Heat Pump Clothes Dryer

User: tina.zheng@massenergize.org

Vendor: Drive Green - Green Energy Consumers Alliance

Action: 2513 - Update Heating and Cooling

It always bugged me that my dryer would gobble up SO MUCH electricity (we have a Sense monitor, which makes it super evident how much power those conventional dryers draw) AND how most the heat just went clear out the pipe into the atmosphere! So when our dryer broke, we looked into heat pump dryers. They work with the same technology that heat pump home-heaters and minisplits work: they recover heat. In this case, the dryer heats up and captures then reuses the heat from the steam, recycling it over and over. Makes total sense to me! We bought a Miele. There aren't many of these on the market yet, and the models are small compared to the average American dryer (for efficiency). They also don't come cheap. But they work well, are super efficient (and plug into an average 120 volt circuit), and you can even capture the water part of the steam into a container - so no need for drainage. Our Miele will last us a long time and we'll recover the expense of buying it through energy savings.