Do they have gas dryers in Europe?

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Laundress

The thing is that heatpump dryers are not a solution because they are non vented.

They are a solution because they literally cut energy usage by a half or even down to a third. That they are non-vented is just a side effect.

And with a good heatpump setup, for the user, they are by all means just a dryer with a filter more to clean. Really, that is the only thing that changes for the user: One filter.
Pop in laundry, set cycle, clean filter after cycle is done.
The step extra is (at least by now) just a second, slightly finer mesh screen that you have to wipe down.

With current US energy prices for either electric or gas, that isn't much of an issue yet.
But your prices will - no matter what - at some point go up to the same sky-high rates that we here have to suffer.
Then, manufacturers will design good full-size heatpump dryers that are affordable.

See the EU: In the early 2000s, heatpump dryers were out there, but expensive. Then, suddenly, interest in more efficent dryers came up as more and more people freaked out at energy prices.
Now, heatpump systems are matured and cheap. That took us maybe 10 years.

With that, suddenly, you wonder if your dryer running twice as fast really is worth using 5kWh instead of 2kWh.
 
Odd question, but why is electricity so expensive in Europe? My folks have solar, and our electric bill has been mostly been between $75-$100 (in euros that would be €69-€84), and that is with the air conditioning set at 72 F (22 C).
 
Sean asks why electricity is so expensive in Europe.

A more appropriate question is why *energy* is so expensive in Europe?

A lot has to be with sustainability -- just look at the Houston area, which got destroyed by a hurricane and at least one company had explosions because there were no requirements for the chemicals to be evacuated or for refrigeration to continue to work during a hurricane to avoid the temperature-sensitive materials degradation and explosion. There were no requirements that the company should shut down production a week before the hurricane landfall (and keep paying employees) so as to avoid making *more* explosives.

There were also relaxed requirements for building codes and, if we are to believe the news, they even had laws *forbidding* putting more stringent codes into place.

While people out of state can point out and laugh about it, please note how much *privilege* you have, living elsewhere away from all the pollution and destruction, because all of that translates into way cheaper energy and anything having to do with petroleum products gets cheaper to the American residents.

Is that all?

No, by a long shot.

A lot of other countries make the petroleum industries pay for pollution mitigation, for environmental costs associated with drilling, extracting, refining and distributing petroleum products. For example, even in Brazil, British Petroleum has to install a safety valve (costing half a million dollars each) when drilling under sea -- the same valve that would have prevented the spill we had a few years ago in US. Notice that BP has not paid for and put everything back the way it was before the accident yet, and probably never will. Please notice that by saving half a million bucks, they endangered lives and environment here, but worse, the sad part is that if they *had* the valve installed back then, not only the accident would not have been so bad (or even occurred in the first place), but all the oil they spilled would have been raw material they could sell for *profit* instead.

Also, in other places, petroleum companies tend to pay TAXES.

US is one of the few places where petroleum companies can make billions of dollars per year of *profit*, pay *zero* dollars in taxes and even get *money back* from the government.

"Wh-whh-whaaat?!?" you say?

Yup, energy costs in US are not just subsidized, they are *heavily* subsidized -- if you think that paying farmers *not to grow* something is the bee's knees, well then, petroleum companies are the cat's pajamas.

Did I hear someone complaining about paying nearly 3 bucks/gallon of gasoline here? When gas is US $3/gallon here, you can bet it's US $3/liter (or about 12 bucks/gallon) in some places in Europe.

I could say more about what's good or bad about such subsidies, or how we now have had about 40 years of forewarning about researching and developing more energy efficient everything (cars, homes, offices, factories, appliances etc).

But as usual, it won't change anyone's minds: people who agree with me have already done so for a very long time, and people who disagree with me will continue to make up excuses to stay "in the past".

Cheers,
   -- Paulo.
 
"However as one has frequently stated our AEG OKO-Lavatherm is nearly next to useless. Weather in NYC is only "cold" enough about three to four months per year for the thing to work."

