My Saturday morning post

[mrsbrown]

If you've never been inspired to make your own solar hot water heater or solar air heater, join the mailing list I'm on and change your mind.

Mostly though, the patterns and inspiring stories are on this website.  They're all American so I get a bit confused with the strange units.

The closest Australian site I can think of is the ATA.  I'd love to get an Australian equivalent going, but I'm already working on enough volunteer type projects, and I can't really do it it in work time, even though it's work related.

Following a link from the mailing list this morning (via an article about plastic balloons used to make solar power plants) I found out that in the USA, they need an activist group to change legislation so that they're ALLOWED (!!!)to hang their washing outside!

I already knew the nuclear figure (probably wrong by now, I first heard it 20 years ago) that the 9% of energy produced in the US was nuclear and also that, coincidentally, 9% of the energy used in the US was used for clothes drying. That's probably part of why I didn't own a dryer until about a year ago.  The laundry website also has a list of ten reasons to hang out clothes (figures are for the US)

    *      Save money (more than $100/year on electric bill for most households).FN1
    *      Conserve energy and the environment.
    *      Clothes and sheets smell better.
    *      Clothes last longer. Where do you think lint comes from?
    *      It is physical activity which you can do in or outside.
    *      Sunlight bleaches and disinfects
    *      Indoor racks can humidify in dry winter weather
    *      Clothes dryer fires account for about 15,600 structure fires, 15 deaths, and 400 injuries annually. The yearly national fire loss for clothes dryer fires in structures is estimated at $99 million.

They left out the joy of chatting to a small child (if you have one) while you hang out the clothes and having an oportunity to be reminded that outside is lovely,  even when you didn't want to  go out to start with.

Last night at the Sustainable Living Festival I found out about the Solar Venti, a solar heating device I'm tempted to try.  You can use them for drying rooms  instead of an electric dryer (as shown on Carbon Cops) or for providing some preheating to your home.

mr_bassman has maintained this theme this morning.  He's just discovered one of my favourite shows - The secret life  of Machines

All the videos are here -   I'm going to watch the washing machine episode

Comments

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

For me, the most interesting thing about that "right to dry" webpage is... Hawaii has a Union Jack in their state flag!?!?!

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

What I want when we renovate(don't laugh) is some sort of contraption so that I can peg stuff at waist height, next to the machine, and have it zip outside, or up onto the roof, or wherever. Because at least some of the time when I'm well enough to be putting stuff in the dryer, I could manage pegging if it was waist height and right by the machine. And I figure the short burst of energy used in my imaginary electric clothes hoist would still be far less than that of the tumble dryer.

[quatrefoil.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of councils and bodies corporate in Sydney which don't let you hang washing where it's visible from the street - my lease doesn't allow me to. If you live in a flat and your balcony faces the street that often means you can't hang your washing out. I have access to a backyard hills hoist, but have to fight for space on it on the weekends.

[mrsbrown.livejournal.com]

You could have a raisable clothes drying rack - think rectangle of wood with strings you hang clothes which, via pulleys can be pulled up to roof level.

Then you could install a solar venti (see reference above) and blow warm air into your laundry to dry the clothes.

OTOH you have that fabbo clothes horse on wheels. You could put more window into your west facing laundry add a bit of ventilation (openable window?) and have a drying room that way.

[doushkasmum.livejournal.com]

I remember when I stayed with my Grandma in the US after TYC. I washed my garb and totally confused her by insisting on hanging it out and not putting it in the dryer I knew would destroy it. At that time I had no understanding of her point of view. Thinking about it now I see some of her mindset. When she was a young Mum the pollution in her city was so bad that office workers would change their white shirts at noon so as to be seen as still wearing a white shirt, not a gray one. Washing hung out would come in very dirty. Add to that the several months of snow in the winter and you can see where just using the dryer would become the default. The air now is much cleaner, but still. I do think that the places which ban washing lines in the backyard as *too untidy* do need a good clue-by-four to the head!

[hnpcc]

Ah, that first bit makes a bit more sense to me. I was wondering how the bans would have come about, but if people were drying inside because of air pollution (and I guess, extreme cold) the move to inside dryers as common is obvious. I was always under the impression that some of the resistance to clotheslines - particularly in some parts of California where having clotheslines in the backyard is prohibited as well - was more of a class issue than anything else.

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

If we put the windows in high up, we could put the clothes horse on a hoist.

Not that I'm suddenly obsessed with hoists for some reason.