Fire and Energy

A Gas Dryer Being Serviced

We all love to consume less energy and lower our utility bills without sacrifice. At Going True Green's blog and website we present details to accomplish just that... However, with everything in life, we must be educated on all aspects of any project.

Let us first review the excellent money and energy saving step of having a clothes Dryer that uses Natural Gas instead of Electricity to dry clothes. The difference in cost is a tremendous 75 percent!

For example, if using electric heat to dry your clothes had a cost of $1.00, that cost would only be 25 cents if natural gas was used to dry the same clothes. This savings is even better than the preliminary savings reported on the new Heat Pump electric* dryers. I will continue to research the new Heat Pump dryers, but as of now they will save people changing from electric dryers about 53 percent. Nevertheless, we have to compare that to a change from an electric dryer to a gas dryer that offers up to a 75% savings. The issue with this is that you need the availability of natural gas, if your utility doesn't have gas lines in the ground nearby, then you may wish to consider the new Heat Pump dryers. If you already have a gas dryer, the numbers seem to show that changing to a Heat Pump dryer will RAISE your energy cost. So no action required, not with a 75% savings being had.

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*Heat Pump electric dryers take the heated exhaust air, remove the moisture and pump the air back in to help dry the clothes faster. However, they still use electricity to heat the air. As of now, Going True Green has not ascertained if they are available (or will be available) to use natural gas to dry clothes instead of using electricity. If they become available with natural gas, that will make them the most efficient. Yet, there is the high purchase cost of a Heat Pump dryer to consider. We will provide additional data in future blogs and our online classes.

So the break down in efficiency for clothes dryers is as follows: electric being the most expensive, then the heat pump dryers also using electricity, close behind would be a dryer using liquid propane gas, and natural gas being the most energy efficient.

Removal of Solid Clumps of Lint

The final part of this blog posting is the first word in the title: FIRE. The number one cause of household fires are from dryers! More to the point... The lint build up in the dryer or vent. Even if you clean the lint screen each and every time you do a load, lint will still build up inside and around the dryer. Lint especially builds up in the vent and you should have your dryer professionally cleaned every few years. The images on the left shows a gas dryer being serviced and cleaned by Richie's L.I. Appliance Service who GTG thanks for providing the photograph images. The solid clump of lint in his hand built up despite normal use and lint screen cleaning. The danger about all that lint, it is an excellent fire starter. So for safety reasons have your dryer professionally checked and cleaned.

For more details you can visit our parent website: EnergyHotwire... Here is the Link directly to page 6 on dryers that has more information about Dryer Safety Facts.


Bill Lauto, GTG
Environmental Scientist at
GoingTrueGreen.com
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