Let me start by saying I hear you and I believe that *your* experience with an instance of an AEG condensing dryer has been sub-optimal to say the least. I am sorry to hear your experience has been so bad.

On the other hand, the only folks I've heard from that *consistently* have a problem with underperforming condenser dryers live in *much* warmer places than NYC, they live in Australia. The weird thing about Australia is that a lot of people don't even bother to vent their *vented* dryers to the outside, so I'm not even sure why condenser dryers are offered there in the first place.

I would love to be able to watch your AEG Lavatherm working side-by-side another identical or nearly identical copy, because I have a *very* strong suspicion that your unit is broken or was a lemon that never got fixed properly in the first place.

I will be the very first person to admit that I do not have any personal experience with AEG Lavatherm units, but there are *plenty* of people who bought one and were very satisfied with their performance, some even lived in NYC. You can also watch reviews on Youtube from European folks and they don't seem to complain about much lower performance compared to Miele and Bosch/Siemens units.

I do have a Bosch unit that is getting close to 20 years old now and it does work very well even during summer.

Anyway, I do hope you can get your unit fixed properly one of these days, because my experience has been that an Euro condensing dryer can outperform a "portable" (1,500W) dryer like the one you have.

Cheers,
   -- Paulo.
 
Only persons one is aware of happy with condensing dryers

In NYC and surrounding area, and this includes a non-active member were persons who were running their AC during warmer months of the year. This was obviously their personal decision but do not see the point of turning on an appliance designed to make the house cooler just to run another appliance work properly.

There are large swaths of the year when one does not use the AC but weather is still not optimal for using the Lavatherm, and am not going to turn on the former to use the latter.

Tonight it is around 69F, but Dew Point is 69F with humidity 89%. There just isn't great enough temperature and moisture differential between indoor air and that inside the dryer for the thing to function properly. Suppose one *could* just let it go until things are ready, but I don't have that kind of time.

Also so you will know, Paulo my dryer is not a "lemon" nor "malfunctioning", this has been confirmed by AEG. The dryer is doing what is supposed to do as have been told. Depending upon certain factors such has residual moisture 115 to 120 minutes is considered *normal* to dry a 6kg load of wash in this dryer.

OTOH smaller Whirlpool compact dryer can do between 3kg to 6kg (depending upon what load consists) in about 60 to 80 minutes. Heavy and thick terrycloth items like bath towels and robes take longer. Loads made up just of clothing such as undergarments and so forth less.
 
iej--james

US type gas dryers paired with Euro high efficiency washers can actually be an extremely good solution though. You get laundry dry very quickly as the US machines are designed for much wetter clothes.

 

That is exactly why I have an Asko and a Miele along with a GE and Frigidaire gas dryers!  I just washed my 100% cotton queen quilt in the Miele, spun at 1200rpm, and dried it in the Frigidaire...it was dry in under an hour. 

 

I've always felt that people who believe they must always have a "matched set" have more dollars than sense.
 
Launderess:

Condenser dryers (as opposed to Heat Pump dryers) get less efficient above 110F ambient temperature, and 69F is very much in the ideal range. The air circuit inside the dryer is a closed circuit and ambient humidity / dew point shouldn't affect the dryer much -- what you just described, 69F, dew point of 69F and ambient humidity of 89% means a couple of things, (a) it's probably raining or about to rain in your location and (b) those are *much* more likely to adversely affect a *vented* dryer, because a vented dryer is *most* efficient when ambient air is warm and dry, given that the dryer will get ambient air, heat it and circulate inside the load before exhausting it.

A condenser dryer takes air from inside the tumble drum, cools it down (thus condensing the water), warms it up again and sends it into the drum -- the air circuit isn't sealed, but there's very little exchange with the ambient air. The circuit that cools the condenser takes air from the room, circulates it to cool the condenser and is expelled back into the room. In a properly functioning heat exchanger (the condenser part) there's only *heat* exchange, not moisture.

