The sale of traditional tumble dryers is to be stamped out in a Net Zero drive that will push consumers toward more expensive heat pump machines that take longer to dry clothes. The Telegraph has the story.
Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, is introducing new laws that will phase out the sale of condenser tumble dryers and promote heat-pump alternatives to help cut carbon emissions.
The move, condemned as a “mad” form of “Soviet control” by the Tories and Reform, will align Britain more closely with the European Union which has already implemented similar rules.
Traditional dryers use a heating element to warm air, which passes through your clothes and removes moisture. That moisture is then condensed into water and collected in a reservoir, before being drained away.
A heat-pump dryer uses a closed-loop system that recycles warm air and runs at a lower temperature – around 50°C instead of the standard 70-75°C.
Heat-pump dryers cost £40 more to buy on average than traditional dryers, with premium heat-pump machines costing as much as £1,650.
They can take as much as half an hour longer to dry clothes, with users on consumer forums complaining that they are spending far longer drying multiple loads for their families.
While the Government believes the more modern and cheaper-to-run heat-pump dryers will save consumers in the long run, critics say they can fail in very cold conditions. Others have raised concerns about how much noise they make, complaining about a droning hum akin to the sound of an air-conditioning unit.
Advocates say they do less damage to clothes over time, but some users have complained their clothes feel cold and as if they are still damp after the lower-temperature drying cycles finish.
On top of this, certain models have been affected by technical faults that have caused the machines to burst into flames.
Plans for a de facto sales ban were quietly confirmed in documents published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on a Sunday earlier this month, with new regulations published on Friday.
The department has already instigated bans on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030, as well as on gas boilers in new homes and has mandated solar panels to be installed on all new properties.
Richard Tice, Reform UK’s Business, Trade and Energy Secretary, described the latest move as ludicrous.
“Mad Miliband’s latest Net Zero push to get rid of the traditional tumble dryer and force a more expensive alternative is utter madness. This new ludicrous move will not only push bills even higher in the short term, but it will also take longer to dry clothes and come with a huge fire risk.
“At a time when families are struggling with household costs, Labour is choosing to focus on tone-deaf green ideologies rather than listening to what the public wants.
“Reform UK will scrap the failing and disastrous Net Zero agenda and focus on bringing energy bills down.”
Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary, said: “Why not let consumers choose whether or not that works for them?
“This is the problem with our Net Zero legislation – it means Ed Miliband dictating what car people drive, how they should heat their homes and even what machine they can tumble their pyjamas in. This is Soviet levels of control.
“That’s why we would repeal Net Zero legislation and focus on cheaper energy. The Conservatives’ plan is better for the environment and for people’s pockets.”
The new tumble dryer restrictions will work by introducing a “minimum performance standard” that phases out gas-fired, air-vented and more traditional condenser models.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
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How can a whole country be at the mercy of a madman like this?
Will we end up like the North Koreans, allowing a madman to completely enslave their whole country full of millions of people, starving, torturing and executing them at will?
One madman.
I’ve used one. They take considerably longer and the stuff still doesn’t come out properly dry.
How can an appliance that takes twice as long use less electricity and be “better” for fabrics.
Here’s my idea to get rid of Net Zero overnight for good: Require all politicians and other political actors, including high-level civil servants and party staff, to publish weekly bank account statements with detailed explanations for any incoming amounts which are not a regular salary.
Miliband is either lunatic who really doesn’t understand anything or – and I believe that to be much more probable – someone who doesn’t even have to bother to come up with elaborate lies to cover favours for his cronies because hand-waiving and Net Zero will always do.
We have the luxury of a garden with space for a washing line. It’s cheap to run and we don’t need to add chemicals to make the washing smell nice. In emergencies, we have a tumble dryer (heat pump type) that seems to make very quick work of drying a load. I can understand the argument against heat pump models on purchase cost grounds, but performance-wise I don’t see a problem.
