Buying A House: C or D?

It might be regional within the US but most dryers here are natural gas in my experience. It’s cheaper to run in $ but more carbon (depending on how you’re electricity is generated potentially quite a lot more).

To be clear: all of them use electricity to turn the fan. A gas dryer uses gas for heat.

I presume an "electric dryer" here means one that also uses an electric heating element.

I’ve never lived anywhere that had a gas dryer

FWIW, in justifying my appliance purchases I (1) have little kids and (2) live in a place where it is not infrequently humid enough for clothes to take multiple days to dry.

also I do plan to add solar once I replace my roof in a couple years

i'm a dryer nazi but i should be honest that it's not actually a huge deal in terms of the average american's carbon footprint (0.2%!). it's a bigger fraction (1 or 2%) of your footprint if you live in a city and don't fly very often. but still, it's not the end of the world.

narrator: it was the end of the world.

this is a great todo list for a new homeowner imo (it works for renters too, but most of it makes more sense if you own a single family home):

https://erikareinhardt.com/personal-climate-action

I'm also pretty intense about keeping the thermostat low, turning off lights, etc.

My dryer died and I got a collapsible drying rack - even indoors everything dries quicker than I expected. Sheets are a bit of a nightmare, though.

xp to self there's some magical thinking about electric cars in there, but otherwise its solid

live in a place where it is not infrequently humid enough for clothes to take multiple days to dry.

I have a lot of clothes that I have to line dry because they are fancy or fussy fabrics that dryers do bad things to, and I don't want to spend the money or increase the use of toxic chemicals of dry cleaning these garments. In winter, and when it is rainy/humid, it will take several days for things to dry, because I avoid using central heat and just use space heaters when needed.

all of that would be fine if it wouldn't mean literally having multiple racks of clothing/linens/towels drying pretty much at all times.

I’ve never had a dryer in London. Everyone dries clothes on racks next to a radiator, or uses the airing cupboard where the boiler or immersion tank lives. Lots of those have slatted shelving where you can hang towels. For sheets, I just sling them onto doors and they’re always dry within a couple of hours, even when it rains.

I've read through the piece linked by caek, and I feel like there's a sizable omission. Can't tell from the data presented, but this doesn't appear to factor in the environmental costs of the production and distribution of the better options. The message seems to be "replace all the yucky stuff now."

Sometimes I have seen comparisons of (say) a gas car vs. an electric car, and they apparently imagine a world where the former vanishes from your driveway (magically) and the latter appears (magically). But that's not the case!

The old car gets transported somewhere and either keeps getting used, or needs to be disposed of. Those processes have environmental impact, sorry.

The new car took energy and raw materials to manufacture. Count those too, please. Energy was involved in building a dealership, selling you the car, and getting it to you. Count those too, please.

Ditto appliances. Has there been a good cradle-to-grave, life-cycle comparison of keeping an existing appliance (and running it into the ground) vs. replacing it with a shiny new one that is "better" in terms of day-to-day running?

Let's say you have a 20-year-old washing machine that works fine. You could replace it tomorrow with something more efficient, and pat yourself on the back for saving the planet... while ignoring the energy expenditures and environmental impacts of manufacturing it and getting it to you. Surely in some cases it works out better if you keep it?

totally and good point. i've tried to come up with my own numbers for that stuff but it's extremely difficult. i'm taking things like that more as "when the time comes" rather than throw all my stuff in the ocean and buy new stuff.

I've never been anywhere as damp as the UK either
Maybe if we all got dryers it wouldn't be so damp any more?!

We may have had this discussion before, but I'm sure loads of my clothes bought in the UK say 'do not tumble dry' whereas similar ones bought in the US don't have that - even if it's the exact same sort of clothing.

weird! most of my clothes (bought in the US) are either "lay flat to dry," "dry clean only" or "tumble dry low" -- it's probably different for men's clothes (and maybe kids' stuff) but rarely do I see a woman's garment with tags that essentially say, "machine dry the fuck out of me at extra high heat"

def notice a lot more of my wife's clothing than mine says do not tumble dry when I do laundry

Everyone dries clothes on racks next to a radiator, or uses the airing cupboard where the boiler or immersion tank lives. Lots of those have slatted shelving where you can hang towels. For sheets, I just sling them onto doors and they’re always dry within a couple of hours, even when it rains.

Interesting! I wonder if y'all keep your homes significantly warmer than I do? And also have fewer clothes? Or do laundry a lot in smaller loads? ... We did have a thread a while back about differences in washing machines in the UK vs. US?

I lie actually, I did have a dryer in my old house but it worked so rarely it was a gamble whether it would stop after 10 mins or not. I'm not anti-dryer, btw, particularly for sheets. And I occasionally put a dehumidifier on if I have loads of laundry to dry, so that's just as bad.

Caek

i'm taking things like that more as "when the time comes" rather than throw all my stuff in the ocean and buy new stuff.

Understood, and you're cool, but Reinhardt is ambiguous, seeming to say both things:

These must all be replaced, and as soon as possible...

