Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => The Environment => Topic started by: DiscoverDave on 02/12/2009 13:25:11
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My quest began when someone told me that Germany has a law prohibiting clothes dryers to vent to the outside. If true, a dryer venting inside a home would produce two energy-saving and environmentally-friendly effects: it would help heat the home in the winter, and it would encourage people to dry their laundry outside in the summer.
Is this law in existence (anywhere)?
In researching this, I couldn't find anything about German laws on venting clothes dryers, but I did find "condenser" dryers. They circulate the air in a dryer to evaporate the water from the clothes, then cool the air with a heat exchanger and condense the water out of it, then heat the air with the heat exchanger to go back to dry the clothes some more.
Do many Europeans (or others) use this kind of dryer?
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I use this kind of dryer, but in Belgium there's no law against the conventional dryer type.
An added advantage of a condensing dryer is that you can recuperate the water and use it for ironing since it's very soft (low Calcium)
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My quest began when someone told me that Germany has a law prohibiting clothes dryers to vent to the outside. If true, a dryer venting inside a home would produce two energy-saving and environmentally-friendly effects: it would help heat the home in the winter, and it would encourage people to dry their laundry outside in the summer.
It could be an excellent bit of legislation to see introduced.
I'm not sure about the argument for summer use though. I don't think this would change most people's behaviour - they either would already be drying their clothes outdoors in summer or simply open the windows/use fans more.
In fact, in hotter climates were air-conditioning is common the net energy cost could be greater as the AC would be fighting the dryer.
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I can't believe I am actually reading a thread on the Green Way to dry clothes. I grew up in rural Ohio and my mother always dried cloths outside in the summer, and in the back room in Winter. Air dried clothes are to dryer clothes as beluga caviar is to frog roe.
However, given the very first chance, I don't know ANYONE who fills their mouth with wooden clothes pins versus an automated dryer. In fact, I would pay BIG time to have air dried laundry, but I have never heard of anyone that offers that service. Gee. Why IS that? After all, its SO much better for the environment!
What a bunch of simps.
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DD In the US all dryer vents are available with a simple and inexpensive lever that vents the dryer exhaust either to the outside or the inside. In warm humid weather you switch to outside vent. In the cold dry Winter you vent inside. This device has been available for about $20 for about as long as I can remember. Jeeze, I can't believe this is an actual serious discussion.
PS: Re gas fired driers. I have a fake, ventless fireplace log system that poses no threat to life and limb. A gas fired drier exhausted to the interior is of no more significance then a gas fired kitchen stove. OK OK. I lived in a houseboat where a ventless kerosene heater might be of concern. It was tightly closed with about 300 square feet total.
I leave it to your investigation how dangerous a ventless propane gas kitchen stove or clothes dryer might be to to life and limb in a regular house.
PS: I kind of suspect that NO gas powered US drier actually vents the combustion products into the interior space anyway. What we are talking about is the hot air produced by the combustion that is used to dry the cloths. That can safely be vented any damn place.
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really not in france. and the more people that blow themselves up the less it costs the social security so all good.... not really all households recycle but that as far as it goes they just dont want to change there life style
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geo driver - You wrote: "... really not in france. and the more people that blow themselves up the less it costs the social security so all good.... not really all households recycle but that as far as it goes they just dont want to change there life style..."
What in the living hell are you talking about? Get cogent or get lost. And thats saying a lot from me, a guy into his third strong beer. Seriously, I want to know your concerns. However, you need to focus. First, write a topic sentence that includes a subject. Then elaborate on THAT subject. Repeat as necessary. This is not Rocket Science. This is sixth grade grammatical exercise.
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Litespeed - if you don't understand the post, why not ask nicely for clarification? If you can't do that, maybe it's best not to post here after 3 strong beers? That kind of attitude is not really welcome here.
Geo driver, please could you clarify your post for us? Thanks.
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Ben
Your point is well taken. Just consider me the village drunk. In my defense, however, I do expect a modicum of literacy. Specifically, it is incumbent upon any writer to take into consideration the audience. I understand my posts might seem ill concieved or erroneous to the audience. However, even with three strong beers in me I doubt anyone is much in question as to the points I make.
Still, I am obligated to apologize to GEO driver for being arrogant in this regard. These forums are open to one and all. Accordingly, it is also incumbent upon the reader [me] to take into consideration what other poster might mean, obscure as it might be, without the sarcasm. But I am weak.
