Further exploration with lower power clothes drying

A few weeks ago the clothes dryer at my house broke down which led me on an exploratory journey: Powering down on drying clothes is a serious look into what it would take to replace an aspect of modern American living with a lower power equivalent. If it is true we face a future of dwindling energy resources we as people need to learn, or perhaps relearn, ways of living with lower energy inputs. I've done a bit more exploration, have a better solution in hand, but it is not yet completely satisfactory.

Lazy Line Dry was very interesting to read. Of course, so simple, this isn't complicated at all, it just requires a clothes line.

Clothes Line is a specific kind of rope available pretty much everywhere. I found a 100 foot length available for a few dollars at the local hardware store, bought that and some nails.

Location presents a little challenge with clothes lines. Drying clothes outdoors runs the risk of them being rained on, right? But drying them indoors means taking up living space with clothes on a line. Currently I've run my clothes line in the garage between a pair of nails.

One problem with the current situation is drooping line. The line is pretty long and droops in the middle, and the clothes tend to bunch at the droop. Not good. Perhaps it's going to require a shorter line and certainly keeping the line taught minimizes the droop.

The Lazy Line Dry article offers an interesting labor saving suggestion. Simply put the clothes directly on a hanger, and hang the hanger on the line. The stereotype for clothes line use is to use clothes pins to pin clothes to the line. But if you put the clothes directly on a hanger it saves a fair bit of work, especially over the work required with a machine dryer. Running clothes through a machine dryer takes a lot of steps of unloading the washer, loading the dryer, unloading the dryer, folding clothes, hanging clothes, etc. Clipping clothes to a clothes line is fewer steps but still more steps than simply putting the clothes on a hanger in the first place.

It's suggested to use plastic hangers rather than steel wire ones. Hurm. I have a collection of wire hangers I've owned for 30+ years. They were inherited from my father and they're still in good shape and still do a great job. But the article has a good point, that steel can rust and stain clothes. But given that I've owned these hangers for over 30 years and they haven't rusted yet I wonder how valid that concern is.

One thing I found is for drying pants the hangers which have clips on them are essential. You clip the pants to the hanger, and the pants hang straight down. I've for decades hung pants folded on a wire hanger but have found that wet pants hung this way do not dry very well on the folded part. Pants hung straight have an easier time of drying out.

There is another option besides the traditional clothes line. I found plastic clips that hang on the top of a door. These are strong and can easily hold wet clothes to dry. Simply buy enough of these clips to hang on all the doors in your house, then spread the clothes (on hangers) among those clips.

Links: 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Lazy-Line-Dry/

External Media

Powering down on drying clothes

The clothes dryer at my house seems to have broken. It's a typical american big-as-heck clothes dryer and I've measured its power use as being 750 watts. Last week it stopped getting hot and hence the clothes did not dry out and the dryer just spun and spun and spun for hours. I suppose there may be a simple thing busted inside it, like a heating element, or a fuse, or some such. Or it may mean replacing the whole thing. Since I don't own the house nor the clothes dryer there's a little bit of complication. And in any case I have the idea to use this as an opportunity to experiment with powering down.

"Power Down" is a phrase I learned through the Transition Towns initiative. Transition Towns is asking us to recognize twin crises facing us -- peak oil and climate change. Peak oil and the peaks of other resources says that our society is going to be facing a crunch in available resources very soon and that the wise thing to do is to find ways to decrease the required power and resource usage in order to maintain our lives. We americans use far more resources than do other countries and we could very well be more efficient about our resource utilization while still maintaining a high quality of life.

In any case .. drying clothes. Obviously our clothes will still get stinky and dirty and still need to be cleaned. Cleaning clothes means they get wet, and then have to be dried. Obviously in power down we'll still have to dry our clothes somehow, the question is "how".

The first step in my own experimenting was to buy a typical accordion style wooden drying rack from the local hardware store. I really knew better but talked myself into it anyway. Of course one of the wood pieces broke on the first time using it and I had to jury rig a way to keep it upright. But it did to the job of drying the clothes (overnight). I also draped some of the clothes over the space heaters and that worked rather well.

