Gas vs. Electric Dryer

[Albert Wagner]

My point was that escaping a fire is easier than escaping an explosion. Do you have any reliable statistics otherwise?

[Jonathan Kamens]

One of the neat things about pilot lights and gas leaks is that since the pilot light is always burning, it is always burning off any gas in its vicinity. So no, a pilot light is unlikely to ignite an explosion as a result of a small gas leak.

As for large gas leaks, they just don't happen that often, and as I said before, I'm fairly certain that more people are injured by electricity-related accidents than gas-related accidents.

Irrelevant if the fires happen much more often than the explosions.

I submit that the reason why every pretty much gas leak and explosion is reported in the media is because they happen so rarely.

[Bill Seurer]

This is an important point. A lot of electricity is generated by burning natural gas.

[BrianEWilliams]

To all the responents, thanks for the good ideas. I talked to our Sears saleswoman, and she made a similar point that if gas prices go up, then electricity will go up too. I know this isn't strictly true, but that reasoning has led me to the gas dryer option.

Your point about endlessly analyzing things is the story of my life. I guess I like the process, so it is recreation vs. work.

[Wade Lippman]

All the houses on a street blew up. Yep, sounds like arson to me.

[Bill Seurer]

You don't consider the "odds" when rating personal risk, only spectacular occurances. Fires due to electric heaters are much more common but less spectacular than gas explosions.

[Eastward Bound]

You know what Mr. Lippman. What you have heard of is by no means an isolated occurrence.

Houses explode from gas leaks all the time.

The biggest gas line danger in a home are the flexible gas lines that connect the clothes dryer to the gas line along with the stove and the water heater that use the flexible connection as well.

DANGEROUS! Here in Cali at least I know that it is illegal for anyone to install a new gas appliance without putting in a new flexible metal gas line.

Also what if nobody is home to smell the gas leak? (Vacation most likely, most home owners are not smart enough to shut off the main gas valve before they leave the house) Then it just keeps building up more and more until all 4 houses the 3 surrounding houses included are blown up.

There was once incident somewhere in North America where an Elderly couple were getting more and more sick and they would sleep for the whole day through and would have to use crutches. They felt tired all the time and would vomit and they didn't know why.

Eventually the house cat (cats have an acute sense of smell) was seen digging in the side of the house. The Lady went up to her cat and noticed that there was a bad odor and a hissing sound from the gas leaking out into the ground.

The gas company came with one of those testers that can sense how strong the gas concentration is and it was off the scale.

That very same couple are a lot better now but are extremely lucky to be alive. They were suffering from the poisoning and their house was filling up with gas without them knowing. They are lucky that they didn't quite literally blow up.

Sure there is a danger using electric appliances as well. The difference is when you introduce gas appliances into the house, you and your loved ones are now more at risk. Every house would have electricity anyway. Having a gas appliance only adds more risks along with a lot more things that can go wrong.

Remember, "What ever can go wrong will go wrong." Murphys law...

I'm not trying to by like Ralph Nader here going overboard. I'm just saying that now that I am aware of all of the possible dangers involved and the smart thing to do would be to make wise decisions to keep you and your loved ones safe. Wouldn't you want to keep your loved ones safe? There is nothing worse then a parent outliving a child.

If for whatever impossible reason I were forced to use gas appliances I would have them all inspected annually and would replace all the flexible gas lines every year. Now if you had to inspect all of your gas equipment and infrastructure annually how is that more frugal then just using the more maintenance free electric appliances in the first place?

A burn victim from flash burnings can be the most tragic accidents to live through. I have seen burn victims and it is not pretty seeing them like that uncomfortable no matter what they do. They don't even look human anymore. Being a burn victim is no different then loosing your hearing, loosing your vision or becoming a cripple. It's sad, it's tragic and it's most unfortunate. The worst part about it is that it would have been avoided if only one took the necessary precautions.

[Bill Seurer]

No they don't. Where do you get crap like this?

[George]

Yes and it is an interesting paradox because one of the reasons for the "shortages" and higher cost of natural gas is that many peak use gas turbine generators have been put on line recently which readily use up what was once an oversupply of gas.

[lpogoda]

New dryers aren't required to display energy guide labels (in the US anyway, I don't know about elsewhere) so judging operating costs isn't as easy as it is for, say, washers.

However, except in extremely unusual circumstances, heat from burning gas just has to be cheaper than heat from electricity, so you can expect operating costs for a gas dryer to be less than those for a comparable electric model. The question is, how much cheaper?

Columbia Gas of Ohio (hardly an unbiased source) has a page

) showing how much less gas drying can cost in various parts of it's service area. I have no idea how accurate the data presented are, or how representative of your area this page may be.

I don't know about maintenance issues, but...a year or two ago (or was it longer) an apartment building near Philadelphia burned because of heavy rains. Water flooded the laundry room, the dryers started to float, which broke the connections with the gas lines, which released gas into the structure, which was set off by some spark or other, and kaboom.

