From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future

Cheery_Daff

Greying_Pilgrim said:

Cheery - did your calculations set on a specific mode for the dehu?  I only ask, because I know that there is a published "usage" per hour for one setting of our dehu - it's one of the eco/middle of the road settings.  I was using the dehu on the laundry setting (clothes emoji), and as it seems the fan runs a little faster, I had assumed that this may be more of a power drain?  Realistically, even if the drying was costing £1 an hour at home (with unit charge pro-rata'd in too), it would still be worth doing - because although it took 'longer' I was able to do other things whilst the dehu puttered away.  OK, so I mostly put it on for 2hrs at a time, as I find the water needs emptying at that point anyway, but it's all still less bother than a launderette visit.  It took so long because it's only really effective using one airer in front of the dehu at a time, and there's no point in overloading the airer - nothing gets dry.  But I have to say, I left the airers overnight (not in front of a running dehu, just at room temp etc) and when I was folding the sheets today, I was perfectly content that they were fully dry and could be put away.  

I am pleased that the tatties crisped up today, but i think I'm more impressed at how LG has taken to eating roast parsnips - with the skin on too!  Thank you JO! 

Greying X

Ooh, ours only had one setting,  I think! I just press the power button and it comes on 🤔 but I think there are other buttons so I clearly didn't read the instructions 🙈 i worked it out ages ago with one of those plugs that tells you how much electric your using, but it would have been a while back,  and we're on a variable electric tariff now anyway so it will change.  Best ignoring me i think! 😂

Cheery_Daff

Ah, on investigation, I don't think I made it up 😂 350w, so 0.35kwh, and electric today is varying between 19p per kwh now and 35p at peak time, so somewhere around 6-12p an hour for ours today. But that's just going on the advertised 350w 

(And you've now reached the outer limit of my understanding of such things I confess 😂 Off to investigate whether ours has a laundry setting, which would be quite useful!)

Greying_Pilgrim

Cheery_Daff said:  ........ Best ignoring me i think! 😂

Sweetie! I could never! 😁 I think, I'm probably being over-cautious.  Not that that means I should have the dehu on all day and everyday at full-bore (it would make the air too dry, I don't do well with it drying laundry in the same room as me, as it is 🫤), but I think when compared to going to a launderette, using a dehu is possibly still a cost effective method of drying.  And I'm lucky to have a launderette within.......a mile??  of home.  Much like owning a TD, you have the initial outlay of buying a dehu - although primarily ours was purchased to dry the house out due to the shonky original windows. 

That was something I forgot to mention when we had the bed linen drying marathon the other day - I'd set the dehu up firstly in LG's bedroom, and then latterly in ours, and I'm sure because the dehu was on for so long, and it dried the air in the rooms, as well as removing the water from the fabrics, the bedrooms were soooooo much warmer that night.  It was a 'cold' (ish) night, but the bedrooms didn't totally reflect that, so there is a sort of 'side bonus' of using the dehu, that you don't get from attending the launderette 😁

Greying X

Baileys_Babe

@Greying_Pilgrim your dehumidifier is a desiccant type which does produce heat as a by product and is also suitable to run at much lower temperatures than compressor types.

Ours is also a desiccant and the heat output is useful in keeping our house comfortable.

kayannie

I'm only just catching up as I haven't logged on since 23rd. Read as far as 24th, so still behind. You mentioned buying the half price haddock from L!dl, I get this a couple of times a month & although it is pricey paying the full price (£3.99 I think), the pieces of fish are fairly large & delicious,  worth splashing out on. You also mentioned freezing fingers hanging washing out. I had to get some out at 7a.m. a couple of days ago & although I wore gloves, I thought my fingers would drop off!
I hope you had a lovely Christmas, I'm off to catch up on you now. 
Happy new year to you.
KA xx

