Venting heat sources to the outside?

[CraigT]

One of my pet peeves is seeing heat sources inside of the house when I'm running the AC. The three that get most of my ire are the laundry room, the dishwasher, and my over stove microwave/vent (that just filters the air and returns it to the room). I realize that I could re-route the microwave/vent to the outside and add blower/vents to the small second story laundry room and behind the dishwasher to minimize my ire, however I always wonder if by doing this my total energy costs might rise because I will essentially be knocking three holes into exterior walls and replacing R-19 insulation with a flapper door whose R value is probably .000000000001, and will allow the cold to enter all winter 24/7.

Is there a solution to my dilemma?

[HeyBub]

The clothes dryer should already be vented. Most dishwashers have a non-heat drying option. The microwave heats food. It's the heat from the food that's warming your house. The only fix is to not eat hot food.

[CraigT]

Sure the dryer is vented, but that drum and the sides of the dryer aren't insulated and the washer certainly gives up a ton of moist heat too after a few cycles. You do a load of wash in that 6' X 8' room and is sweltering if you don't open the window in there.

Even without using a drying cycle on the dishwasher a ton of moist heat is given off.

Maybe I wasn't very clear, I'm not talking about the food that is heated in the microwave, but the unit is one of those combination over the stove microwaves that has an integrated vent to filter cooking odors from the stove below. Of the three I'll probably modify this one to vent to the outside. This is a factory option that wasn't utilized by the previous owner of the house when he installed it.

[TWayne]

Ven the room itself; get one of those thermostats with hygrometer/thermometer settings. If you have winter weather, the heat & moisture's useful, not so in the summer or warm climes. Heck, or even do it manually with a vent & just a timer; that's what we did. I'm cheap & those controls are expensive.

[Mikepier]

I would not worry about the dryer and dishwasher. Run those early in the morning or late at night if your really trying to save energy. By far the microhood should be vented outside. Cooking during a heatwave will make the CAC work harder. I just renovated my kitchen and that was the most important thing I wanted to do, vent the microhood outside.

[Howard]

Buy a barbeque and cook outside during the summer.

Buy a clothesline and solar dry the clothes.

Don't punch unnecessary holes in the wall that may vent warm air out all winter.

[jmeehan]

The microwave is your best friend. It will heat the food with the least amount of "waste" heat entering the living area. You should have a vent over the stove. That one will save you IF you are doing much stove top or oven cooking and baking during the summer. The others are not practical. Remember when you exhaust heat out of your home, you also will be drawing in hot (humid?) air in from somewhere outside.

Do the dishes by hand and reduce that source of heat.

[Don Phillipson]

Why condition the laundry room air? Why not insulate the door and partition wall, open a laundry room window whenever you need, and close any heater/cooler vent in the laundry room?

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I do that now. I'm paying to cool the air and the dryer is sucking it in and blowing it out the vent. While I never went to the extreme of insulating the door and such, opening the window does the job for me.

[trader4]

Agree. And that's a very good point. Depending on how much air the range enhaust draws, running it could be WORSE than letting the heat from the range stay in the house. If you carefully adjust the air flow to the heat generated, then you'd probably come out ahead. But if you have one running on high with a small burner going, I'd venture that you will wind up worse off.

In the grand scheme of things, the heat generated by the dryer, dishwasher, etc are not going to make a big difference to the point where it's worth coming up with special venting solutions. And I would be if you did, the air/heat loss from those extra vents during the rest of the time would make them a net loser. Just try to minimize the usage of the dryer, run dishwasher without drying heat, etc.