I just had interesting thought

I can see there being a difference. The dryer is going to put the moisture in the house in about 45 minutes Vs. 8 or ten hours for clothes hanging to dry.

As was suggested earlier.....pantyhose work well as a filter for the dryer lint.

We dry most of our clothes in an unheated sun porch. Takes a couple of days for my work jeans but time is not an issue.

I agree that there is a difference. The bigegst one is the introduction of airborn lint and dust. None of that gets blown around from hanging clothes.

One additional (green) idea would be to use the dryer durring the day time to gain on sunlight factor. Cfm replacement based on infilteration air for the dryer would be better if warmed from the sun. Go outside and place your hand over your vent outlet and that will tell you of the cold air that must infiltrate into the house to replace dryer air. I do exercise our pellet stove dryer, my wifes exercise bike located next to the stove. The bike also can be used for a boot dryer also.

I did this in my old trailer house each winter for 10 years. I too simply put a nylon stocking over the vent tube and welcomed the humidity in the home. Mainly because my woodstove kept the humidity in the house under 20%. We were constanly getting shocks on the carpets and furniture.

Now I've built a new home and still have a electric dryer. I do have it vented outside, I no longer need the humidity in the home due to the air to air exchanger. But I did notice this winter as I lay in bed one night with the window above my head open a crack, how much air was being drawn into window. I thought it was the wind blowing the air in. Then the cloths dryer stopped its cycle and the air immediately stopped coming into the window. I thought, wow, that dryer really pulls in the air. Even though the bedroom and laundry room are on opposite ends of the house. So what I have been doing since. is, cracking the window open in the laundry room when the wife starts drying cloths, and I'm able to shut the door in the laundry room to keep the cold air from making its way into the rest of the home. The air being drawn in the window is only about 4 feet away from the dryer, so most likely its the same air being used by the dryer to dry the cloths.

Now THAT"S a tight house! I hope to be there some day. :roll:

Opening the window is probably a good idea as long as your pipes in the laundry don't freeze. Anything that exhausts from the house has to pull air in from somewhere, taking your heat with it. My wife thinks I'm being anal about turning off the fan over the range as soon as major cooking is done, but that is a lot of air being sucked out of the house.

Chris

That's another whole story. I never did understand the need for a rangehood. Maybe you could put a stocking on it? :lol: