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Comment by rejectedandsad | Hacker News Reader

Dryers in Europe are famously ineffective, and from what I gather even having them is rarer - many people still air dry on clotheslines etc. Plus, air conditioning is more common even in cooler areas of the US - I’m in the north but have and use central AC.

We should innovate ourselves out of this with solar, wind, nuclear rather than advocating for inferior living standards.

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> Dryers in Europe are famously ineffective

Citation needed.

Europe's Clothes Dryers Consume Half As Much Energy As America's

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/06/11/euro...

> many people still air dry on clotheslines

I have a very efficient and effective dryer and still dry on clotheslines from time to time. Saves energy, is very quick when the sun is shining.

We bought an especially energy efficient dryer in Europe a couple of years ago. It takes about twice as long to dry a load of clothes (2.5~3 hours) as the one at my folk's house in North America.

That's part of how it gets to a high efficiency. You sometimes have a fast and inefficiency mode as well, although I've never needed to have my clothes dry right now, so I just run the dryer during off-peak hours and the clothes are dry in the morning.

People in Europe were/are reluctant to use dryers also because of the unnecessary power consumption. I also noted that a lot of clothes you buy in Europe are specifically not meant for tumble drying (according to the label) while this is practically unheard of in North America. Ironically, I suspect that in both cases, the clothes are produced in probably the same place somewhere in Asia.

Also, in case you have too much time on your hand: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7h93mb/nonameric...

They also destroy your clothes faster even if they are meant to be put in the dryer. All the stuff that's in the filter? Yeah, that's not actually useless lint, that was part of the fabric of your clothes. Clothes line is much better, also it doesn't cost you much, it rarely breaks, uses no energy. To me it's not inferior at all.

...if you have easy access to one, that is, which of course is often not the case if you live in an apartment.

That's not even true as dryers with heat pump are the norm, compared to mainly gas-powered ones in the us.

All of the dryers I’ve used have been electric, not gas in all of the apartments and homes I’ve lived in. Some places in the north do use natural gas but that’s more in older developments.

All dryers I have used in North America (Canada, not the US) were electric but simply dumped the hot and moist air to the outside. Compared to my current heat pump dryer (in Europe) they were horribly inefficient.

Heat pump electric dryers, still rare in the US, work very differently than electrical resistance dryers.

why do you even need AC in areas with moderate temperature? I get people in Arizona using it, but why would someone in e.g. New Hampshire need it, considering how much power it consumes?

Many over here (UK) both dry their clothes on lines, and wash their dishes in the sink rather than a dishwasher. Space is a big factor - I've seen walk-in closets in the US bigger than most UK bedrooms. Our houses are much smaller on average.

It was 93F for most of last week, even in NH. I’m not going to suffer through that.

Space could be a factor but I live in a 450sqft studio. My washer dryer has about 1 square meter footprint in a closet.

fair enough, that's pretty damn hot. When you said cooler, I thought you meant something like a moderate year-round temperature - though with global warming even that probably isn't going to stick around long-term; we're going through a scorching summer (77F is a lot for us) in the UK right now.

I have a dryer but not really any room for a dishwasher unless I got a countertop unit; I live in a normal-sized starter house in the UK.

That's not an unusual temperature in the summer in Central Europe. Still, people do fine without AC. I find this "I'm not going to suffer through that" attitude strangely disconcerting.

On the flip side, the costs for building a house are getting higher in higher every year not in small parts because the requirements for insulation and energy efficiency where I currently live in Europe have started to become borderline ridiculous.

Its 87F in late-afternoon Paris right now and 83F in London. Where I'm from the humidity would make this unbearable. Perhaps Paris isn't the same, but I wouldn't want to take the chance. I'd rather be able to set my own temperature.

For the record, I'm curious as to why the attitude of wanting a high standard of living is disconcerting.

As others have said, humidity makes an absolutely staggering difference.

Pretty sure dishwashers use far less water than sink washing.

> Getting them clean in the sink can use up to 27 gallons of water per load. An Energy Star certified dishwasher can use as little as 3 gallons per load (around 11 litres), according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. [1]

[1] https://www.cnet.com/home/kitchen-and-household/how-much-wat...

That may well be true, but washing in the sink uses almost no energy - to directly compare the two, you'd have to compare the energy used directly by a dishwasher and hand washing (heating the water), plus the energy required to filter the waste water from each.

I agree it obviously doesn't use much power, though in a lot of places fresh water is a much bigger concern (and that's really saying something). California comes to mind.

27 gallons of water per load of dishes? That sounds like they were washing dishes under running water which is obviously wasteful. Fill a dishpan, do the dishes, rinse them with clear water at the end and you will need very little water in total.

As someone north of New Hampshire who just had several 30+ C days, some hit 35 C, with high humidity, AC is necessary.

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