Drying washing - heating vs tumble dryer?

BeenieCat

I have a White Knight A Rated CL847 Drier and as long as i choose the energy efficient cycle (which takes overnight to dry) then it's extremely cheap to run.

kippers

I use my tumble dryer before 8am on economy 7. I hang out if it's fine from spring to autumn but it rarely dries in winter so this is when i tumble dry.

I dried things on the radiator as some of you mentioned for a while and this cause a big damp problem and we ended up with psocids in our hall where i dried them (tiny tiny beatles over the walls and window ledges, etc and all our belongings). It took quite a while to get rid of them even with a de-humidifer on constant for months...so i will never never do this again!

The rare things i can't tumble dry in winter do go the line outside and then are hung in the bathroom to finish off, but i always leave the window open.

(I'm a bit obsessed with opening windows now).

Primrose

I avoid ironing as much as possible but in winter I often iron damp clothes as soon as I've taken them out of the washing machine, before hanging them up on my rectractible lines in the bathroom. Especially with cotton clothes, using a hot iron, I find this rapidly speeds up the drying process and it must be a lot cheaper than using a tumble drier. The moisture evaporates quickly when using a hot iron, leaving less moisture in the bathroom. Whilst I do leave the back kitchen door open when using the tumble drier, I don't like to let condensation build up in the kitchen as moisture can seep into food store cupboards causing dry goods in packets to solidify, or longer term, causing tins to go rusty.