Dehumidifiers combat the additional moisture in the air that will prevent any damp or mold buildup in your home. However, combating extra moisture, dehumidifiers can also draw wetness from clothes, making them dry in a quick manner.
Is Dehumidifier Good to Dry Clothes?
In wet, cold weather, some are frequently forced to dry clothes indoors. Without having a tumble drier, airers and radiators are possibly the only way to dry clothes. However, it may take a long time and may result in a buildup of damp as well as excess moisture in your house.
If there’s nowhere for moisture to escape, especially when windows are closed tight in cold weather, you might see damp buildup. A moisture buildup may cause damage to mold growth on walls, soft furnishing, and health problems.
Dehumidifier – What Does It Do?
Dehumidifiers work by taking moisture from the air. It draws in the air from the room in through the vent and passing it on a set of cooling metal coils. When air hits cold metal, water in the air condenses as well as forms droplets that fall off in a collection bucket or drained away.
There are some kinds of dehumidifiers, but they may be fixed and portable that means if you frequently move where your laundry is set out for drying, you may move your dehumidifier with that.
Can Dehumidifiers Speed Up Drying Your Clothes?
Dehumidifiers will reduce the time it takes for your clothes to dry. Dehumidifiers combat additional moisture in the air that would prevent any damp or mold buildup in your house. It’s important as using clothes horse or airer for a long period of time to dry wet washing indoors can result in extra moisture in the air.
Other than combating extra moisture, dehumidifiers will also draw the wetness from the clothes and help them dry easily. Other dehumidifier units also have a boost button that makes them work much harder and can be helpful once you have wet laundry.
How to Use a Dehumidifier for Drying Your Clothes?
Using dehumidifiers for drying wet laundry is simple. If you have a portable unit, it’s much easier as you may move the unit to whatever room your wet laundry is.
If you have a permanent dehumidifier,(affiliate link) it’ll work the same. It only means that you’ll need to hang your laundry in the room that has a dehumidifier. It’s fine, but it can affect your plans once you need to use that room to entertain.
The golden rule is that wet washing must not be placed in the rooms with many soft furnishings. Although you have a dehumidifier, you must avoid hanging washing in your bedroom.
A good tip to ensure that your dehumidifier is working efficiently and would dry wet laundry in no time is sitting it in a small room. Dehumidifiers can be set to work in various areas depending on the capacity of the unit you have. If your dehumidifier can work up to 1300 sq feet and you have placed it in a 600 sq ft room, it’ll be working efficiently and may draw more moisture out of wet clothes quicker.
You must also seal off the room you’re drying your clothes in. Close windows and doors to prevent dehumidifiers working overtime to pull in the air from over the house. With this, it’ll be dehumidifying the air in the room where washing is drying.
Do You Need to Keep Emptying a Water Reservoir or Bucket?
In many portable dehumidifiers, you’ll get a water collection bucket. It may hold fairly huge amounts of water and typically only have to be emptied once daily in normal operating conditions. But, if you are using a dehumidifier unit to draw moisture from wet clothes in the room, you might find the water collection reservoir fills up easily.
If you will select a model with a water collection bucket to dry your clothes, it’s worth getting one with a big reservoir. You must also ensure that it has an automatic shut off function if the water bucket gets full to avoid leaking and provide you peace of mind.
There’s another option. You may purchase a dehumidifier that comes with a draining hose. Such units drain water away continuously and eliminate the need to empty the bucket. The only downside with such systems is that they need to be near the drain so you would need to hang your washing in a place with a sink or drain.
Tumble Drier vs Dehumidifier – Which Works Better in Drying Clothes?
Tumble driers are the primary way people could think of drying their clothes. However, such units can be expensive to purchase and costlier to run. The energy consumption for average driers is high and you may see the difference in your energy bills.
As the majority of people would have to use their driers through the winter season, when bills are high because of using more lighting and heating, the cost may be prohibitive.
Another major difference between tumble driers and dehumidifiers is the way how clothes are dried. Since dryers use heat, the clothes may come out feeling rough and stiff to the touch. It’s due to the fact that they’ve been baked dry. Using a dehumidifier and an airer means your clothes will not have that stiffness.
Which Dehumidifier Should You Use?
You have the freedom to choose what type of dehumidifier you like to use. If you have one in your home already, you do not need to buy another one for drying clothes.
But, if you like something new and advanced features, you can shop around for the newly released dehumidifier units in the market. Depending on your preferences and budget, make sure to choose the one that will benefit you the most.
The Takeaway
Using dehumidifiers for drying clothes isn’t just easy, but also it’ll help you save energy and time. Setting up a dehumidifier in the same place as your clothes will help them dry much quicker as well as closing windows and doors mean the power of your dehumidifier is concentrated and would work more efficiently.