Vs.

you need to replace all burning with electricity now.

Methinks if I have a ten-year-old Civic Hybrid (and I do), it makes more sense to run it to death, then sell it for scrap, than to go out and buy the latest Tesla (ha, like I could).

Even if the day-to-day carbon footprint of owning the Tesla were "better," there are other factors in play. The manufacture, marketing, sales, and delivery of the Tesla are not without impact.

Also? Where I live, a plug-in electric car is... powered by coal. It's not like you are plugging it into a magical outlet filled with pixie dust and liberal dreams.

The electricity that charges those batteries mostly comes from fucking fossil fuels, so the namby-pamby sweater-vest wearing poetry-professor vegan e-car driver who smugly disparages "gas-guzzlers" maybe needs to take the sanctimony down a notch.

(I say, as I sanctimoniously bike to the grocery store.)

generally speaking, mass produced grid electricity yields less pollution per mile in an EV than is produced by an ICE (hence EVs having "equivalent MPGs" of 100+). i think that's true even if the power source is coal. it's definitely true of natural gas.

but yeah in the particular case of cars the advice is not good on more than just cost of production. EVs produce just as much particulate air pollution as ICEs and hybrids. they're not going to improve general health in cities at all. and car ownership leads pretty directly to hollowing out of mass transit, which drives people into the suburbs, which is one of the worst thing policy makers can do if they want to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

i still think it's a good article for getting a back of the envelope idea of what are the biggest contributors in your life and which of them in principle have fixes.

there’s a thread for the EV arguing: why don’t you drive an EV?

ok but is there a thread to revive when you link to that thread?

I’m just trying to drive more traffic to I Love Cars (see what I did there).

Buying A House With No Dryer Update.

Sellers countered. We signed. I will soon own no dryer.

Oh and the washing machine is outside, which I kind of love because you can't do that shit in crappy climates.

Congrats!

We produced zero offspring and thus I am not gonna feel too bad about getting a dryer if I want one. Carbon pittance compared to having kids tbrr.

xpost thanks! I think! We land in SB on Sunday :)

What about pony

Pony will be living 13 minutes away from new house.

Our plan is to go live with him should the questionable foundation fail.

Pony is flying to California on Air Horse One btw

Pony is flying to California on Air Horse One btw

lol, congratulations!

i wanted to ride it, your pony, but covid had other ideas :(
i hope they have carrots and apples on air horse one

Air Horse One !!!! lol ... so good

Best wishes to pony for a great flight.

I get to fly with him! Honestly as excited about flying with a pony as I am about bad foundation house.

that house looks better than the others you looked at tbh.

Since I am in the same boat, did you ask for price reduction due to foundation?

I get to fly with him! Honestly as excited about flying with a pony as I am about bad foundation house.

Uh, wow! We're going to need some photos from the plane . . . .

We actually had to go over asking, even with the foundation and other inspection concerns. Still feel like we did OK in a tough market. The fact that we've spent 10 years in a 100+ year old house made us less put off by some of the old house needs.

yes, most things are going over asking. iirc the asking price seemed set for a bidding war, so you probably did fine.

re: this conversation about sustainability and eco-consciousness in appliances, you all realize that there's quite literally nothing that you can do as an individual household to make an impact on catastrophic climate destabilization, right? and that all of the "green products" being sold are simply perpetuating the very force that brought us to this point in the first place, capitalism?

like, i just don't understand how people can think that they're actually doing something by not using a dryer. you smell like mildew and sanctimony. grow up.

and as for my former trap house: stuff like the lovely banister leading to the second floor was left intact. little things. Otherwise, complete rehab.

I wish I still had the Google street view of the house from before we bought it— it looked like absolute shit.

also tho:

dry your clothes in the Santa Ana winds as you drink Kirschwasser from a shell

― The Beige of Dadz (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, October 20, 2020 9:03 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

made me cackle

In britain it's quite normal to not have a dryer and laundromat are rare (every flat I rented back home had a washing machine but no dryer, in canada no apartment I've rented has had in-suite laundry). Unless you have a damp apartment that needs remediation you can dry things by hanging and you dont smell like mildew, and I lived somewhere where it rained most days. I'd rather have an in-suite washer and no dryer than both washer and dryer in the building like I do now.

I've lived with both, without both, and with just a washer, and truly believe that living with both is a luxury, and also one that I'm totally fine with allowing myself. I lived in a 140 sq. foot truck with another person for three years— at a certain point, I need to allow myself some nice things.

as i said, I'm not anti-dryer, it's not standard here and you'd generally need to pay out to have one, if you have the luxury of spare appliance space in the first place, otherwise you'd probably need to remodel your kitchen. (I've never heard good things about combination washer-dryers).
I don't believe that not buying an expensive item because I don't need it or have space for it makes me sanctimonious. I genuinely don't give a shit if anyone else has a dryer or not.

btw the jeans and top I'm wearing both have the "no tumble dry" label on. I'd mainly be drying sheets and socks if I stuck to the care labels.