Withington Co-operative Eco-house - laundry

Drying cabinet

Robert — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 16:41:47 +0000

Over the weekend, we set up the ISE drying cabinet in the front room at my house (the only place we could think of to put it!):

My initial impression of this unit wasn't very good: only the door is double-walled; the sides are only single, resulting in some heat transfer into the room during use. The instructions tell you to level up the unit with some slightly awkward adjustable feet, but no matter which permutation I tried, I couldn't get it completely square, with the result that the door sticks slightly on closing (a bit like building a flat-pack wardrobe, if you've had that experience).

In use the unit is effective - drying times seem to range from 40 mins to 3 hours depending on the load. We haven't got as far as putting the energy monitor on it yet, though it is rated at 2kW which doesn't bode well.

The people in my house have been using the drying cabinet exclusively for the past two days, and seem to have forgotten about the washing line in the garden. Although there is of course an element of "novelty factor" here, nevertheless this is an example of people using eco-features to improve their comfort/convenience, instead of minimising environmental impact. Could energy use of clothes-drying at the eco-house put a significant dent in the energy savings from other areas?

I'm glad we set it up though because two issues have come to light:

1. Height consideration (for both getting it into the basement laundry room, and allowance for ducting when in situ)

2. A non-trivial amount of condensate drips from the extract duct in operation, so we really need to ensure this is drained outside

Laundry

Robert — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:24:41 +0000

Today I took the plunge and ordered an ISE Drying Cabinet which is the best - if expensive - clothes dying solution that I could find. Clothes drying is a major source of moisture, which in an eco-house won't be able to escape, so hanging up clothes within habitable rooms won't be allowed - hence the need for the drying cabinet. This is something like a modern-day version of an airing cupboard, with moisture from the clothes taken out via a duct to outside air.

Like all the other large and/or novel elements of the design, I'm taking the approach of buying things in sooner rather than later, as physically having the items helps understand what's required to make them work as intended, and avoid "gotchas". With the drying cabinet, the manual isn't clear on how long a load of clothes will take to dry, so we're going to set it up at my house initially, to see how it performs; there's also a height issue, as the basement ceiling is only 2m high, and we need to be careful with door lintel heights etc, that we can actually get the unit in!

In other news, the Velux windows are now ordered, roof work is ongoing. Also got an email from the neighbour, so we're now in dialogue via email.

This weekend I'm going to visit Redfield Community - a housing co-operative that's been going 35 years.

eBay bargain

Robert — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:36:52 +0000

Had a lovely weekend at Old Hall - communal living batteries now fully recharged :-)

I made sure I was back to be able to meet the builders on-site first thing this morning... but they called at 9am and said they weren't coming until tomorrow.

On the upside, I just bought this sink on eBay for the bargain price of £50!

eBay bargain - deep-bowl commercial sink for laundry

It's useful to have a deep-bowl sink so you can put a bucket under the taps and for non-food purposes; so we will be installing this in the basement laundry room.

I've also now placed the order with rainwaterharvesting.co.uk and everything apart from the tank itself should be delivered tomorrow (it will be useful to have the header tank etc on-site so that the builders can see what they will be working with).

Sprinkler company is coming on-site again first thing in the morning too, so looks like tomorrow's going to be a busy day!

Withington Co-operative Eco-house - laundry

Drying cabinet

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eBay bargain

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