Cost of having a dryer

As a follow up to my previous post, I'm wondering if anyone might be able to comment on if they feel having a dryer has significantly added to their electric bill. I did receive one reply that mentioned this (thank you springhaze) but I'd like to get a few more opinions on the subject. Thanks.

I suppose it depends on how reliant you're going to be on your tumble dryer. We have one, but only use it as a back-up - you know, for those periods when it's raining endlessly for way too long to use the line, and you have too much stuff to dry on the radiators or on an airer. I do use ours, but not often enough for it to have a significant impact on our bills. It's nice to know it's there, though! 

I can't give a comparison as we've had our dryer for years, but I can tell you about our overall usage and you can compare to your bill. Our last electricity bill covered the period from 31 July to 28 January. We used 1136 units, and that included heavy dryer use (we use it for most loads except in summer). We pay our bill by direct debit, £32 a month, and when this bill came they actually owed us money.

For me, the advantages of having one far outweighs any costs involved. So for us, it really doesn't matter.

Well, we just purchased ours a couple of months ago.  But at the same time, we just converted our home heating from one crappy electric fire in the living room to gas-fired central heating.  So our bill has actually gone down significantly.  The conclusion I can draw from this is that the dryer running 2 or 3 loads 2 or 3 times per week is way cheaper than having that energy hog of an electric fire running non-stop to try and heat the whole house!! (Which of course it never did, as it was only in the living room.)

It never really occurred to me that it would use up that much power, but I've just had a think.  Apparently my dryer uses about 3.5kWh to dry a load (per the manufacturer's web-site,) this is for a 6kg appliance rated 'C' - which is not that efficient.   According to the money saving expert the average UK energy price is about 12p per kWh - so it should cost me about 42p to do a load.  We do 2, maybe 3 loads a week, so the dryer costs less then a Starbucks tall filter coffee.

That's of course using average figure for energy prices whatever the manufacturer counts as a load of washing but I can't see the numbers being that far out, certainly it should be in the same order of magnitude.

My God! I will gladly give up a Starbucks coffee for three loads of laundry!!! Thanks PR!

Speck

I could never give up my dryer now!  We are in an older home with PAYG electricity  We (at the most) use £10/week. (well, that's what we budget for and don't usually use it all) 

My first few months in, I think I was ready to tear my hair out.  I hate the stiffness to line dried/radiator dried jeans and bulkier items (like hoodies) taking more than a day to dry out.  My daughter also has a skin condition and I didn't want rough clothes aggravating it any further.  My MIL may have teased about DH buying me a dryer for our anniversary, but it was the best gift I could have received!