Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis has urged UK households to check for a 'demon home appliance' that could be costing them hundreds in energy bills.
The financial expert has claimed that this appliance can cost you big-time in your annual energy bills, reports Manchester Evening News. This news has come as thousands of households are struggling to dry their washing indoors, as a result of cold, outside air and rising energy bills.
A lot of people are struggling to keep their heating on due to the cost of living crisis, and temperatures are plummeting to below zero this week - making this problem even more frustrating. Due to this, many people are looking for alternative ways to dry their clothing.
READ MORE: Shoppers rush to Dunelm for £14 heater that can warm up room for 'pennies'
However, some drying methods could be costing more than you'd first expect. Martin Lewis has warned people that tumble dryers could be draining your bank account if you use it too often.
Discussing the issue on his podcast, the money expert said: "Do you know what the real demon appliances are in most people's houses? The one that you really don't want to use because it's really expensive?
"Tumble dryers."
Martin then went on to suggest a must cheaper way to dry your clothes, without using the tumble dryer. He explained: "Those who have dehumidifiers, that can take some of the moisture out. It's less wattage than a tumble dryer so it can be more effective."
Martin also issued a warning last week to anyone using an air fryer or microwave instead of an oven to cook. The expert said: "The problem with the equation for heating equipment is an oven is going to be about 2000W.
"A microwave I believe, from memory, a best guess explanation, a microwave gives you consistent heat whereas an oven is warming up to full temperature and then topping it up so it isn't running at full power the whole time."
He continued: "But if you're doing a jacket potato for 10 minutes it's going to be far cheaper [in the microwave] than doing a single jacket potato in an oven and keeping it on for an hour and a half.
"However if you were doing a full roast dinner and you were cooking many of them, that is where it's probably cheaper than putting five or six jacket potatoes in a microwave because each additional object you put in a microwave, you need to keep it on longer because a microwave just heats the individual object.
"General equation is, find the wattage of an item, then work out how many kilowatts or what fraction of a kilowatt it's using, then multiply that by 34p per hour of use." The same advice can be applied to air fyers and halogen cookers."
Martin concluded: "If you had a 1000W microwave and you put it on for 10 minutes, one KWH for a sixth of an hour, a sixth of 34p is about 6p, shall we say?
"So it's 6p turning the microwave on for that amount of time. So yes it's a very useful equation."
Do you have an energy hack to help dry clothes on these frosty mornings? We want to hear all about it. Tell us in the comments below.
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