If you’ve read my blogs, you know that one of my pet peeves is European dryers! I KNOW electricity is expensive in Europe but that’s no excuse for the totally inefficient dryers that are used around here. We have used everything from industrial dryers at laundromats (hot air + no vents = hot wet clothes) to the washer/dryer combination machines (Just hot wet clothes after 3 hours!) to stand alone home dryers. Forget it! It’s way more efficient to just get out the drying racks and hang the clothes on them! I guess wanting soft, fluffy towels is a first world problem.
The latest dryer fiasco was in Munich at the Aloft Hotel. We like this chain; this one is super convenient and it has free washing and drying of clothes for guests – 2 washing machines and 2 dryers. The washing machine works fine although this one again has a 2-hour wash cycle on it for who knows why?? We opted for the 15 minutes cycle.
The two dryers, though, are another issue! These are two Siemens machines with about 13 different cycle selections (nicely translated on a sign into English). The problem??? NONE of the cycles get HOT and the machine is not vented in any way. I tried about 6 different cycles, including “towels” and “cotton” and “warm”. “Warm” did get warmer than cold but not by much. “Towels” had a running time of 1 hour and 34 minutes but was always COLD. After 45 minutes of drying, I gave up and have clothes hanging all over the room.
Germany is very ecologically minded. My suggestion for their dryers – manufacture them to produce HOT air, vent the machines and everything will dry in 20 minutes and, actually, be dry! I need to compare the energy use of my dryer at home that I use for 20 minutes and have dry clothes with the energy use of the dryer I just used for 45 minutes and still have wet clothes! It’s my new research project.