The temperature differential (the air inside the dryer is at 140F or so, while the ambient air is around 70F or so) is more than enough to saturate the air circulating inside the drum with water that then condenses out.

We're also talking about dryers which have at most 1,500W heaters (your portable) and dryers that have around 3,000W heaters. While I have *no* trouble believing you that your Lavatherm is not behaving optimally because something is broken (air leak in the condenser and/or drying circuit, making the condensing inefficient and/or leaking moisture into your home), you will have to excuse me for not believing you when you tell me that your 1.5kW dryer (120V, 15A) is faster than your 3.0kW (240V, 15A) dryer, whether or not AEG told you whatever they told you, I'm more likely to believe AEG wanted you to hang up the phone, given that they don't care about our market, they never even offered their machines here, they were imported from Canada.

All I can tell you is that my experience with a similar Bosch is that I get 5kg of clothes dry in 60-80 minutes, depending on stuff like it's a load of bed sheets, t-shirts, jeans or towels. I've used this dryer in all kinds of weather, rain or dry, 50-90F, and the machine worked just fine. It needs to be above 100F for me to even notice that it takes another 5-10 minutes extra to dry.

My experience with Miele condensing dryers was fairly similar.

The experience of people who show up here and/or ThatHomeSite/GardenWeb/Houzz seem to match mine and even people who extensively discussed their experience importing the AEG set from Canada into US (at that time it was ThatHomeSite) seemed to be overwhelmingly good and some of them lived in Los Angeles, some in San Francisco, but I remember there were people in NYC too and in all these years, I seem to remember only *you* complaining about your AEG and another person, whose name I've spaced out right now, but had a similar complaint about her Asko dryer that, surprise, surprise, turned out had a problem in that the condenser wasn't sealing properly, so hot, humid air was escaping into the room instead of condensing.

The most vocal folks complaining about condensing dryers are folks in US, who are used to a 6.0kW (240V, 30A) machine and well, of course you can't match that speed with only half the resources. Some of those people, I'm sure, would also complain about how a regular domestic dryer is crappy because the 50 pounder dryer at their local laundromat can finish their 15-pound load in less than 20 minutes and the domestic dryer is taking 60 minutes or so.

But here's the thing -- an Euro dryer which uses 240V/15A and is a vented dryer is only a bit faster than the equivalent condenser dryer, usually by 5 to 15 minutes only. I know this because I *have* used side-by-side dryers that were identical except for one was a Miele condenser dryer and the other was a Miele vented dryer. I am willing to bet most of the difference is because the condenser dryer takes a little bit longer to cool down the load because of the way it has to get rid of the heat.

I've also used a "portable" vented dryer extensively, and times for a 5kg load were in excess of 120 minutes. Efficiency fell sharply with cooler rainy (humid) weather.

So, something is very wrong with your account of events.

Given how trustworthy you have proved yourself over all these years I've read you online, I am sorry, but you leave me no option but to believe your AEG Lavatherm is defective somehow.

And I do hope you get if fixed someday.

Peace,
   -- Paulo.
 
Miele T1 Heatpump experience - really excellent !

I have been using a Miele T1 heat pump dryer for more than 6 months at this stage and I am finding it an absolutely fantastic machine. I can't really find anything negative to say about it.

It's an expensive machine, but it is paying for itself as I use the dryer quite a lot.

It achieves A+++ levels of efficiency and runs at about 1.39kWh to dry 8KG of towels and for lighter loads I could be coming in at way less than 1kWh.

In an air-to-air condensor Miele dryer that's 4.14kWh per load! (C rated)
Miele's last generation of residential vented dyers are similar rated about 4.01 to 4.14 depending on the load size.

Some vented dryers were using as much as 9.23kWh.

So basically it's at least 3 times more efficient and I am noticing my bills are suggesting that on average it may be even more efficient again, possibly because I was not using the vented dryer as efficiently as I could have been - too full etc. I find the heat pump will actually handle quite heavily loaded drums without being inefficient or overheating as it's more about 'pulling the moisture' out of the air with forced condensation.

