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jabehling45

DryAway Racks

9 years ago

Hello! Working on design for our laundry room as our new house is built. I have seen these DryAway racks in several model homes: https://dryaway.net/ Anyone have experience with them? Thanks!

Comments (4)

  • 9 years ago

    I'm new in this forum, so please forgive me if this is the wrong etiquette, but as someone who hang dries most laundry, and spent a year hanging all laundry, I wouldn't like these at all. I haven't used them or seen them in person, however, so please understand that this is opinion only, not fact.

    The assumption these make is that your laundry is mostly, dry, mostly very flat and without bulk. I was looking for pictures of a full load of laundry, and the only garment photo I found was one camisole draped over a rod. In the video, it does show it shows small pieces, mostly T-shirts, which shows the garments folded over the rods hitting the neighboring frames as they're taken in and out and catching on them. There's one where she pulls it out until it catches and slides it back rather than showing what it takes to disengage.

    Whether on lines, or hanging in the spare bathroom, I do not like bending my clothing over like that. You end up with a bar mark in the middle. If the clothes are folded over, that means they'd better be camisoles, because bulky clothes will be rubbing up against each other as in the video. Even pinned on one side, there's not much room, and pins can leave marks too.


    In the FAQs it says that they will not get mold and not drip. That's disingenuous. Some fabrics hold water past what a spin cycle usually extracts. As gravity pulls the water down, the fabric gets supersaturated and can drip. No flood here, but better on the bathroom tile rather than in a cabinet. Mold will depend on how many mold spores are in the air, the heat, humidity and air circulation of the room. Since these racks are so close together there's little hope of a lot of air circulation between them when full, yet they boldly claim you won't need a fan. In a moderate climate, if I hang two large loads of laundry to dry in
    the spare bathroom, the humidity in the room and adjacent hall goes up
    to an uncomfortable level. That's in the open, not bounded by cabinetry
    and squished together.

    There is no way you're going to hang the four hundred loads of family laundry per year that they cite as average as well. There's no way one of our large loads of laundry is going to fit on those racks at one time either, just on rod space, let alone bulk.

    This would potentially be useful for drying bras, which really shouldn't go in dryers ever, as well as other delicates, swimwear and exercise clothes. I don't think it's more useful than the folding rack they claim is bad (it's not if you have a quality version rather than a cheap knock off, but those actually don't hold as much--they're not intended for the whole load).

    In the same amount of space as the rack system, you can use a folding clothes tree, though it won't be sleek or pretty. A two level clothes tree holds about 30 short garments on hangers, maximum, or half that of longer ones. These are still too close together to dry well, but at least the air can get to them. It takes too long for things to dry on one of those to dry the 7+ loads of laundry in a week that their figure of 400 loads per year comes to, and you'd have to be on top of doing a load daily...assuming you could get the previous one dry.

    You might be able to make the same idea as the racks work by building your own and spacing them out more. As far as I can tell, the DryAway uses brackets that hold multiples of four. Use heavy duty drawer hardware and space them one at a time. I'd use X braces or at least corner braces as well, to keep the frames straight. Add a moisture extracting fan to the room, and leave the cabinet sides off, and it might work.

    You might also want to look at heated drying cupboards.

    I'm sorry if this is too much or too analytical. My first reaction was "clever!" My second reaction was "No."


  • 9 years ago

    thank you for your thoughtful response. I have seen many, many positive reviews on this product :)


  • 9 years ago

    Excellent! Do any of them mention how much laundry they can actually dry on them, how long it takes for it to dry, etc.? I fully admit that they could work a lot better than I think just from looking at the pictures/video.

  • 9 years ago

    If I had room, I would like to have a couple of those, or the lateral drawer-type kind that dry flat. Some of the lateral styles have fans in the back, IIRC. But. I wouldn't kid myself. They won't hold much. In a luxury laundry, however, they would be nice.