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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

NOt mine! I live in the country, but the county gas pipeline crosses our property. The easement (written 50 years ago) permits us to connect as a customer.

So all our appliances are gas.

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Okay, so your dryer uses zero electricity, but the carbon impact is presumably still substantial?

Probably worse. Gas will always have a carbon footprint. While electricity is getting greener every day!

Isn't there consensus that the industrial sector's carbon footprint is multitudes greater than residential so even a net-0 residential would barely put a dent in reducing carbon impact?

Residential energy use accounts for roughly 20% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1922205117

So it could do something, but it's not everything.

Bad choice nonetheless. Get a heat pump dryer and you'll save a lot and your clothes will last longer.

Saving depends on the cost of gas and electricity, so you might be right for some locales and wrong for others (to the point that a heat pump dryer will cost more than gas dryer), but how do you imagine clothes will last longer? Do you think temperature causes more wear than a spinning drum?

> how do you imagine clothes will last longer?

From my own experience + the fact that it dries at a much lower temperature.

I am questioning that fact. In my experience temperature is not destroying fabric, people used to iron their clothes for decades. Spinning in an underpowered dryer for longer will put more wear on the fabrics and stitching.

You can kind of compare the amount of lint you get, but often that is caused by the washing machine and not the dryer.

I imagine the mechanics of wear are very similar between a washer and a dryer. If temperature was the main contributing factor then ironed and dry-cleaned clothes such as uniforms would deteriorate much quicker than machine washed/dried ones.

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