The other major plus points:

Cycle time is not that long compared to the vented dryer. I am not really noticing a huge difference.

It is FAR, FAR more gentle on clothes. I am finding I can comfortably dry t-shirts and other items that I would be loathed to put into a traditional dryer. The process is much less harsh and not very hot.

Your clothes do come out warm, but never roaring hot. In fact, a lot of the cycle is done pretty cool / almost cold as it's just forcing the clothes to dry using the heat pump as a dehumidifier. They really only get warm as the cycle progresses and the heat builds up in the drum. These machines do not use heaters at all.

If the machine can use 3 to 4 times less energy than my previous dryer and achieve what I would regard as superior results, what's not to like about it?!

Also it outputs almost no heat to the room, requires no exhausts and pumps the condensate away requiring very little maintenance.

Miele's approach to keeping the condensers clean is quite simple : a very very good filter.

You have a lint filter in the door frame (glass door), which is similar to most dryers. That's then got a second filter that's permanently mounted (removable with two turntable clips) also in the door frame as a second stage. You clean both by just wiping out with your hand.

Then there's a 'plinth filter' behind an access door at the bottom of the machine. This is washable, multi-layer foam and mesh filter, more like a high-flow rate version of something you'd expect in a vacuum cleaner. It picks up all the very fine dusty stuff.

Once a month or so, you just take it out and give it a wash in the sink. Gently squeeze it dry and pop it back in.

I tend to run the dryer with nothing in it for a few mins to give it an opportunity to dry out fully.
...

Oh yeah, it's also got 'fragrance flacons' to fragrance your laundry. Expensive enough but they last quite a long time and you only have to leave them not he lowest setting unless you want to really smell like you fell into a vat of perfume.

I would definitely avoid using dryer sheets in these type of machines due to the risk of coating the condenser elements in wax. They're a closed cycle, and you could potentially risk getting some issues with build up of gunk. In general I think dryer sheets are problematic though, even in vented machines they can cause build up in the ducts.

It also has steam finish and all of those fancy cycles you'd expect on a high end dryer.[this post was last edited: 9/14/2017-06:52]
 
Resource prices

Yeah, everything is expensive here.

I pay between 1.25€ and 1.50€ for a liter of gasoline. That is slightly below 7$/gal max.

We pay about 0.30€ per kWh, that is about 0.36$.

We pay about 5€ for 1m³ of water, that is 6$ for about 265gal.

Natural gas here is about 0.065€ per kWh. So something like 7-8 cents per kWh in dollars.

Laundress: 6kg spun at Lavamat speeds should be dry in about an hour to an hour and a half.
Don't be fooled by opening the door of the dryer. Condenser dryers have the tendency to leave everthing feeling moist until after the cooldown. Let it run till it finishes, you'll see what I mean.
And I've said it so many times: Humidity of the surrounding air does not affect condensing efficency at all. There is no exchange of air between dryer and surroundings, and moist air even has a greater energy budget then dry air, meaning that per volume per pass over the condenser it takes more energy out.
As long as it isn't 80F or more, that thing will run perfectly fine.
 
That’s a bit dearer than here!

I’m paying:

Electricity per kWh (excluding VAT)
€0.1875 peak
€0.0875 off peak

PSO (public service obligation) is 7.69 / month.
Then there’s an annual standing charge of €180 split across all the bills.

Fuel mix is 100% renewable so CO2 tax is €0.00 which saves quite a bit.

Then add 13.5% VAT to the total

Gas is comming in at €0.0517 per kWh
+ Carbon tax 0.0037 per kWh
+ standing charge 92.05 per year
+ 13.5% VAT

Water is €1.85 / m3 (water) and €1.85 / m3 for waste water (assumed to be the same).
Complicated though as we are having a huge political show down over water charging. It looks like there’ll be a general taxation funded “allowance” and then you’ll pay a per m3 rate for “excessive use”.