Here's a few resources I found...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_dryer - Goes over the types of clothes drying techniques commonly used. But most of the discussion is about the typical "modern" dryer with the spin cycle and all that stuff. The question seems to be what's the effective way to get moisture to evaporate quickly from the clothing.

http://www.urbanclotheslines.com/ - is a vendor selling a variety of low power clothes drying tools. Primarily they have several versions of the outdoors clothes line. They carry a fancy drying clothes rack that looks very tempting.

Clearly there is historical use of clothes lines and drying racks. An outdoors clothes line runs the risk of clothes being rained on etc. One curious result I've seen from air drying towels is they always come out stiff and scratchy, whereas machine drying towels they come out soft and fluffy.

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Clothes_Dryer -- A closet dryer consists of a dehumidifier in a large wardrobe, walk-in wardrobe or utility room. The implementation is a wardrobe, you put a dehumidifier in it, hang the clothes in the wardrobe, the dehumidifier automatically switches on and off with rising and falling humidity. This is more convenient than the extra step of putting clothes into a dryer and there is less wear on the clothes (tumble dryers are rough on clothes). They claim it's drastically less power use, on the order of 0.15 kilowatthours of electricity to operate the dehumidifier versus several KWH for a regular tumble dryer.

http://www.alternativeconsumer.com/2008/04/25/spin-dryer-saves-energy/ - A spin dryer uses centrifugal force to get the moisture out of clothes. They claim energy savings and I suppose this comes from not heating the clothes.

Real Goods carries a 'laundry airer' which they say is meant for compact living spaces and offers a lot of drying rack in a small place.

http://www.laundrylist.org/ - Project Laundry List is an activist organization aiming to demonstrate that personal choices can make a difference for the Earth and its people. Project Laundry List is making air-drying laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy. Air drying clothes is a form of using solar energy, has long historical precedent, etc. It seems that some places are outlawing the practice of hanging your clothes outside to let them air dry.. uh? This is what they're fighting for, the right to do this.

http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen/washing_machine.html -- is an experiment by a guy who's going a lot with using pedal powered machines to generate electricity. Think "exercise bicycle" connected to an electrical generator. He tried to keep up with his normal washer/dryer using his pedal power generator, and was unable to keep up.

http://www.greeniacs.com/GreeniacsGuides/Dry-Your-Clothes-on-a-Clothesline.html -- A nice overview article about drying clothes by hanging them in the air. This is pretty simple stuff but to those of us who grew up with clothes drying machines perhaps we need a little bit of a reminder.

Wall Shelf Drying Rack The wooden Wall Shelf Drying Rack is easy to install on any wall surface. You can put the unit on your porch for solar drying, near back door for easy access or in laundry room for indoor drying. You can also use it as a drying rack for flowers, herbs and pasta. This drying rack is constructed using sturdy, unfinished Eastern White Pine with durable Birch hardwood dowels and four Shaker-style pegs.

*The expandable drying rack is a space saving must have. *Allows you to dry your clothes then store it a way when it is not needed. *Sets up in seconds. The expandable clothes drying rack is a space saving must have. This hassle free drying rack sets up in seconds and allows you to dry your clothes then store it a way when it is not needed. This unit folds down to just a few inches so it can be stored under the bed, sofa, or in a closet. The steel construction makes this laundry rack sturdy and stable. The shiny chrome finish makes it attractive. Great for dorm rooms.

http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080409154707AA2Sv9k -- Someone asked about this problem on Yahoo!Answers and they described ways to diagnose the busted electric dryer. The consensus is it's probably cheap to fix and just call the repair guy already. I'd do that except I'm really interested in the alternatives.

Links: 

http://www.urbanclotheslines.com/

Links: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothes_dryer

Links: 

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Clothes_Dryer

Links: 

http://www.laundrylist.org/

Links: 

http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen/washing_machine.html

External Media

Powerful Little Light: LED With 1,000 Lumens

Lights is perhaps something we take for granted but have you tried living without electric lights? I haven't, though I have spent some time in places where there are no electric lights. The people who live there have all sorts of ways to create light when there's no electric lights.. like, candles. Anyway the ability to have light when it's dark is one of the miracles of the modern age. But it's also a curse of sorts because electric lighting has become so ubiquitous that it's using a tremendous amount of power. The most common light bulb, the incandescent bulb, wastes 95% of the energy sent into the bulb, yet the companies that make them have done a great job keeping costs down, and the inexpensive price is a barrier to entry for any other product.

