Vent Your Electric Dryer Inside in the Winter

It sure feels good to vent the waste heat from our electric dryer into the house in the winter. I never tried to do this, because I feared that lint particles would permeate our home. It was only after watching Jeff, of Missouri Wind and Solar, that I learned about this slick way to vent lint-free, warm, humid air into our house in the winter. What a wonderful time we live in, when good folks so willingly share ideas that can make our lives a bit better. Thank you!
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[@samuelsparling878]

My dad started doing this about a decade ago and it works wonders especially w wood heat drying the air out. I take a flour sack cloth and put it on the end of the hose, the lint comes off fairly easily and I collect it along w the trap lint in paper egg cartons then add wax to make fire starters. There's a lot of little things we can do to save energy, this is a good one, thanks for sharing!

[@backwoodbasics9383]

Yes. Moist air holds heat better, and makes the house feel warmer. We get static shocks in the winter, it's so dry in the house.

[@JillofAllTrades2]

I also like the information Jeff from Missouri Wind & Solar shares! 👍🏻

[@jpar6031]

i just stumbled here, simple, great for electric dryers

[@oldarkie3880]

A very simple solution. only for electric dryers and defiantly not in the summer. The commercial ones only allow for maybe 2 cups of water witch is not enough. I think I will make one of these for my daughter. A 3 gallon bucket is just the right size

[@sierrabravo9228]

thank you for doing this video, gave me some good information!

[@danielmatthews3420]

Thanks for sharing!

[@RustyGlovebox]

New subscriber, you have a lot good ideas and fun projects. I will be following along, take care

[@TheSateef]

great idea. if it gets too humid, simply put a dehumidifier in there, they only cost about $150. seems like a cheaper and more reliable system then a heat pump dryer

[@ksnax]

That actually makes a hell of a lot of sense. Need a good quality one that will last though!

[@0hypnotoad0]

You made a configuration that is essentially the same thing as heat pump dryer, but less efficient and probably more prone to failure since the dehumidifier would probably get slowly contaminated with lint. They call them "heat pump" dryers to ride the coattails of heat pump marketing hype, but really these new dryers are just using a large dehumidifier to run warm and dry air through the drum and dry out the laundry, it's basically the same device, just bigger. You could probably make a ghetto "heat pump" dryer by hanging your damp clothes up in a small closet with a dehumidifier right next to them.

[@BOB24502]

I do the same in the winter to save energy, but put a dehumidifier in my laundry room to keep the mold away

[@SimplySarah760]

Does that work :) worried about the mold issue / if it's a fire hazard? 😵‍💫 We use a dehumidifier in ours too. But still worried. We rent a house and the house has the dryer set up this way lol. 😅

[@thegodnephew]

Am I crazy or wouldn't that negate the energy savings?

[@BOB24502]

@@thegodnephew You got me thinking now, so i'm going to do the math...the dehumidifier only needs to run for about an hour, and it draws 600W, so 0.6kWh at 16 cents per kilowatt hour, the running cost is about 9.6 cents... Now a typical clothes dryer vents about 200 cubic feet per minute out of the house. With a run time of about 40 minutes, that's 8000 cubic feet of cold air you're bringing into the house which needs to be heated up. Let's assume it's 20 degrees outside, and you're trying to heat that cold air up to 68 degrees (differential of 48 degrees). The energy required to heat 1 cubic foot by one degree Farenheit is 0.004 BTUs. It would therefore require 1536 BTUs of energy to heat up the cold air that you brought in by running the dryer vent outside. 1536 BTUs is equal to 450 watts. So far, we're 150 watts in the deficit so it would seem like the dryer venting inside the house + dehumidifier is not a good idea... what also needs to be taken into consideration is how much heat is the dryer producing for 40 minutes... Typical clothe dryers consume about 3000W, and if you hook up the vent to the outside of the house, that's energy (money/heat, whatever you want to call it) wasted. Running the dryer at 3000W for 40 minutes would generate a significant amout of heat, about 6400BTUs of energy otherwise wasted, or 32 cents in electrical cost vented through the wall/roof. It doesn't seem like much but it adds up. That's heat your home's heating system will not need to produce.

