AN electrician has revealed how he has slashed his laundry bill by £180 a year with one household appliance swap.
Ben Curry switched his tumble dryer and now saves around £15 per month on his energy bill.
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The electrician from Derby invested in a Samsung heat pump tumble dryer to replace his old standard condenser dryer.
Ben runs Electrical Innovations which is a team of electricians who have over 25 years of electrical experience, he also has a large social media following.
He shared details of his savings to his TikTok account @elecinn where he regularly posts tips and information for his 42k followers.
A heat pump tumble dryer uses hot air to absorb moisture from your clothes.
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It recycles the hot, dry air making the the heat pump tumble dryer more energy efficient than most other tumble versions.
Ben made a TikTok video explaining the change over to a heat pump tumble dryer and how he monitors the energy usage.
He said: “So one of the things we did is add a monitoring system, we use the Tapo app which is a smart plug.”
“We have one on our washer and one on our tumble dryer.”
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Smart plugs can help control your household appliances via an app on your smartphone or tablet.
You can turn devices on and off, check the status of your appliances and set timers.
In the video, he brought up the heat pump dryer stats on the Tapo app for the past 30 days and compared them with the stats for the old dryer.
He said: “You can see we’ve used 27kwh in the past 30 days using the heat pump dryer, compared with 88.2kwh in the previous 30 days using the old machine.”
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Ben went on to say that in terms of money, using the heat pump dryer cost around £8 over the 30 days compared with £24 for his old tumble dryer.
He said: “This gives a saving of around £15 a month which means that in just over three years the Samsung heat pump dryer will have paid for itself in savings.”
Ben’s Samsung heat pump tumble dryer cost around £589.
We had a look online at Samsung heat pump dryers and John Lewis has one retailing for £730 whereas Currys have one on its website for £579.
Buying a heat pump tumble dryer could be handy if you are looking to save on costs but are not quite ready to ditch your tumble dryer yet.
Bear in mind that because they dry your clothes at a lower temperature heat pump tumble dryers may take a little longer to dry your clothes.
It is an initial investment to buy the dryer and there are a lot of opinions on the market so it is a good idea to shop around when making such an expensive purchase.
You can use sites such as Google Shopping to compare the prices from different retailers.
The video was made in July so these figures might be slightly different now under the new energy tariffs.
Ben also added that as this was during the summer months he is expecting to make bigger savings in the winter when the appliance will be used more.
We reached out to the energy experts at Uswitch to try and find out if this was typical of the kinds of savings that you can expect to make by switching to a heat pump tumble dryer.
They said that the estimate of around £15/16 a month is typical of the savings that you could make by using a heat pump tumble dryer.
This is based on the above kwh and if the number of washes in each month was the same.
You can save money on your laundry bills in other ways too.
If you have heavy items such as jeans and bedding, make sure that they get a little extra “spin time” as this will reduce the excess water and in turn the time it takes to dry them.
A sturdy clothes airer is a must, and you can also get ones that are wall mounted or can hang from the ceiling.
Putting your clothes higher up will help the drying process as the heat from your home rises.
Heated airers are also very popular and means you don’t have to have things hanging in front of your radiators taking the heat away from your room.
Other ways to save on your energy bills
As the temperature starts to cool down many people will already be worrying about the prospect of higher bills in winter.
But there are a few things you can do to try and keep the cost of your energy bills down.
Adjust your thermostat
It is proven by the Energy Saving Trust that reducing the thermostat temperature by 1 degree can reduce your fuel bill by 10%.
Uswitch has previously explained that households could make potential savings of up to £127.70 just by making that one simple change.
If you were to turn your thermostat down by three degrees from 23°c to 20°c this winter you could save over £380 on your energy bills.
Add loft insulation
Adding some loft insulation could save you up to £300 a year.
If the top of your house is not properly insulated you will be losing all of that precious heat out of the top of your roof.
If it’s a bigger project and you’ve more area to cover, you don’t necessarily have to splash out on the costs alone.
Low-income households can make their homes more energy efficient with grants of up to £10,000 from councils.
Seal any draughts
Getting some simple draught excluders and setting them up around the doors in your home is a cheap solution to cutting down on bills.
You can get excluders that fit to your letterbox and there are solutions to fit around your windows too that can be found in any DIY store.
Remember that closing your curtains when you put the heating on is something that you can do to keep more heat in your home.
Check your radiators
According to British Gas, the average household can save up to £75 every year if they have thermostatic radiator valves fitted on all their radiators.
If you’ve got a TRV attached to your radiators, you’ll be able to limit or turn off the flow of hot water into the radiator.
This can help reduce the amount of gas that your boiler needs to burn to heat up the water in your central heating system.
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Valves can be picked up for less than £4 and they’re easy to replace yourself if some of yours are not working.
We have listed more energy-saving tips that could slash your bills by up to £1,666 this year.