There are two sorts of electric lights which are more efficient than incandescent bulbs. The compact fluorescent is about 3x as efficient, and those bulbs last 10x longer (or thereabouts) so the higher price for the compact fluorescent pays for itself over the life of the bulb but I suspect the much higher price puts off most people and hence they are not so popular. However LED lighting is even more efficient, using about 1 percent the power required for an incandescent bulb, while lasting hundreds of times longer. Unfortunately LED bulbs which could adequately light a room were astronomically expensive and almost nobody knows these exist much less own any.

Osram has developed a small light-emitting diode spotlight that achieves an output of more than 1,000 lumens for the first time. That's the same brightness as a 75 watt bulb.

Article Reference: 

Powerful Little Light: LED With 1,000 Lumens

Osram

What about keeping warm in the winter?

It's midsummer and it's hot out. I've had a few articles recently about keeping cool in the summer without spending a lot of energy, e.g. without running an air conditioner. But, what about keeping warm in the winter?

Winter? Isn't that months away? Well, yeah, but the same principle holds true as I've been discussing about keeping cool without air conditioners. Our ancestors didn't have central heating nor central air conditioning. Our ancestors did not have fossil fuels easily available. Our ancestors didn't have the over abundance of energy that we enjoy today. How did they survive? How did they make it through cold winters and hot summers? That's worth studying and seeing what can be applied today.

The Furnace-free House in Vermont is a three-way conversation between Donella (Dana) Meadows (the client), Marc Rosenbaum, PE (the ecological design/energy consultant), and Amory Lovins (world famous energy expert). It began when Amory told Donella that it was possible to build a passive solar home in the Vermont climate which required no heating system or back-up heat. They discussed it, and the discussion is presented on that page.

Air Conditioning: "We're cooking our planet to refrigerate the diminishing part that's still habitable"

In The deluded world of air conditioning William Saletan offers a very interesting perspective. "We're cooking our planet to refrigerate the diminishing part that's still habitable".

When you air condition a building you're taking heat that's inside the building and moving it outside. That's what an air conditioner is, a heat pump. The fluids that go through an air conditioning system? They're the medium through which heat is exchanged, or rather pumped, from one place to another.

And, when we pump heat outdoors that costs energy. The energy used comes from somewhere, most likely through burning natural gas. So when we run an air conditioner and pump energy outside, that natural gas that's burned to make the electricity emits carbon into the atmosphere, which then in turn increases the greenhouse and global warming effect.

Air conditioners hasten global warming. So it's a fools journey to run an air conditioner because when you do it's just tightening a noose around your neck. Unfortunately the tightening of that noose is happening slowly enough that it's hard to connect the air conditioner with the global warming.

And, it's not just air conditioners. It's the whole range of gadgets that use electricity or gasoline. Want to clean up the fallen leaves in your yard? Are you going to get out a rake, or use a leaf blower? Want to go grocery shopping? Are you going to drive a Hummer or a Geo Metro or a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle (NEV) or a bicycle? When your teenager turns 16 do they get a car immediately? Do you know what a "phantom electrical load" is?

In this hot summer air conditioning is a, er, hot topic. There are some alternatives to consider. But something I wonder about is, just how the heck did our ancestors survive without air conditioners?

Why do we have to use air conditioners when there are thousands of years of human experience that could show us how to live without air conditioning in the first place?

For example, there are herbal ways to cool down. Ways that do not require refridgeration or air conditioning.

In the Middle East Sekanjabin (?sp?) is a traditional drink. It's main active ingredients are mint and sugar. Both are known to herbalists as cooling substances that, when ingested, will act to cool the body.

How can you prove this to yourself? Let me offer a simple test from Healing with the Herbs of Life. First take a sprig of fresh mint, crush it up, and pop it in your mouth. Doesn't your mouth feel cool? Take a breath in and out. Cool?

Now take some cinnamon, just a dab, and put it in your mouth. Hot?

