Introduction
After cooling and heating your home and refrigerating or cooking your food, you spend the most money on laundry and drying is a big part of it. Even if you limit dryer use to once a week, the energy consumption is significantly high compared to other appliances. Moreover, dryers are very expensive and cost a pretty penny when they need to be repaired. To get your dryer repaired by professionals you can search for “dryer repair near me” and hire technicians. For now, let’s check out how you can squeeze more savings out of your dryer.
The Details
- Lint is the enemy – Dryers have many complicated components. They are advanced appliances that contain a lot of complex technologies. However, the lint trap is not one of them. Usually, it’s a piece of plastic with one or multiple layers of mesh grill that block out lint. However, this simple component is very important for the dryer.
The lint trap can accumulate a lot of lint pretty quickly. Your clothes lose a few fibers each time they are tumbled and thrown around in hot air. The lint trap catches these fibers along with any residual debris and dirt. With all those particles the lint trap can get clogged within just a few drying cycles.
That’s why the lint trap needs to be cleaned after you use the dryer. When the lint trap is clean, hot air can move around freely inside the dryer drum and quickly extract moisture from the damp clothes. The dryer works efficiently without making its intricate components overwork. If the lint trap is clogged, air can’t move around freely, and the dryer components work extra hard to make up the difference. That means they use more power, break down more easily and cost you more money on repairs.
Moreover, the lint collected by the dryer is also extremely dry. Campers, hunters, and other people who like to frequent the outdoors collect that lint as a fire starter. So, if some of the lint catches on fire it can cause a loss of thousands or millions of dollars by burning down your dryer along with your home.
- Don’t overload – Overloading is one of the most counterintuitive things you can do with the washer and the dryer. People think they can reduce drying times and save money by overloading their dryers. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. When you overload the dryer with more items, you reduce the free space inside the drum. That leads to restricted airflow.
Hot air gets trapped in small sections of the drum and isn’t able to circulate freely. That means a few items come out fully dry and extremely hot while others come out damp. Moreover, due to restricted airflow and the moisture sensors inside the drum, the dryer is working extra hard by cranking up the heat. This means you pay more for that drying cycle and don’t even get a completely dry load out of the dryer.
That’s why you must stick to the official capacity mentioned by the manufacturer and use the dryer in the proper way to keep it efficient. Overloading the dryer makes you burn more fuel and lose more money in the long term since you reduce the lifespan of your dryer.
- Select the quickest spin mode – When you use your dryer make sure to choose the quickest spin mode on the control panel. Yes, this sounds insane if you need to do it for every load. However, you would be pleasantly surprised by the results. While the dryer consumes more energy with the quickest spin mode, it also brings equally rewarding benefits.
As the dryer uses more power to spin the drum, it also shortens drying time since the hot air gets circulated more easily inside the drum and gets spread evenly for maximum moisture extraction. You can even balance out the energy consumption and use a lower heat setting with the quickest spin mode. It delivers quicker drying times that use less energy overall and your clothes get less damaged due to the lower temperatures.
- Woolen balls, not dryer sheets – Dryer sheets are a staple in any laundry room. They have many benefits. Your clothes come out with fewer wrinkles, smell nicer, and are free from static. However, those benefits come at the cost of the environment and your health. Those cheap dryer sheets are full of harmful chemicals that can end up in the underground water supply after being discharged by your dryer. Moreover, they leave a toxic chemical residue on your clothes that chips away at our health.
That’s why you need to switch to wool balls and other known dryer sheet alternatives. They are completely natural and don’t have any toxic chemicals to endanger the environment or your health. Moreover, they are much cheaper than dryer sheets in the long term since they can be reused for hundreds of drying cycles. Even aluminum balls made from aluminum sheets in your kitchen are a better alternative than dryer sheets.
- Regular maintenance – Like any other appliance, your dryer also needs to be inspected and maintained after a certain period so that it can stay efficient and work properly. Doing routine maintenance helps you avoid many problems and also helps to identify minor problems that have the potential to become very big and cost you in a major way. These minor issues can be solved for just tens of dollars if you routinely maintain and service your dryer. If they become big enough, the repair cost can be ridiculously high to make you consider buying a new dryer.
Conclusion
Squeezing more money out of your dryer isn’t a difficult thing. You just need to use it the right way so that it lasts for a long time and do regular maintenance so that small problems that can be nipped in the but can’t escalate enough to make you buy a new dryer. To fix your dryer or get it maintained by a certified technician, you can search for “dryer repair near me”.