[lpogoda]

Oh for heaven's sake. Natural gas is a mixture of compounds, (methane, ethane, propane, isobutane, etc.). Natural gas boils at minus 263 degrees F. Methane, the principle component of natural gas (around 94% of the total by volume), freezes at minus 296.5 degrees F. Precise temperatures will vary with the proportions of the various components.

Can natural gas lines freeze? Not in any climate found on Earth.

[n.o]

Search

for 'gas leak house explode' found over 5000 hits. Here are 3 examples...

[Jonathan Kamens]

First of all, when you type a query into the search box on the

home page and click Search, you aren't actually searching you're searching the entire Web. Notice that there are two radio buttons next to the search box with the words "The Web" and "CNN.com" next to them and the one that's checked by default is "The Web".

Second, when you search for "gas leak house explode" you're telling Google to find pages that match *any* of those words, not pages that match *all* of them.

Third, since you're searching the entire Web, you're finding many pages reporting on the same events, and many other pages talking about the topic without actually mentioning specific events.

If you go to

select the "CNN.com" search rather than searching "The Web", and search for "gas leak house explode", you find only three matches, which is not quite the same as "over 5000". If you search for "gas leak house explosion" instead, you find 68 matches. In contrast, if you search for "electrical fire house", you find 468 matches.

I'm not trying to claim that any of this is particularly scientific; I'm merely trying to illustrate that your "over 5000" citation is completely bogus.

[Anthony Matonak]

n.o@spam wrote: ...

....

Try a search for 'electric dryer fire' and you'll get 80,000 hits. Try a search for 'flying saucers abduct cheerleader' and you'll still get at least 2 hits.

Can houses with natural gas appliances explode? Yes. Does it happen very often? No. Can houses with electrical appliances burn down and kill everyone? Yes. Does it happen very often? More often than gas leak explosions.

If one were really concerned with the safety aspect of natural gas then it would be appropriate to get the correct explosive gas and carbon monoxide alarms installed. These are common in RV's.

Anthony

[Eastward Bound]

Not a lot, most of our electricity is generated by burning coal. Only a very small percentage is done by gas. Gas is too expensive to burn in large quantities. And many municipalities want to reserve their gas.

Coal is cheap and abundant in North America. Natural gas is not. Also much of New England doesn't use natural gas but instead puts giant oil tanks in the basements of the houses. These tanks have a fill up flap at the front porch of the house usually for easy access to the refueling trucks.

I don't like using volatile natural gas it's too unstable. You can't sell that to me. And you can't sell it to anyone else who is as sensible.

[Bob Ward]

So did searching for 'gas leak house not explode'... perhaps you need to refine your searching technique.

[Eastward Bound]

Bill, back in the mid 90s England was building a bunch of flats (apartments/condos) that were about 30 floors high 50 max. They were based off of a type of construction technology that originated from a northern part of Europe that DID NOT use natural gas. But the most important thing is that they were so cheap to build and they went up rapidly with the cranes because they were so simple in construction.

Big mistake. Even though it was a great idea to solve much of England's housing shortage problems, all of these high rises were flawed.

They were built like a house of cards because every section of wall and floor all comes together like a puzzle, and gravity plays a big role in keeping it all together. (Some of these buildings were spared when they updated them with reinforces to hold the sections of walls and floors together)

This works differently then what is common in north America where we use big columns that are the main support for the building. The outer shell would be to keep out the elements only and didn't support themselves.

So The British went ahead and built all of these high rises and were very exited about it because now they had cheap affordable housing for many.

The big mistake is that they also installed gas lines and gas appliances into these buildings. About a month after construction of some of the first buildings all hell broke loose when one of the residence left their stove running with no flame (told ya so). The single apartment at the mid section of the building exploded. Because the place was built like a house of cards there was a domino effect. Not the whole building fell down on itself but 1/4 of it was missing in the corner where the apartment had exploded. There was a bunch of deaths and fatalities.

They made another wrong decision when they decided to simply shrug it off as an accident as if it couldn't happen again. They couldn't be more wrong.

Some time later it happened again (natural gas explosion), this time a lot worse. And I can still see in my head a poor couple who lived to tell about it when their apartment fell down from the rest of the building. "My husband jumped on top of me and said I love you and that the flat (apartment) was falling."

After that they started making some big changes.

Most of the new apartment buildings where torn down deemed as unsafe. Only one or two of them that weren't built that tall were spared. All they had to do was put in reinforces or fasteners that held each wall and floor section together instead of just relying on gravity to do the job. And of course in the end they ended up removing all gas appliances and infrastructure and installed all electric's in it's place.

This was a most unfortunate incident. Two incidents that didn't have to happen. If it's comforting to anyone, at least we might learn from these horrific experiences. The company that built the buildings went belly under and is still in debt till this day.

[mark Ransley]

I think a beer powered dryer is safer unless you think its to volitale

[Albert Wagner]

I saw that on TV. Really peculiar looking; all the apartments on one corner neatly sheared off.

[Jonathan Kamens]

Um, I didn't see anybody say that. In fact, I said exactly the opposite, i.e., that the reason why it seems like there are so many gas explosions reported in the media is because they happen so infrequently that they're a big deal, so every one of them gets reported.