Sounds like a good plan!

What you've actually built is a room sized heat pump tumble dryer!

I wonder if you could do the same with a wardrobe sized unit, that you hang your spun dried (i.e. damp) clothes in on their hangers and over night a small dehumidifer dried them ready to be transferred into a regular wardrobe.

Hell, just have a large built in wardrobe with a dehumidifer in, just hang straight in wardrobe where they dry take 'em out when you want to wear them.

The rumpled look I call it - others call me scruff

Posted By: fostertomothers call me scruff

Only behind your back

I love this idea. And my wife does too. We have design our build to have a dedicated laundry room with drying space (a must with 3 children) but as of now i have only considered adding low grade heat, small DHW radiator. Now we will add provision for dehumidifier.

Once again GBF has produced pure gold, i love it

I was just thinking about how to dry clothes in my new, yet to be built house! This sounds like a good plan for my bathroom. It's going to have a smallish tripled glazed window though so may not be quite as good as a large cupboard. Also need to look at electricity supply for the dehumidifier - what capacity/size dehumidifier have you used?

Brilliant idea, and very timely for me - only minutes before reading this, I was looking at humidity-sensitive extractor fans to go into my planned basement utility room (which will be insulated on walls, floor and ceiling and will contain the gas boiler and hot water cylinder, and be used for washing and drying clothes).

Like seascape, I'm interested in your dehumidifier specs. For my purposes I'd like one that can be plumbed in and wall-mounted, and preferably have a timer - any recommendations?

Some seem to work using the Peltier effect, whereas many have compressors - which would be more energy efficient (I do appreciate that the heat isn't 'wasted', but I'm not sure that I need more heat in my utility room)?

We were going to put up the sheila maid style airer in our kitchen, but my husband said no as it would ruin the space - I agreed. And no utility room or space for one, or a dedicated drying room.

The alternative was to put up a wall mounted airer (brabantia wall fix) in the garden lean to/store. This also houses our bikes and wood and bins. It has a clear corrugated polycarbonate roof and lots of air circulation. I'm hopeful that it will be possible to dry clothes outside under cover pretty much all year round - maybe not as quickly as in a room with a dehumidifier, but certainly more cheaply. Yesterday it sporadically bucketed down here, but my sheets dried outside nonetheless.

If it gets really cold and damp out, then I outside drying won't work and I will revert to a clothes airer in front of the stove. You can buy special humidifying kettles (!) to counteract the drying effect of woodburning stoves - I would think some damp laundry would work just as well.

I do this exact thing in a spare room. Small room, sealed (although no insulation yet), with Mitsi dehumidifier. Works really well!

Posted By: jameswdehumidifier specs

I use windscreen wipers on my specs - you know like MG TA ones bolted to the top frame

We have been hanging washing outside for the past several decades, no tumble drier, no dehumidifier, s/h rotary line, cost = 0

Good idea! Still uses electricity though. A customer of mine wanted to use a ceiling-mounted drying rack for clothes - like the sort you use above an Aga - so we fitted a radiator in the shower room, which runs on a timer, independent of the other heating, using stored solar energy from the day before. This is an older end-terrace property. Works like the proverbial. Many ways to skin this kind of cat methinks.

JTG: Is this a tarpaulin like mine?

Those drying cabinets that Mike mentions are very popular here in Sweden, great for drying stuff when you come in from the snow!

http://www.cylinda.se/Vara-produkter/Tvatt--tork/Tork/Torkskap/TORKSKAP-TS-190-ECOX-VIT-H/

I'm sure it was on here that I saw mentioned a tent like affair that goes over a rotary clothes line for year round drying. I remember seeing them on ebay at the time much cheaper than they were selling on their online shop but can't remember the name and so can't find them again.

I did want to tell someone (something wrong with that?), especially when a dedicated drying room with dehumidifier is regarded as an ecological solution to the 'problem' of drying clothes. If your benchmark is a tumble-drier than I guess it is. If your benchmark is a washing line.....how can it possibly be? (And I get that you gain the heat, but half the year you don't want or need the heat). Tony makes the same point. I guess I'm an advocate for the low-tech and for efficient use of space as a first principle of ecological design. A world in which a dedicated laundry/drying room is 'a must' requires a lot of resources (multiply that attitude by all the dedicated single-use spaces one might specify - Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House come to mind).

The light is excellent. Glass (toughened) would be a longer lasting and perhaps more ecological choice. Sadly, compromises made on account of not being prepared to spend that kind of cash on what is ultimately just a lean to.

You need a well insulated room for maximum drying efficiency, unless you are prepared to input additional heat. Small dehumidifiers have a fairly low wattage (exact consumption will depend on operating climate), and that needs to raise the air temperature as high as possible to get rapid evaporation AND rapid condensation by the dehumidifier. The latent heat absorbed by of evaporation is liberated on condensation from the air, so there is no net gain or loss of energy from that source. The speed of evaporation and the efficiency of the dehumidifier are both critically dependent on air temperature - so insulation and airtightness are critical. Once you have those in place, the actual size of the dehumidifier isn't critical - it may just take more time to dry. Set the the humidistat to max extraction rate (but not 'continuous'). A small domestic machine is adequate for the 8ft x 6ft insulated room. You don't need a timer as the dehumidifier (if properly set) will switch itself off when all is dry, providing the room is pretty airtight. We set our room next to the small laundry room on the same floor as the bedrooms to minimise transport of clothes. Obviously in a dry climate drying on a washing line is ideal, but often it's a rare option for many people.

I looked up the suggested links to proprietary drying cabinets. My Swedish is nil so couldn't determine how that small wardrobe worked. None of the others seemed to be thermodynamically efficient; some merely heated cabinets with water-cooled condensers: what a waste of heat and water. A Bosch one boasted it only used 2kwH per cycle for a single load. A small room can dry several loads for about 1kWh, all of which is retained to heat the house; and furthermore in a room you can dry ANYTHING, not just clothes! Makes quite a good sauna too if you want one - hot and humid when the process starts.

Washing lines in car port type sheds outside can counter rain - but not lack of wind or high humidity/low temperatures.

Realistically a large share of national drying costs must accounted for by families with young children doing a load or more every day. What a boom a drying room would be for them

When it threatens to rain in the wettest place in the UK, I just put things on hangers and hang them from the curtain rail.
When I moved into this place, it started raining on the first weekend, we had rain every day for 66 days, no one told me about that.
I think this year has been pretty similar, campsites have been empty.

Ed Davies : I said you need airtight room. No risk at all if use standard insulated plasterboard ( ie incorporating phenolic type foam insulation and vapour barrier). If you are neurotic, tape the joints with vapour-proof tape. Lino or tiles on floor.