Mint is a cooling herb, while cinnamon is a heating herb. Healing with the Herbs of Life goes into this in extensive detail from the perspective of Chinese Medicine. But the concepts are known to herbalists of all societies.

Another example of how the thousands of years of human experience can show us how to cool our living quarters without air conditioning. A few years ago I visited some friends who own some land in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It was mid-summer, on a hot day. On their land is an old one-room schoolhouse that sits out in the direct sun all day long. However, the inside of that schoolhouse remains cool all day long. How? Thick walls. Similarly in California there are many old buildings left from the Spanish. These are "adobe" buildings and the main feature is the thick walls.

Thick walls mean good insulation. You might think insulation only helps keep heat inside. Actually what insulation does is impede the flow of heat. So the heat outside the building has a harder time getting inside the better the insulation.

Another alternative to air conditioning is offered by the plant kingdom. Plant trees around your house, trees that are large enough to shade the roof. The trees will keep the heat from hitting your house in the first place. If you live in a place that that gets real cold in the winter, then you want trees that shed their leaves in the fall. That way in the winter the branches are bare and the sun will reach your house to provide some heat.

Reference: The Deluded World of Air Conditioning

Other air conditioning alternatives

As I mentioned in Make your own air conditioner, I want to minimize my power use. So I'm looking at alternatives to buying another window sized air conditioner (especially as none of the stores have any in stock).

One alternative I saw was to drape a cloth in a bowl of water, and blow air over the cloth with a fan. The evaporation is supposed to make the air cool. I tried this, and it didn't make any effect.

The one thing I do find helpful is to have fans blowing air directly over my body, and to have fans blowing air in from the outside. This combination makes life bearable except in the hottest of times.

Another thing which helps is to enlist the aid of the trees. Trees naturally do the evaporative cooling effect, because that's what their function is. Trees draw water out of the ground and perspire the water through their leaves. If you sit under a tree you're in an evaporative cooling zone.

The opposite kind of zone is, unfortunately, what our cities are tending to build for us. Namely, the long stretches of asphalt. Consider, what color is the most absorptive of heat? Black. What color is asphalt? Black. Why, oh why, are asphalt parking lots to hot? It's because they're black. Do you think that perhaps the abundance of asphalt parking lots in cities might contribute to the heat in cities? Yes, they do, and U.S. government scientists did study this very issue several years ago. So why do cities like to continue supporting the installation of asphalt parking lots? HeckifIknow..!!!

There is also the swamp cooler. Swamp coolers are widely used in the desert areas, and work best with dry climates. In the SF Bay Area our humidity hovers around 50%, which is the top end of the claimed humidity range where these work. Swamp coolers work by evaporating water, so of course the more readily the water evaporates the better the cooling action. I have ordered a swamp cooler and hopefully it will arrive next week.

Make your own air conditioner

It's been hot the last few days. In St. Louis severe storms knocked out power over most of the city. In general the U.S. has had a real serious heat wave, and in England they've set another all time high temperature record. In the SF Bay Area it's been very hot for this area.

Since my interest is to see how I can live comfortably while keeping my power use minimized ... I don't have an air conditioner in my house, and instead rely on fans and one window-sized air conditioner. Okay, it's more accurate to say the house doesn't have central air conditioning. For the most part I'm uncomfortable but it's not unbearable. But I think I'm being more accomodating to the weather than my neighbors, many of whom have central air conditioning cranked to the max.

Cranking the air conditioning to the max may seem like it's helping you, but in the big picture it's only making the heat worse. The higher power draw required by having the AC maxed means the power plants are running at maximum capacity. Indeed there have been day after day where the power producers have been at emergency production levels, barely able to meet the demand with the generating capacity. That high power production use directly turns into higher levels of pollution, because most of the power plants are burning fossil fuels. Higher pollution levels mean higher degrees of global warming and heating.

Make Your Own Air Conditioner and PETE'S HOMEMADE AIR CONDITIONER and How to build a $30 air conditioner and GEOFF'S ORIGINAL HOMEMADE AIR CONDITIONING cover a low-cost low-energy-required alternative.

