrace, takes a couple more days to dry. It just doesn't get that cold here.
I have used the dryer a couple of times and it doesn't dry the clothes very well. So I got used to using the sun.
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RedSquirrelUK
Drama Llama
Posts: 6,737
Location: The UK's beautiful West Country
Aug 2, 2014 13:03:45 GMT
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Post by RedSquirrelUK on Aug 5, 2023 21:37:59 GMT
UK here. We have no air conditioning. We have a massive Australian washer-dryer, and we only use the dryer for towels to fluff them up, then finish them on the line. We have a conservatory where we dry clothes in the summer and sunny days, and in the winter we use a little tiny room that has a dehumidifier in. Pollen makes us sneeze too.
I actually have no idea how the dryer works. There is nothing to empty, and no vent.
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Post by **GypsyGirl** on Aug 5, 2023 21:38:09 GMT
We have a washer and a dryer...but the dryer isn't even plugged in. The sun here is so hot that whatever is hung out in the morning is dry by the afternoon. Do you have a switch to turn on/off the water heater? When we were in Doha there was a switch for the hot water heater. In the summertime it was always off because the water tanks were on the roof, so there was no need to heat the water. Just wondered what the situation is there for hot water.
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Post by dewryce on Aug 5, 2023 21:54:52 GMT
This thread is so interesting, love reading how peas around the world live! Two questions:
1) What is an airer?
2) Does the sun not bleach out the color of your clothing? It does the outside of our curtains, and those are inside. A couple of times towels and our travel chairs have been accidentally left in the backyard and those bleached pretty quickly as well.
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Post by Merge on Aug 5, 2023 21:58:49 GMT
If your dryer does not have an exhaust vent--where does the hot air go?--back into the living quarters? How awful. I envision the dryer adding hot air and the air conditioner trying to cool the home. That must be a mistaken idea. you assume air conditioning! . not so common in homes outside of the US. Yep. I've learned the hard way when traveling in summer to check that any place we're staying has AC. Also an issue in the northern parts of the US.
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Chinagirl828
Drama Llama
Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 6,476
Jun 28, 2014 6:28:53 GMT
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Post by Chinagirl828 on Aug 6, 2023 8:47:39 GMT
If your dryer does not have an exhaust vent--where does the hot air go?--back into the living quarters? How awful. I envision the dryer adding hot air and the air conditioner trying to cool the home. If it's hot enough to need the air con then it's definitely hot enough to dry the washing outside. Using my dryer is a last resort to get something dry. 1) What is an airer? 2) Does the sun not bleach out the color of your clothing? It does the outside of our curtains, and those are inside. A couple of times towels and our travel chairs have been accidentally left in the backyard and those bleached pretty quickly as well. This is a clothes airer or clothes horse. They come in lots of different configurations and you can get a surprising amount of clothes on them to dry. (Also, sorry it's so large!) As for your second question, yes things fade over time, but I typically find clothes are needing to be replaced by the time any fading becomes noticeable.
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Post by gar on Aug 6, 2023 9:20:41 GMT
As for your second question, yes things fade over time As they would just from normal washing and wearing outside anyway
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Post by sleepingbooty on Aug 6, 2023 9:25:39 GMT
I don't have a dryer as I live in a dry climate and hang clothes to dry in the apartment but my parents have one of those "slow" dryers as Americans call them. It takes 1 hour and 49 minutes to dry a load of cotton items like towels/bed linen per the programme. You need to empty the condensation water compartment after every load, particularly for water-heavy items like towels. Dryers damage fabric, period. Even towels. If you're looking to preserve cotton towels by air-drying them but want them to feel soft like they're out of the dryer, just let them air-dry and throw them in the dryer for 5 minutes before folding them. ETA: I dry my clothes on a Leifheit standing dryer that folds down super slim and is stored away when not in use. I do not let my clothes dry in the sunlight during spring/summer because it's so harsh where I live (and 70% of my wardrobe is black). I just move the dryer as the sunlight changes in my living room. It's really not much of a hassle.
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wellway
Prolific Pea
Posts: 8,767
Jun 25, 2014 20:50:09 GMT
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Post by wellway on Aug 6, 2023 9:37:28 GMT
You can get an electric heated version of the clothes horse and can add a cover to trap the heat. They proved very popular here when the electricity prices increased and winter was coming. I used one this last winter and found it really useful. Rarely used the tumble dryer which in turn reduced my electricity use. www.lakeland.co.uk/brands/drysoon
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Post by rahnee on Aug 6, 2023 10:00:24 GMT
I found out how ineffective our clothes dryers are here after reading a post from an American ex-pat living in Australia. She made the same comment, that the clothes dryers here take too long. I also learnt on here that a lot of clothes dryers in America have an exhaust vent. I rarely use the clothes dryer, and could easily live without one. In the warmer months I hang my clothes on the clothes line outside. In winter I hang them on a drying rack over a ducted heating vent. It's too expensive to use the dryer. Probably because they are so inefficient and take over an hour to dry! We are the same. Clothes line in warmer weather, and drying rack over heater vent when its cold. I actually don't have a dryer. I've never really had the need for one. We did use one of our last holiday to the US and 1/2 my clothes shrunk (including something I'd just bought new and worn once)
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carhoch
Pearl Clutcher
Be yourself everybody else is already taken
Posts: 2,991
Location: We’re RV’s so It change all the time .