However, as in all these situations, it should be consumers who have the choice of what to buy, not the government deciding for them.
I have a tumble dryer (part of a washer dryer) but it always runs for 6 – 7 hours and I can dry my washing much quicker, cheaper and with less noise on a line in the garden
This won’t affect me personally since I’ve never had a tumble dryer. But once again, it’s the policy of the madhouse.
Just like the EU’s “rules” on vacuum cleaners, they Insist on people using an inferior product which doesn’t work properly and takes longer to do a worse job …. meaning more (deliberately expensive) energy to power it.
Absolute lunacy …. and very “Soviet” of them.
Yet it’s ok to have an EV that uses between 2.8 and 3.1 kw per mile. Lunacy.
This is not a duplicate comment DS. Looks to me as if Ed’s shirt has been ironed. Now, they really do use a lot of electricity. Is he going to ban them too?
I might start listening to Milliband when he shows us that he has one to go along with his solar panels.
Looks to me as if Ed’s shirt has been ironed. Now, they really do use a lot of electricity. Is he going to ban them too?
“Man full of hot air bans machine full
of hot air”
There you go, fixed the headline for him
Someone needs to ban this idiot!
But if they run for longer they will consume more… at the end of the day you need x kwh to dry your clothes delivered one way or the other, in fact probably hotter is better.
This is getting really very f#k8ng stupid.
Furthermore, x kwh “wasted” drying your clothes is, usually, x kwh “saved” on heating your air, provided your house room thermostats are working and provided you don’t have air-conditioning.
“This is getting really very f#k8ng stupid.”
Every day, I think – hope! – that there is actually a ceiling to feasible stupidity, and that the political state of the UK will bonk its head against it. So far, no ceiling is evident. There is no limit to stupidity, perhaps. Onwards and Upwards!
I used one when staying with friends. I would put it on for the supposed time period, then at the end of that, put the laundry back in another one or two times and still not quite dry. Hard to see how much energy was saved.
It’s like modern dishwashers which use less water at lower temperatures – people have to put dishes in for another cycle or wash them by hand.
On my new washer, the supposed heavy load white cotton setting lasts 57 minutes, at 30C with two rinses. Fortunately I can choose manually, 60C and 3 rinses.
Odd to report, despite washers and laundry detergents being able to “remove stains even at low temperatures and shorter cycles”, there has been a proliferation of additives to help remove stains left by low temperature washes, and laundry sanitisers to kill off bacteria left by low temperatures and inadequate rinsing.
The man is increasingly becoming nothing short of a dictatorial lunatic. Are tumble dryers a risk to human health (yes, I know some poorly maintained spontaneously combust)? Are they contraband? By what right does this idiot have to ban any legally made and supplied goods. Some people without access to a washing line depend on tumbling to dry clothes. They probably can’t afford £300-£400 for one of his luxury versions when a new condenser can be bought for £150 or less. This champagne millionaire socialist is forcing working people off the road, stopping them flying, freezing them in their houses, when he does nothing to change his living conditions to reduce his carbon footprint. The bastard is nothing but a pompous hypocrite.
The pompous hypocrite is a bastard!
What’s good enough for Trump is more than good enough for milliband.
“By what right does this idiot have to ban any legally made and supplied goods.”
Simple. Make his insanity into Law. Then hi-viz-jacketed numbskulls can get in your face with “It’s the LAW, citizen. Do you want to be a CRIMINAL LAWBREAKER?”
The M.O. of this demented government, all over.
Saving the planet… lol
Why does the media tolerate this? They could easily torpedo this Soros/Davos Agenda 2030 puppet by simply publishing a few facts:
https://www.mining.com/chinese-companies-build-700-coal-plants-outside-china/
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/716347646/why-is-china-placing-a-global-bet-on-coal?t=1579949224074
Answer: the media is full from top to bottom by intellectually, morally, and spiritually degenerate globalist lackeys, who are in a CONSPIRACY REALITY. Plus those who have been threatened by their ,managers with career death, if they publish any dissent, and managers who are similarly under threat, and so on right up the hierarchy.