Greying_Pilgrim

Thank you to the MSE'r who may, or may not wish to remain anonymous..... but who has been most helpful in working out ball park figures for me to base my decision to put the dehu on or not for laundry purposes.  They have helpfully shown me that my 7hr 'marathon', t'other day probably cost us not much more than a couple of quid, which would have bought (approx) 12 minutes drying time in the launderette.  Even without fabric shrinkage/damage, I'm pretty sure bed linen wouldn't dry (to putting away dryness) in 12 minutes.  So, for this 'unforseen' laundry event - and we've had no improvement in outside drying conditions in the interim - it was well worth from a cost, convenience and peace of mind point of view, flicking the switch and getting the laundry dry.  Whilst I still favour line drying - when and where I can - using the dehu can be built into household running costs, and I shall be a whole lot less worried about it being too expensive in the future - sometimes you just need to flick the switch.  I can economise and utilise mother nature at other times - sometimes even I need help and convenience 😁

LG and I went for a pootle this morning.  Their Christmas money is burning a hole in their pocket 🙄 So I said we could go to the retail park and have a look around.  There wasn't anything that they were looking for in any of the shops that we visited ☹️ But we picked up some 'everyday' clothes in a chazzer, which - if they fit - will be really useful, and they were m&$, still with the tags on.  OK, so they'd been in the sale, but unworn, and we got them for a quarter of the new price, so potentially they will get worn loads, and 'earn' their keep 😁  I did also pop in for a look around bee&Em.   All I got there were some tacos  - I'd not seen them for sale, anywhere else but m&$.  I'm wondering if they will work for 'buffet-style' teas.... 🤔 We had a look around iceyland 😱 to prices (even the YS'd things), and 😱 to the fact they've set out their Easter Egg offerings 😱  I did also pop into fArmf00ds, as we were on the right retail park.  Pickings were slim for us today, but I did pick up 2 x tinned fruit cocktail - 825g tins (500g drained weight), in fruit juice for 99p, butter beans, la1la brand 2 for £1 and some 'crisps' that were la1la brand too, made to look like a wheel - sour cream and chive flavour 39p - nostalgia buy.  Our last stop was to the farm & garden store, and I managed to pick up a new pull start for the mower (DH will be thrilled...... 🤣), and I even remembered to get some wellies for LG - which was the whole purpose of going in there - despite seemingly walking down every aisle but footwear 🤣

We had leftover crustless quiche and baked beans for lunch.  I hadn't wanted to freeze the quiche as i had put rice in it, which had already been frozen/defrosted once.  LG ate it up, nae bother.  

Grey and still, weatherwise with us today, but dry at least.  

Thank you for popping by, and thank you for helping me.   It is appreciated, greatly.

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Lovely to *see* you kayannie - thanks for popping in.  Hopefully you and your hubby had a great festive time too?  Thanks for the fish endorsement - I saw similar packs in M&$ yesterday, they were YS'd (thinking about it, it was cod, not haddock, none of the haddock were YS'd), but were mucho more money than the MrL offering - despite looking remarkably similar...........

Greying X

rtandon27

@Greying_Pilgrim & @Cheery_Daff - I use our dehumidifier primarily for drying clothes with the added benifit of keeping the damp out of the 60's kitchen/bathroom extension and warming up the air so we don't have to keep our heating on higher settings. The one we have is a dessicant, the M3@co DD8L - so an older model.  It currently costs approx 22p an hour on the laundry setting (I did the math & have a spreadsheet - lol) so even if I run it for 8-10 hours a day, which happens on the weekends, it still costs less than our local laundrette for drying just one load - which can run 4 to 8 gpb for a cycle. Factoring in that we need to drive there and back, that's a good 10 pounds for drying a load. All in all, keeping it 'in house' is money saving as for us the dehu. is an appliance so gets paid for out of a different budget than the electric/oil one & the fancy folding adjustable rack was also out of the household budget so I'd not factor it into drying costs. The added bonus is that the time it saves gets spend on other more useful chores or batch cooking or even a nap!

Greying_Pilgrim

rt - thanks sweetie - another lovely MSE'r keeping me on track with pricing and useage info.  All valuable!  Thank you.  I'm with you on the faff, of using the launderette - although our local one isn't too bad, and when I've used it in the daytime (esp weekdays) there's only been the attendant (nice) or chatty, lonely locals in there.  But when we had to use the place regularly, and went early mornings, there were the most awful people using the place.  So I have to say, whilst we're 'lucky' to have it near-ish, I do much prefer having access to the dehu.  

Greying X