Financial guru Martin Lewis has shared a cheap way of drying clothes as the cost of living crisis continues. The inexpensive hack costs just 7p, and doesn't involve turning the heating on.
Martin's advice could make a huge difference ahead of Christmas, as the rising cost of energy means that people are strapped for cash when it comes to buying Christmas dinner staples and presents. The founder of MoneySavingExpert.com was speaking on the latest episode of his podcast when a listener asked him if there was a way they could dry their clothes without spending a fortune on energy, YorkshireLive reports.
Instead of using central heating, Martin explained that you can dry clothes for just 7p per hour by using a dehumidifier. Although there would be the 'initial capital outlay' of purchasing a dehumidifier, Martin explained how householders could get the most out of the purchase.
Read more: Martin Lewis' urgent plea which can help turn £800 into £5,500
He said: "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 kwh 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. Which is generally far, far cheaper than putting the heating on. If a dehumidifier does work for you it will definitely have lower electricity bills but of course you do have the initial capital outlay of buying a dehumidifier and see how that works for you."
Martin then added that the same equation could be used to work out whether it's cheaper to cook meals with an oven, a microwave, or an air fryer. The financial journalist added: "The problem with the equation for heating equipment is an oven is going to be about 2000W.
"A microwave I believe, from memory, a best guess explanation, a microwave 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.
"General equation is, find the wattage of an item, then work out how many kilowatts or what fraction of a kilowatt it's using, then multiply that by 34p per hour of use. If you had a 1000W microwave and you put it on for 10 minutes, one kWh for a sixth of an hour, a sixth of 34p is about 6p, shall we say? So it's 6p turning the microwave on for that amount of time. So yes it's a very useful equation."
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