Garbage:
Recyclables : free
Glass: free
Compostables : €0.15 per kg
All other waste: €0.35 per kg

You have an RFID tag in your garbage bin handles and each time the bin is lifted it is weighed. They’ve a competitive market like power or gas with multiple providers so you can shop around a little. You typically have a mobile phone app and website that lets you know how much you’re disposing off and which bin is being collected when.

If you live in an area with issues of people freeloading on your bins, they’ve “gravity locks” where the chargeable bins will only open if inverted fully by the truck. They even deployed scanning tech so your recycling is scattered into a hopper in the truck, photographed and then linked to your account. If you contaminate the truck - eg put normal garbage into the free recycling bin, you’ll get caught and you have to pay to dispose of the contents of the entire truck!

Last time I filled :

Petrol (gasoline) €1.30 / l
Diesel : €1.39 / l

There’s an annual road tax which is technically for “road use” but is charged on the CO2 rating (A to G) of your car. * see below ( a gas guzzler will cost ya!!)

Also we charge a 22 cent (about 25 US cent) for every plastic bag you rake in the supermarket or any retail store. It must be itemized on your receipt as it cannot be absorbed by the store. Money generated goes into an environmental fund. It cut bag use by more than 95% since it’s introduction about 18 years ago.

I’ll let you do the maths into dollars and gallons.

As you can see though, there’s a range of measures aimed at getting you to reduce your environmental impact. It’s not all stick though, you get carrots like grants and tax breaks towards home insulation upgrades, solar panels, geothermal etc etc.

—�—

Irish motor tax rates (annual fee)

A0 0 €120
A1 1 – 80g/km €170
A2 81 – 100g/km €180
A3 101 – 110g/km €190
A4 111 – 120g/km €200
B1 121 – 130g/km €270
B2 131 – 140g/km €280
C 141 – 155g/km €390
D 156 – 170g/km €570
E 171 – 190g/km €750
F 191 – 225g/km €1,200
G 225g/km or higher €2350
 
You can pick energy provider here by their fuel mix which is slowly driving up the switch towards renewables as there’s a CO2 tax on the emissions which is disclosed on your bills.

We’ve still a long way to go though, although I suspect Ireland is likely to suddenly jump ahead of the pile on this - small population and a hell of a lot of wind and big off shore wind projects underway.
We kinda hit a speed bump in 2008 when the economy was looking like it might go over a cliff and a lot of wind power projects went on hold.

The economy’s booming again now and it looks like we are going to miss our Paris ageeement targets and get fined about half a billion, despite best efforts.

There isn’t all that much the state can do as if can’t directly fund projects without breaking EU public spending rules so, we are basically just going to have to pay the fine and continue on with the build out.
 
It looks like we should see a fairly major solar boom here too - 3000 megawatts of projects have applied for planning persmiasion (zoning etc). Although we have some fairly serious NIMBYism here around these kinds of projects. A lot of on shore wind and power lines associated with them get blocked for long periods.

It’ll be interesting to see how much solar gets off the ground.

You’ve actually got significantly more solar energy hitting you there too in more northerly parts of NL.
Although it seems we can still make it work here to some degree. We have years with as little as 1100 hours of direct sunshine. Averages somewhere between 1100 and 1600 but is typically not not brighter than Scotland, Norway and Iceland.
 
in Europe, do you have to pay higher taxes if you were to drive a old car from 30+ years ago? Here in California, you don't have to smog your car if it is older than 1973, but if it is newer than 1973, you have to smog it. Some states like Florida don't have any smog at all.
 
I just checked the consumption on the Miele T1 (it has a kWh meter built into it accessible via the menus).

A mixture of towels - 6 bath towels, 4 hand towels, 10 facecloths washed in the W1 and spun to 1600

Dried using 0.9 kWh in 1h15min

...

Wow that’s quite serious earthquake damage.
We had a huge amount of debate about fracking here similar reasons and its now banned.
I assume these are conventional gas fields?
 

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