It’s depressing and entirely predictable that any move to improve efficiency is always hit by a wave of misplaced anger and full-on stupidity. In this case, I’m talking about Ed Miliband’s plan for tumble dryers.
In the recent government document, Raising standards for household tumble dryers, the bit that’s been getting certain people chomping at the bit is the sentence, “To improve the efficiency of household tumble dryers, the final regulations introduce a new minimum performance standard that phases out inefficient gas-fired, air-vented, and condenser models.”
In certain sectors, this move has been likened to the Soviet era, as it removes choice and forces consumers to buy more expensive heat pump appliances. All of which are bizarre hot takes, and completely miss the point. I’d know, as I review tumble dryers and have the cold facts.
This situation reminds me of the time that the EU introduced a new law that reduced the maximum power of vacuum cleaners from 1600W to 900W. The same kinds of people who are moaning about tumble dryers also moaned about this rule change, saying that homes would be dirtier and powerful cleaners would be banned.
Of course, those people were wrong about vacuum cleaners. Cleaning performance isn’t so much about raw suction power as it is overall efficiency: lower power vacuum cleaners can have as much suction power as those that draw more power, and things like motorised brushbars can improve dust collection without using significant amounts of power. In a shocking twist, people moaning about tumble dryers are also wrong.
Heat pump tumble dryers cost a little more but are a lot cheaper to run
It’s true, a heat pump tumble does cost more than a vented and condenser models. Looking at entry-level models, you’ll probably pay around £40 more upfront for a heat pump dryer than for a vented or condenser dryer.
That’s not a huge amount, but the more important bit of information is how much they cost to run. I review a lot of tumble dryers (all of my best buy tumble dryers are heat pump models), and the cold hard truth is that heat pump models are significantly cheaper to run.
In our guide, condenser vs heat pump tumble dryers, we looked at running costs for a washer-dryer (which uses a condenser for drying) and a heat pump model. The washer dryer used 2.387kWh to dry a load of clothes, and the heat pump used 0.813kWh.
At the current price cap of 24.67p per kWh of electricity, that’s a cost of 58.88p for the condenser dryer and 20.05p for the heat pump. That means that the condenser dryer costs 38.83p per cycle more to run.
In 103 cycles, the heat pump tumble dryer has clawed back that extra £40 it cost. That could be under a year (if you run a couple of cycles per week), or within two years. Everything past that is just more saving.
Several people complaining about the tumble dryer plan have said that they’d focus on reducing energy costs instead. So, say we could get electricity prices back down to around 16p per kWh.
In this scenario, our condenser dryer would cost 37.19p per cycle and the heat pump dryer 13p per cycle. The condenser is still 24.19p per cycle more expensive to run. In this scenario, it would take 165 cycles to get your extra £40 outlay back, but that’s still within two or three years for more people. Given that you’re likely to have a dryer for a good eight to 10 years, you’ll still save money in the long run.
Heat pump dryers do take longer, but they’re better for your clothes
Another thing thrown at heap pump tumble dryers is that they take longer to dry your clothes. That’s true, because of the way that they work.
Vented and condenser tumble dryers work via a heating element that’s passed into the drum at around 70°C, heating your clothing and removing moisture. This moisture is then either condensed into a tank (a condenser dryer) or vented out the back (a vented dryer).
Using hotter air speeds up the drying process, but it requires more electricity and the heat you generate is just pumped out.
Heat pump tumble dryers use a closed system, and use a compressor rather than a heating element. These dryers extract heat from the closed system and recycle it continuously (our guide, What is a heat pump tumble dryer?, explains more), running at around 50°C.
That lower temperature means longer drying times, but less energy use overall. And lower temperatures are better for clothes, as they’re kinder to the fabric and less likely to cause issues such as shrinking.
Aside from the money factor, energy is a precious resource, so why not use it as efficiently as possible?
That’s even the case if you have solar and are generating your own power. With a heat pump, less of your solar goes onto drying your clothes, which means, depending on the size of your array, you’re more likely to be able to generate the full power for the cycle, or your spare capacity can be used elsewhere: topping up a battery, running your TV or just for exporting to the grid, where you’ll get paid for it. Doing more with the resource you have is better, no matter how you cut it.
The only real downside of heat pump tumble dryers is that they are best used in warmer rooms. According to Hoover, its heat pump tumble dryers are designed to work in rooms that are always warmer than 7°C, so they may not work in cold rooms or garages in the winter months.
There are alternatives. Hotpoint ColdGuard Heat Pump tumble dryers are built to work in rooms as cold as 0°C.
Heat pump tumble dryers are better than traditional types, and the government taking steps to ensure that efficient models are the only ones you can buy makes sense in the long run. Here, as in any other area, efficiency is better for everyone and a cost saving is a cost saving, regardless of the price of electricity.
