Martin Lewis shares cheaper way of drying laundry that only costs 7p an hour

For those wondering what the most cost effective drying method is for wet clothes, consumer champion Martin Lewis has the answer.

He shared his investigation into the most cost effective drying method and the result with listeners of his BBC Sounds podcast, The Martin Lewis Podcast.

Having recently described tumble dryers as the ‘demon appliance’ it will come as no surprise to fans of the money saving expert, 50, that this is not the most cost effective way.

Similarly, turning your heating on to dry clothes left on a drying rack won’t save you many pennies either.

Instead, Martin recommended using a dehumidifier – a device which sucks moisture out of indoor air – sharing with his podcast listeners that using a dehumidifier would be: “generally far, far, far cheaper than putting the heating on.”

Going into detail on why a dehumidifier could save money and is therefore a better alternative to the tumble dryer, the NTA winner who was hailed a "national hero" explained users are “typically paying up to a quid per load” when putting their washing in a tumble dryer.

Dehumidifiers, however, work out at about 7p per hour.

Expanding on his calculations, the finance guru shared: “many dehumidifiers have different wattages, the one I checked out was 200 watts.

“Once we know it’s 200 watts and we know a kilowatt is 1,000 watts, which is how electricity tends to be priced, we know this is a fifth of a kilowatt.”

“And you pay roughly 34p per kilowatt per hour. A fifth is 7p so you’re going to pay roughly 7p per hour to run a dehumidifier at 200 watts assuming it uses full power the whole time.”

While acknowledging consumers would have to spend a bit of money to buy the device, in the long run it would work out cheaper as they are: “much, much lower wattage appliances than standard heating.”

On the same podcast episode, Martin offered some more helpful swaps consumers could do to make savings when it comes to cooking.

Using an air fryer rather than an oven or microwave for cooking was one suggestion.

He said: “the problem with the equation for heating equipment is an oven is going to be about 2,000 watts.”

“A microwave I believe, from memory… gives you consistent heat whereas an oven is warming up to full temperature and then topping it up so it isn’t running at full power the whole time”

“But if you’re doing a jacket potato for 10 minutes it’s going to be far cheaper than doing a single jacket potato in an oven and keeping it on for an hour and a half.”

“However, if you were doing a full roast dinner and you were cooking many of them, that is where it’s probably cheaper than putting five or six jacket potatoes in a microwave because each additional object you put in a microwave, you need to keep it on longer because a microwave just heats the individual object.”

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