The idea is ultra simple. You get a cooler of ice water, and a submersible pump. Attach the pump to a hose arrangement where the hose is woven through a fan, and then direct the hose back into the cooler. Turn on the pump and the fan. The result will be to pump cold water through piping over which you're blowing air. The air should cool down while going over the piping.

It's simple enough, and inexpensive to put together. One of the pages claimed a cost of $30.

I've acquired the required parts and will be putting it together later to see how well it works. To make ice water, I've bought some of those freezable blue blocks. The plan is to freeze them, and put them in a cooler with some water. I have a submersible pump I bought to make a water fountain several years ago. For tubing I bought some plastic tubing at the pet store, and intend to, if this works out, buy some brass tubing for the heat exchanger.

The first experiment was to hook the pump to the tubing. Unfortunately the pump is not powerful enough to make water go up very high above itself. The tubing is three feet long, and the pump is unable to get the water to go the full length of the tubing if it is stretched straight up. But if you have the tubing coiled just above the pump, then water goes through just fine.

It's hot ... here's how to cool off w/o using lots of energy

We're having a heck of a heat wave this summer. I live in the SF Bay Area and the temperatures are moderated a bit by the ocean. But yesterday it was over 100 where I live, which is an outrageous temperature. I know, I know, 100 isn't so outrageous in other parts of the U.S. but in the SF Bay Area our climate is highly moderated by the ocean. Usually severe winter or summer weather is but a rumor we hear about from friends in other parts of the country.

And I was reading that England is also seeing 100 degree weather. That they were expected to set an all time high temperature. And that it's the second time in the last three years that England is recording an all time high temperature.

Anybody doubt about Global Warming?

Anyway ... this is supposed to be about keeping cool. One reason I wanted to live in the SF Bay Area is the climate. I read in a "Places Rated" book that here in the Bay Area we have a low percentage of air conditioners installed in houses. Obviously that's climate related, and any place that doesn't have the people using air conditioning has got to be relatively cool in the summer.

And, indeed, that's what we have. Usually we have moderate temperatures in the summer with only a few days where we wish we had air conditioners.

Here's a few ideas I've collected about keeping cool without using a lot of power. Air conditioners use a lot of power, and if you want to live sustainably it's worth considering other ways of keeping cool without using air conditioning.

Attic fans work to exhaust hot air from your attic. The attic is like global warming on a miniature scale. Your roof is probably black color and is probably exposed to the sun, and therefore absorbs heat that's transmitted into the attic. The attic then sends that heat into the house. But an attic fan turns on when the temperature is high, draws the air out of the attic, reducing that effect.

Keep the windows open at night when it's cool, use fans to draw air into the house at night, and then shut the windows during the day. The idea is to capture cool air and keep it as long as you can during the day.

wiki how has some tips on keeping cool

For example .. aim a fan so it blows over the top of a bucket of ice. This will work better when the humidity is low. It's a similar idea to the swamp coolers they use in the desert.

Take a cool shower .. cover yourself with a cool cloth .. wear socks that have been soaked in cool water ..

The general idea is to use evaporative cooling.

Energy Hog

energyhog.org is a flash-based web site geared to children, and offers a game environment in which one can learn about "Energy Hog's" in the typical household. The Energy Hog's are the basic innefficiencies people have around the house ...

For example, if you have a television or other electronic gadget with an instant-on feature, it is probably constantly pulling current. For a television to be instant-on the CRT tube has to be kept warmed up and ready to go, and this requires constant power. That along with all the other trickles of current around the house adds up to a significant amount of electricity.

The typical house window is a single pane of glass, which doesn't make for much insulating power. In the winter or summer the window can either be a source of cold or a source of heat, but if it's double paned then it's a better insulator.

Chimneys can provide you with a place to put a fire and create warmth in your house. But at the same time if the flue is open (and you don't have a fire burning) it can let cold air into the house. Alternatively, during the summer a chimney can let the air conditioned air escape.

Refidgerators and other major can be energy innefficient, or energy efficient. Pay close attention to the labeling when you buy them.

Keeping the house cooled or heated during the day when nobody is at home wastes energy. Why not leave the thermostat adjusted so the heating/cooling is off until you get home?