Jun 28, 2014 21:46:39 GMT
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Post by carhoch on Aug 6, 2023 11:30:46 GMT
Dryer in Switzerland work well but they are so tiny that everything comes out with wrinkles , it’s the washer that drives me crazy because of the long cycle.
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Post by AussieMeg on Aug 6, 2023 12:24:13 GMT
NZ Pea here as well. Mine's an old dryer - 29 years old now so doesn't have as many settings as newer models but I think it takes about 1 1/2 hours for a load of towels using 'cupboard dry'. I do use the dryer in winter particularly when it's raining a lot but otherwise my preference is to hang the washing outside on the line, even in winter. How cold does it get though? Because as much as I like line dried laundry and I do hang out my clothes that can't be dried in nice weather, I've got to hang them in my basement in winter because they will freeze. So I would say line drying in winter is impossible. We don't get snow here, and it doesn't get cold enough for the clothes to freeze. But they don't dry very well in winter usually. I actually hung my washing on the line outside last weekend, and it's the middle of winter. It was a sunny and windy day, so they dried well. Only problem was, I forgot to take them off the line, and then it rained! you assume air conditioning! . not so common in homes outside of the US. I don't know anyone who doesn't have an air conditioner or evaporative cooling in their house. It's very common here. We even had an air conditioner in my family home back in the 70s.
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Post by gar on Aug 6, 2023 12:35:15 GMT
you assume air conditioning! . not so common in homes outside of the US. I don't know anyone who doesn't have an air conditioner or evaporative cooling in their house. It's very common here. We even had an air conditioner in my family home back in the 70s. We've never really had reliable, long stretches of hot weather to warrant it like you guys have but with global warming that may change! We also often have to contend with much older properties which aren't conducive to having air con installed. There are times I would love to have it though!
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Post by mammajamma on Aug 6, 2023 13:14:24 GMT
I didn’t read all the responses to see if you already got the answer you are looking for. But it’s likely because the European dryers are condenser dryers. They work differently. I live in Texas but we have a Bosch ventless dryer (condenser dryer). It has taken some getting use to. But if you shake the clothes and put on hangars at the end of the cycle, they dry quickly. And it’s more gentle on your fabrics. At least that’s what they say. 😍 If found this article that explains. reviewed.usatoday.com/laundry/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-ventless-dryers
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Post by lucyg on Aug 6, 2023 17:15:48 GMT
I don't know anyone who doesn't have an air conditioner or evaporative cooling in their house. It's very common here. We even had an air conditioner in my family home back in the 70s. We've never really had reliable, long stretches of hot weather to warrant it like you guys have but with global warming that may change! We also often have to contend with much older properties which aren't conducive to having air con installed. There are times I would love to have it though! No one in my town had A/C when we first moved here 40 years ago, and hardly anyone does even now. We live near the San Francisco Bay and it tends to be cooler than inland. But people are starting to get A/C now. The weather has definitely warmed over these 40 years. I need to replace my 40yo furnace (thank the gods for my engineer BIL who has kept it running all this time) and I plan to add air. I don’t like it much and won’t use it more than a few days per year … but I think it’s going to become a necessity over the next decade or so.
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Post by ktdoesntscrap on Aug 11, 2023 23:00:51 GMT
How cold does it get though? Because as much as I like line dried laundry and I do hang out my clothes that can't be dried in nice weather, I've got to hang them in my basement in winter because they will freeze. So I would say line drying in winter is impossible. We don't get snow here, and it doesn't get cold enough for the clothes to freeze. But they don't dry very well in winter usually. I actually hung my washing on the line outside last weekend, and it's the middle of winter. It was a sunny and windy day, so they dried well. Only problem was, I forgot to take them off the line, and then it rained! you assume air conditioning! . not so common in homes outside of the US. I don't know anyone who doesn't have an air conditioner or evaporative cooling in their house. It's very common here. We even had an air conditioner in my family home back in the 70s. Sorry didn't mean to imply there was NO WHERE outside of the US that it was common, but it is not common in a large majority of the world!
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AllieC
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,057
Jul 4, 2014 6:57:02 GMT
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Post by AllieC on Aug 12, 2023 7:42:02 GMT
In Australia - I have a condenser dryer but use it rarely even in winter. If we hang out clothes out early then are dry by 4pm when it might start to get damp. I might out them in the dryer to finish them off but again that’s rare. We don’t even have clothes horse/airer.
Pollen isn’t something I’ve ever heard anyone having an issue with in Aus, I’ve certainly never had it. If it’s a dusty day(rare) we won’t do washing that day.
Clothing can fade but we hang most inside out and our line is partially covered so it’s not really an issue.
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Post by Merge on Aug 12, 2023 12:02:34 GMT
Thanks to all the peas who contributed to general pea knowledge with this post! I’m back at home now, and though we hated leaving Australia, it was very nice to come home and be able to quickly wash and dry an entire suitcase full of clothes. 😊
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Dalai Mama
Drama Llama
La Pea Boheme
Posts: 6,985
Jun 26, 2014 0:31:31 GMT
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Post by Dalai Mama on Aug 12, 2023 12:53:36 GMT
Newfoundlander. Clotheslines are part of our culture, so much so that they have been used in our tourism marketing campaigns (Google it - it’s a beautiful ad ❤️).
Living in Toronto, though, our dryers are the same as yours - I just rarely use them. When we moved in to our current house, I had DH set up a series of lines in our laundry room. You can take the girl off the Rock…
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