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Of all the things that I find would help immensely to reduce our reliance on condenser driers and help us to reduce our carbon footprints would be to monitor the weather and make suggestions about when might be a good time to put washing out and when to take it in. It's a simple concept but many people probably have no idea how much this might save them in energy bills and in their reliance on appliances.
According to a quick internet search: The average condenser tumble dryer uses about 5.2 kWh of electricity for a full load of laundry. Over the course of a year, the condenser dryer will use 617 kWh.
Additionally: There were an estimated 27.8 million households in the UK in 2020.
Multiplying out gives a total of 17.15TWh/year. This amounts to almost 5% of annual UK electricity generation based on a peak of 348.5TWh
A weather logger/predictor could reduce some of this wasted energy by helping people to make the most of outside weather to dry clothes the conventional, "natural," way.
Sometimes it's difficult to know how long washing will take to dry as that will depend on the weather at large. Wind speed, humidity, rainfall, sunshine and temperature will all have a part to play in determining speed of drying.
How might you know when it's likely to rain significantly and subsequently when should one put washing out or take it in?
The remainder of this article will discuss how to address these issues and optimise the process of drying clothes outside.
When drying clothes outside the following factors will probably have the greatest positive effect on how long the clothes will take to dry and whether it is sensible to leave them outside or take them in:
- High Air Temperature
- Low Humidity
- High Wind Speed
- High Sunshine Probability
- Low cloud cover percentage
- Low Rain Probability
- High Dew Point Temperature
Many weather web-providers supply information of this nature. Data relating to the weather can be downloaded and processed by logging onto such servers as "Weather Underground." in fact it may be possible to make a metric just by multiplying these indicators together initially. The eventual ideal would be to predict drying conditions based on the effect of prevailing weather conditions on the wet and dry weight of a patch of cloth hanging in the elements.
The patch of cloth can be weighed by a digital scale or strain gauge. Devices such as these are very common and relatively inexpensive. The weight of the patch of cloth can be monitored alongside the prevailing weather conditions in order to generate data regarding drying time and whether the weather is having a positive or negative effect on such drying time.
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