With the rising cost of energy bills, families have been looking for an alternative to drying their clothes. Using the tumble dryer or central heating can rack up a large bill.
One alternative is a heated airer. Parents editor Emma Gill decided to try out the Dry-Soon Deluxe 3-Tier Heated Airer from Lakeland to see how it compared.
Manchester Evening News reports sales of airers have risen in the last few months. The Lakeland airer, which has 100 five-star reviews, has been in big demand.
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It can actually hold up to 15kg of wet washing over 21 metres of drying space and earlier this year families had been raving about the product, saying they 'wouldn't be without it'. Emma was not sure what her washing weighed, but after at least four days of no washing with four people in the house, there was a lot - isn't there always!
The description says it 'costs just pennies to run', but she wanted to know exactly how many pennies. So, having bought a nifty electricity monitor to check the usage of individual items, Emma checked it for herself.
It was on for five hours overall, which amounted to 45p on the current electricity rate, or 9p an hour. When the rate increases on October 1, it will be just under 54p for the same time, or just under 11p per hour.
It wasn't all dry in that time, but the good thing about these is that when it's on, your room heats up too - so the spare bedroom was toasty warm. And the heat that lingered once it was turned off helped to finish most of them off.
You can get a cover for the airer too, which speeds up the drying time - although sticking a bed sheet over the top has the same effect. Emma didn't use it as she wanted to make use of the heat coming from it while she was there, rather than most of it staying trapped inside.
Emma could have done with the cover to stop her dog getting near though - not sure if all Labradors have the same sock fetish but he's obsessed - and says she will certainly be giving it a go when she is not in the room. Reassuringly there's a mesh top and sides to the cover to prevent it from getting too hot.
The real beauty of this particular model is definitely its size, especially when you've got a family-load or loads to get dry, with school uniforms, sports kits and whatever else they've decided to stick in the wash after a couple of hours' wear.
But it's light enough to move around to wherever you want to use it and when not in use it folds away neatly, with the cover turning into a storage bag. Dry-Soon Deluxe 3-Tier Heated Airer costs £179.99 and delivery is free. You can buy the airer and cover as a bundle for £209.98.
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