We live at a time where EVIL, and I mean EVIL, rules western societies.
I’ve always dried my clothes on a clothes line, even when I lived in a flat. Others will have no choice.
Until earlier this year, I had an almost 19 years old combined washer/dryer that failed, and was replaced by a new machine – just a washer now, though. The drying function of the old one had fallen out of use due to the increase in power unit prices, and the use of water for cooling.
The heating element on my tumble dryer failed and at some point Philips had replaced the circular element with a rectangular one so the replacement was no longer available. That is was over 20 years old might have helped. I did wonder about getting the rectangular element and seeing if I could make it fit but then bought a new one from a British manufacturer. Imagine my surprise to find it very similar to my old one to the extent that the fluff traps were the same. Turns out this was the Philips design now made by a British company. Mine just vents out the back without a condenser.
Clearly the eco-zealots will never understand that if a new technology is better than the one it’s intended to replace the free market and common sense will ensure it’s adopted without the need for mandates, quotas, subsidies etc.
Sensible people are unable to think like Socialists.
They don’t care about choice or even the right or sensible choice, they care about power.
Eco-Zealots are closet Socialists – not so hidden these days. Socialists cannot understand economics, that part of their brains didn’t develop in the womb.
We got rid of our tumble dryer 20 years ago preferring to use a washing line or indoor clothes airer. Why do I now feel the urge to rush out and buy an ‘old fashioned’ tumble dryer?
I made and fitted an old-fashioned “maiden” to hang the washing from. It is suspended from the ceiling of the utility room where the boiler lives so uses the heat convected from the outside of the boiler to dry the clothes.
Do I get my Milliband brownie points? Oh, I forget, I still have a gas boiler.
Same here, although I still have a tumble dryer if needed. The difference between domestic and commercial use, though, is vast. What will hotels etc do?
Same here, except I’ve never owned a tumble dryer. Time to make a purchase, methinks 🙂
Tumble dryers that don’t dry, vacuum cleaners that don’t clean, heat pumps that don’t heat. Whatever net zero corrupts goes arse about face.
Governments that don’t govern, armies that don’t protect the country, police that don’t catch criminals, civil servants that don’t serve, “leaders” that are traitors, “anti-racists” that are racists, men that are “women”, “vaccines” that don’t prevent illness. Satan, the “father of lies”.
IIRC it all started with the ban on 150 tungsten lights, resulting in lights that don’t illuminate. What many people do not realise is that in a cold or temperate climate and with a thermostatically controlled heating system every watt that you save by installing a more efficient light (or any internal appliance) causes your heating system to increase its output by a watt to keep the house at the same temperature. Other than heat pumps, the only way to save energy is to drop the thermostat by a degree or two, draft proof and insulate. (However, the last two can backfire by encouraging damp and mould which could cost more to fix than the saving on heating, and the financial implications of heat pumps and solar panels are beginning to show up but that is a story for another day.)
Good point about the heating and lighting
There’s a ‘law’ about this too… evidently, when you attempt to save energy by introducing, say, LED bulbs in place of the incandescent variety, you end up using even more energy because you replace one bulb, central in your kitchen, with six and put even more under your kitchen units…
And leave them on all the time because they “don’t cost anything” to run.
99% of the electrical energy is converted into heat with a tungsten bulb. Good in Winter.
Yep, and thats all part of the plan.
The ecofascists tried hard to get the current era labelled ‘The Anthropocene’ in honour of the unproven theory of anthropogenic global warming. A more apt name would be ‘The Retardocene’ – the period where humans went backwards using things that are worse than their predecessors and relying on a technology from around the 3rd century to power our economies.
🤣 “The Retardocene” … can’t stop laughing! Priceless.