Drying clothes: Gas Dryer vs Clothes Hanger with Fan
An easy way to reduce your carbon footprint is to dry your clothes on a clothesline instead of using a gas or electric dryer. Many people do not have sufficient outdoor space, or dry and warm air, to be able to dry their clothes completely with this method.
In this post, we’ll walk through the numbers behind the strategy of aiding an indoor clothes drying rack with a small electric fan, and whether or not it makes sense vs. just using your dryer
A average gas dryer uses .22 therms per load, and .21 kWh of auxiliary power1. So if you pay the national average of $0.95 per therm, your total energy dryer costs come out to around $0.25 (No wonder laundrymats are so lucrative!2)
For many people, drying clothes outside without auxiliary power is not possible, due to space or weather constraints. However, it is possible to dry clothes with a portable electric fan. As an example, the Honeywell Turbo Force costs $17 and consumes 40 watts, although in my experience consumes closer to 30 watts. A full load of laundry can be dried in eight hours, for a total of 240 or .24 kWh. At 22 cents per kWh, this reduces your drying costs from 25 cents to 4 cents, while helping the environment!