Does an airer really save money when drying clothes?

We lived in half of my grandmother's jouse; she had one.

Yes, a rotating one; not just for cakes. Seen on large tables in Chinese restaurants!

Round here, that type of airer is known as a "rack". My parents had one, but with our 8' celings, it'd be too low - plus the only place it'd really fit is along the centreline of the narrow kitchen, between the cupboard units, but directly covering the lights!

My parents got rid of theirs to install new lights down the centre of their kitchen.

And a heat-pump tumble dryer?

We have the same one, in green. It was installed nearly 25 years ago, over the old Rayburn which used to do the central heating and hot water. Close dried very quickly!

Though the Rayburn has been retired for about 10 years, the airer is still there - but now serves as a rack for posts and pans.

_clothes!_

The steel wire goes around the pulleys with little effort. That's the advantage of braided steel. The vinyl coating over the steel wire, also helps reduce rolling resistance.

When you put out a wash, you have to "set a brake" to keep the line from moving in the pulley as the wind blows.

The pulley design itself, lacked a feature for that (where it would have made sense to have something that stopped the pulley from turning).

Paul

The mangle might have been hand cranked at one time.

But the type we had, there was a power takeoff that went up the side of the (electric) machine from the lower section. And that was geared down to run the two rollers. The rollers are neat, in that they sit in *wooden* blocks as a bearing. I never had any issues with the wood used for those bearings (I was the guy that fixed the machine at home -- my father would suddenly discover he had other things to do).

While it had some notion of safety, you really really don't want your fingers going into those wringers. Doctors back then had not perfected putting fingers back on, like they have today.

My repair skill was limited to putting a new belt on the motor, or changing out the water pump (friction drive, rubber covered wheel). If the chassis rusted through, there was no sense repairing that, as a hole would only open some where else.

There was some kind of gear box under there for the agitator, and on one occasion there was a lube problem I tried to fix. I can't remember how that worked out now. Just that there was a mess involved.

If you have two of those machines, you can use the second machine as a "soap saver". And do a second load of wash in the other machine. You can transfer water between machines, with the pump they have. You can then do a rinse cycle in the empty machine (and dump to the set tub drain). You could for example, do your white shirts first in machine #1, pass the perfectly good soapy water to machine #2, and do your coloured items that leaked colour in that water. And that cut your soap consumption in half.

The worst part of working on those machines, is there was no place to work. It wasn't like a parking lot with a machine in the center. Just tipping a machine up and orienting it so you could work on it, was a nightmare.

Paul

This is the style here. It folds down into a compact unit when you are done with it.

Kids winter clothing would sometimes go in the rack. Many times, mittens or wool hats would hang on that thing, to dry out. You would be instructed to "put them near the bottom".

And that's only for the odd item. You can't put two loads of wash on a thing like that. The most we would run, is two racks, locating them in different rooms having a heat vent. Normally, zero or one rack would be used. Some outdoor laundry was dry enough, no more drying was necessary.

If you did not have a hot air vent, to help, it might double or triple the drying time. House humidity makes a big difference. Above 60% RH, it takes forever to dry that way.

Paul

When I was younger, it rained every day for a month once.

Just the looks on family member faces, was priceless. I've never seen such depression.

The weather can be hell some times.

Paul

You can get those at the same URL. We have one of those too. Kept on two large ladder hooks on the wall of the utility room.

Apart from it rusting, snapping and likely staining the clothes.

When I moved to my current house, there was a plastic clothes line - the sort that has an outer skin and some strands of ?nylon cord inside (definately no metal).

I moved here in 1991 and only this year has it decided to snap after the outer sheath became brittle.

MY grandmother used to put a paraffin heater under hers to dry the washing !.

Which make/model of dehumidifier ?

Until three weeks ago I had a rotary washing line that was over ten years old. The line was plastic coated nylon and it lasted for the life of the rotary mechanism. The plastic that held the metal arms in place became brittle and snapped, hence a replacement purchased and fitted recently.

In the 60s a large paraffin heater was the main source of heating in my parents house. That's when petrol stations also sold paraffin on the forecourt but I vaguely remember man came around and sold it from a large tank in the back of the van. My parents had a small drum with a tap of possibly 5+ gallons capacity.

Clothes can be ironed when damp.

Who irons clothes nowadays? :-)

Used in conjunction with a dehumidifier, you'll use about a third of the electricity and not end up with a damp problem or crispy clothes. In the summer just leave a window open, or dry outdoors.