[@andrewbashe3904]

​@@BOB24502 Say you ran out of oil and only for one day

[@BOB24502]

@@andrewbashe3904 ran out of oil? Not sure I follow here

[@Sarathkumargandreti]

I like the idea. I’m running my electric dryer without vent hose as our vent outlet is clogged and it takes a someone to clean it. Now my home is warm and humid

[@davedeatherage4902]

I like the concept 👍

[@t.c.2776]

I just put a large size sock over the end to filter out any dust that got buy the filter inside the drier... it allows all the heat into the room...

[@mariar3933]

Can’t we use like insulation drying bags like dry buddy ones n fit this ?

[@richearthfarm2014]

How do you keep it from being to humid? We tried this and found things in the room got quite moist.

[@backwoodbasics9383]

Our laundry room would steam up some when our daughter did her mega loads. Perhaps a fan would help to move the air into other rooms? We only did this when petting the cat sent sparks flying. Once spring came, and humidity levels climbed, I re-directed the air outside.

[@DougB64]

I like the idea of this from an efficiency perspective but I would be concerned about what you are putting in the air. What chemicals are emitted into the living space that you breathe and what potential impact could that have on one's health? Would we need to be concerned about the chemicals emitted from heating synthetic fibers or from the chemicals that remain in the clothes from the detergent which I would guess are not good to breathe.

[@0hypnotoad0]

This idea is really climate dependent, if you live in a region that gets horribly dry in the winter (

[@woltews]

its not the lint, its the moisture this puts in the air that will make you feel colder ( more humid air conducts heat away from you more efficiently than dry air ) and the more humid air when coming into contact with cold surfaces like windows will condense water from the air onto the cold surface and that water can now become a media for fungi and bacteria ( this will be not be immediately obvious but manifest as increased minor infections and over time may begin to weaken wood in the house ) .

[@backwoodbasics9383]

It may depend on where you live. Here in the north, cold, arctic air is very dry. The humidity in our house struggles to ever get above 50%, even when venting our electric dryer inside. If you have a humidity issue, perhaps venting moist air indoors is not a good idea. Some common sense may be in order here. For us, added humidity is helpful in the winter. My folks ran a humidifier in our house all winter, growing up.

[@woltews]

@@backwoodbasics9383 I live in Regina Sask it gets to below -40

[@scootermann83]

​@backwoodbasics9383 I'm with you, I'm in SW Ontario and about this time of year it's starts to be a struggle to maintain humidity. I'm looking at interior venting the dryer as an aid to humidity. Nice video sir.

[@shermdog6969]

We're in the desert any humidity is good. Ive worked in maintenance all my life and during the winter if the heaters went down we would just put the hose over the dryer and point towards the room. Most people wanted to keep it that way because it worked better than their furnace.

[@shermdog6969]

Not in dry environments, maybe southern states.

[@DukeInspection]

read your dryer's owners manual and call your local building dept. Dryers need to vent to the exterior.

[@backwoodbasics9383]

Gas dryers certainly do.

[@MayhemRv]

Newsflash: commercially available versions have been on the market for at least 20 years.

[@backwoodbasics9383]

Jeff, from Missouri Wind & Solar, mentions them in his video. He says they run out of water too quickly, and do not work as well is the bucket ones. I am just passing on his advice, which worked for me.

[@jefc3333]

Too much moisture. It will cause mold

[@backwoodbasics9383]

In some cases, and some places. Not so in northern Minnesota in the winter, when we struggle to get humidity in the house above 40%. Works for us, but I remove it in the spring.

[@raysitzes2455]

Not a good ldea will cause black mold

[@ericgarner2559]

Only if you live in a moist place, or vent the dryer into a space that the moisture cannot escape. We did this when i was a kid in Utah where the air in the winter is bone dry, only my family used old nylon stockings to catch the lint. I'd never do this where I live now in Oregon where it's an active fight to keep moss, algae and mold from growing on everything but it make a huge amount of sense if you live in a dry climate and can circulate the air properly.

[@backwoodbasics9383]

Correct Eric. Folks around here run humidifiers in their houses in the winter, putting gallons of water into the air every day.Humidity still struggles to get over 50%. If you lives where humidity is an issue, don't add more.

[@marvella571]

Yikes

[@chrrykiss9070]

Does it make ur home smell fragrant

[@raysitzes2455]

@@ericgarner2559 where I live in Indiana it will definitely cause mold it is hardly ever very dry here