Measuring electrical usage on dryer?

8 years ago

The electric bill in my nephew’s new house has been running high, and he’s a young kid on a tight budget, barely able to make his mortgage payment. He thinks the old dryer — or, he says, the old washer— in the house is part of the problem. He has learned (the hard way) that the auto shut-off on the dryer does not work, so he dried a load of jeans for 12 hours straight. After paying that bill, however, things didn’t improve hugely.

Is there anyway to put a Kill-A-Watt meter kind of thing on a dryer? Would it be safe to do? And really, there is no way it could be the washer, specifically, right? The water heater, perhaps, as the washer draws from it. But there’s nothing in a basic washer that could draw an inordinate amount of power, is there? No onboard heater, just a basic Roper-type washer. Honestly, I just think he’s running his thermostat too high, but he seems convinced otherwise. Thanks for any advice.

Featured Answer

enduring

8 years ago

Does he have electric house heating?

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Comments (6)

dadoes
8 years ago
Presumably this is an electric dryer. I'm not aware of a Kill-a-Watt type of meter available at the consumer level for 240v applications, although that is not to say there isn't one.

There's not much difference in electric consumption between one 240v electric dryer and another. Old machines may be a bit "worn" regards to drum and door seals.

A rough estimate of cost-per-hour is by checking the wattage rating on the dryer's model tag. Most are 5,400 to 5,600 watts. Multiply that out by the KWH cost of his electric service. The trick is that the dryer doesn't draw that full wattage 100% of the time while it's running. It'll draw full power at first until the target air temperature is reached, then the element cycles off/on to maintain the temperature (same as an oven cycles on/off) ... with the off periods increasing in length toward the end as the load reaches dryness. But it's a reasonable estimate.

Example: dryer is rated 5,600 watts. That's 5.6 KW (5,600 / 1000) each hour it runs. If his electric service is $0.15 per KWH, then the dryer is 5.6 X $0.15 ($0.84) for each hour it runs.

Divide the $-amount of his last electric bill by the stated KWH billed for the per-KWH rate.

He could also read his electric meter before and after drying a load, and use that figure X the KWH-rate to figure the cost .. but the electric meter reading will include all the electricity used by everything in the house during the time period, not just the dryer.
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MizLizzie
Original Author
8 years ago
He has a heat pump and a woodstove. It’s the heat, I’m sure of it. Especially given dadoes’s explanation. Maybe he could turn the hot water heater down, but you don’t want to get too low because that has its own dangers. He is on well water. Yes, both water heater and dryer are electric. Rural area, no gas line. Thanks, guys!
georgect
8 years ago
Inside line drying can help a little.

Switch over to LED light bulbs when they die.
Larisa Batchelor
8 years ago
I have what they call prepay electric. You have to put money on your account before you get electric. The electric company did away with post paid accounts and required everyone to go to prepay. No money on your account they shut it off. They give you from 8pm the night before to put money on your account or at 9am they shut the electricity off remotely and then charge you 50.00 to turn it back on.

Anyways the point here is this. Last year I had an old school top load washer and dryer. The washer took a crap and we replaced it with a front load machine. Before replacing the washer our electric bill daily when doing two loads of laundry and our normal electricity usage was 15.00 a day. Once we switched to a front load machine the same electricity usage and the same two loads of laundry went down to 5.00 a day. Now I know the front loader spins the clothes dryer thus me using less electricity from the dryer but I didn’t think it was going to make that huge of a difference.

Before we installed two front load washers and dryers I had the husband repair the old top load washer and we put it back in for about a week. Again our electricity went back up. At that point we decided to sell the top loader and install two complete front load sets and even running both of them daily it’s still cheaper than the one top loader.

Maybe we had a bum washer all together but the moral of the story is look everywhere for extra electricity usage as it can come from things you may not think of.

During all of this we used the original kenmore 80 series dryer and didn’t swap that out until we installed the two front load sets. We now use less electricity with two sets than we did with that one. We also run our ac pretty much all during the summer (when we had the washer issue) and have gotten our usage down to 5-7.00 per day. Our house is all electric. When we have to run our heater (which is rare here in middle Georgia) our electricity jumps to 12.00-15.00 per day.

I will say since they switched us over to prepay we are much more aware of how much electricity we use and now have it down. I can even tell you how much more electricity I’ll use if I do extra laundry or run the heater lol
mfrog
8 years ago
We live in a rural area & our big electricity hogs are the well pump, septic pump & electric baseboard heat. I run my dryer for about 15 minutes to get the wrinkles out & then hang all my laundry to dry.