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right then. litespeed sorry for the confusion. i am very dyslexic and find it difficult to wright whats in my mind i will try to clarify. There are no laws governing dryers of any description. ask a land lord to do something over here is like trying to get blood out of a stone. extraction: just dig a hole in the ground, or use a plastic bottle. en suit every winter there is a bout of people gassing themselves or blowing them selves up because of faulty gas fires or dryers ect..... this seems to pleasse the government as the less people to reach retirement the less the social security has to pay. i hope this has clarified things a bit.
Cheers ben V. and sorry for offending you litespeed, i can read and im not daft, for the gift of writing silken prose i would give my left arm, unfortunately sometimes if i dont want rewrite my replys 5 times, your just gonna have to decipher them as best you can.
again sorry for offending you i cant help it sometimes, anytime you want a conversation in french feel free
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geo - You never offended me. I am immune to that. However, I confess a weakness to pounce like a cat whenever possible. As a sort of dyslexic myself [for decades I believed the US Constitution was created by the "Farmers of the Republic" instead of the "Fathers of the Republic".
Further, your last post reveals a rather clever and entertaining mind. If anyone is to apologize it is me. But then THAT would not be much fun now, would it. I encourage you to keep on posting. I believe you might very well be a cut above most of us in this regard.
Best Regards,
Litespeed
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meawwww lol no worrys litespeed, and i have a tendency to make meekness as a weapon. thank for the kind words mate and i will look forward to posting in the future if only i coujld answer the questions.. lol chat soon
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DD In the US all dryer vents are available with a simple and inexpensive lever that vents the dryer exhaust either to the outside or the inside. In warm humid weather you switch to outside vent. In the cold dry Winter you vent inside. This device has been available for about $20 for about as long as I can remember. Jeeze, I can't believe this is an actual serious discussion.
I don't think it is a very good idea at all to vent the humid air into your home. Talk about mold issues and the likes, especially if you vent it into the basement or cold rooms. This may have worked during times when homes were still drafty but a modern, "air-tight" house is combating moisture all the time. Blowing hot, humid air into your modern home can't be good. And room-temperature humid air feels colder, so in turn you have to heat more to feel comfortable.
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I can't believe I am actually reading a thread on the Green Way to dry clothes. I grew up in rural Ohio and my mother always dried cloths outside in the summer, and in the back room in Winter. Air dried clothes are to dryer clothes as beluga caviar is to frog roe.
However, given the very first chance, I don't know ANYONE who fills their mouth with wooden clothes pins versus an automated dryer. In fact, I would pay BIG time to have air dried laundry, but I have never heard of anyone that offers that service. Gee. Why IS that? After all, its SO much better for the environment!
What a bunch of simps.
I doubt that the dryer was invented and became so popular because it offers a better clothes-wearing experience. It became popular because it was more convenient and takes less time. Drying your laundry outside still is more work and more time consuming than just throwing it into a dryer. If people are willing to pay for the labor of hanging and un-hanging the laundry and are willing to load their wet laundry into their car and transport it to the next out-side air drying facility, there might be a market. As it is, I doubt this is the case. I also have strong doubts that such a facility would offer a reduction in energy consumption overall. Too much transport energy is involved.
When I still lived in Germany we had two rooms in the basement that were shared by all families living in the house. A laundry room for the laundry machine and dryer. Both coin operated and maintained by each party one a rotating weekly basis, and a large empty room with laundry lines in it. You hung your laundry if you did not want to use the dryer and you took it off when it was dry. Sometimes you even took off other people's laundry and folded it carefully to make room for yourself. It worked fine.
It is interesting to note that in some places hanging your laundry outside is illegal. It is perceived as ugly and people are concerened about property values.
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Karsten - "I don't think it is a very good idea at all to vent the humid air into your home." In general I believe you are correct. However, in cold dry climate it is not the case. For instance, while living in Chicago I attached an automatic HUMIDIFYER to the furnace. This is quite common as are stand alone humidifiers you must add water to every day.
Accordingly, in the Winter I installed the cheap vent valve to the dryer hose and vented inside. This added both heat and humidity to the house that would otherwise have been added by the furnace and humidifier. This only really works properly if you leave the furnace vent run continuously to even distribute both heat and humidity. One might question the actual econonomies of this.
However, I usually run my furnace fan almost continuously for air purification purposes. I have created a three stage system that starts with a wide mesh filter that costs almost nothing. The next stage is rated at 800 and cost about $3. The final is a microfilter rated at about 1200 that can cost as much as $13 each. The system even seems effective against cigarette smoke.
Mone-the-less, if you are not savy about this stuff you can grow mold in your walls that would choke a horse!
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Karsten - You are correct. Back in the old days the local town opened the very first coin operated laundry in the area. Never saw a cloths pin after that, and the old wringer washer ended up in the dump.
All of this has to do with relative prosperity. After a few years my folks purchased both a washer and dryer they installed in the old back room that once served for cloths hanging. It shows my age. I grew up in an era (born 1947) when there was no such thing as a fat poor person. In fact, there was only one fat guy in the entire school.
Statistically speaking, Americans spent about 25% of their income on food back in those days. Accordingly, we never even considered the purchase of potato chips. THOSE were reserved for large family gatherings and other special events. Today, food might as well be free. Back in the 1950's we raised chickens to sell the eggs. We got roughly fifty cents per dozen. In today's money that is about $5. Markets today sell them for as little as $1 per dozen.
At that time, a lower working class guy would need to work about two hours to buy a dozen eggs. Even during my college days wages were low. My first job as a soda-jerk paid 85 cents per hour. A McDonalds opened up in the college town and paid $1.25 per hour, PLUS, all you could eat. And a big Mac cost .45 cents. So even if I had to PAY for the fast food, one hours work could provide enough caloric concentration for an entire day.
It has been all downhill ever since. From time to time I still purchase a Big Mack at the drive through. The young kids operating the place look like space alien helium filled balloon projects. It is becoming one of the primary health concerns for the entire nation.
Way off topic, but relevant to the discussion of cloths dryers and the environment. I present it to illustrate the environmental benefits that result from economic prosperity. These Local Fat Kids live in a remote, relatively unprosperous mountain place where all the water and all the air is healthy. Black bears, white tailed deer, and even wild turkeys are in such abundance they border on pests.
My very own self was awakened in the middle of the night by a raccoon on the porch as large a bear cub. And don't get me started about Rattle snakes. I cut the rattles off one myself to mount on my hat. It had inadvertently slithered across the gun range and was (illegally) dispatched by the well armed citizenry at that particular place.
So you get the idea. Wild America is returning across the entire continent. To such an extent serious eco-freaks campaign to buy the entirety of low population counties in the far midwest to restore as a Buffalo Commons from Canada to Mexico. In plane English, the internationally acclaimed Goracle is more and more looking like a side show freak prancing on tiptoes with imaginary mice nipping his heals.
And every last frign' one of us knows there are more polar bears now then 25 years ago. Styrofoam ice flows or not.
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geo-driver
I have been posting like this for decades, and wish to pass along some suggestions. And it does not matter to me if you are on my side or not. I like to engage individuals who know their business and can actually take me to task. Sort of like a sporting debate society.
For instance, you wrote: "i have a tendency to make meekness as a weapon" All is fair in love and war, and meekness can be a very effective weapon. Specifically, you can set deliberate traps in that way. But these traps can NEVER be cheap shots. Once you pounce, you must have two things on your side. First and formost is to know your subject matter. Then you select and study you 'target' debate subject to discover very specific instanaces where they do NOT have as much accumulated reaserch as do you.
At that point you pounce, either gently or otherwise, on that specific topic. And you must have researched your project. You must have a plan B of documentation for a counter attack.. Further, if you are shown to be at a dissadvantage you must ALWAYS acknowledge it as such. Either simply you will look into it. Better yet, simply state 'you stand corrected" if that is the truth.
Also, never address a large list of challenges one at a time. This is boring, and takes too much space. For instance, Madi provided me a list of several dozen catestrophic events from GW. It is useless to address them one at a time. Instead, I simply presented her proposition Tuvalu would dissapear with information I had already accumulated from other invesstigations where I had already documented the Maldives would not dissapear.
Accordingly, her entire misbegotten list becomes suspect as little more then a cut and paste exercise from some other equally misbegotten source. In summary, study your target, study the subject you wish to discuss, always acknowledge a mistake, never lie, and seldom bluff.
My favorite exercise is to challenge anyone who proposes the stupid 'hockey stick' theory of temperature v. CO2. IMHO, the climatistas responsible for this climate historical travesty deserve special attention.
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Her??
You forgot to mention your trick of moving the debate to a different similar thread each time you're rebutted until you have hijacked every thread on the subject that exists in the database, no matter how old
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dude.... true words, the question was do Europeans have laws on dryers, the answer is no, in france not the case.
answer on a subject you know... done
as to everything else, a mistaken idea of putting you at your ease, i enjoy your forthright opinions and if i believe i can answer things i will other then that ill keep stumm