In the twenty-first century, homeowners have come to rely on appliances for just about every conceivable use and for just about any area of the home. Appliances help every type of household task imaginable: from cooking food, to keeping food fresh, to washing clothes, conditioning the air, heating water, cleaning floors, washing dishes and more.
Appliances are essential to every house and one of the main considerations homeowners deal with during a period of remodeling or new home construction is what appliances to buy, improve or replace. These are usually high priced items that will be in the home for years to come, making the decision about what to buy all more important. This is even more true today with the movement toward cleaning up the environment and conserving energy.
Clothes dryers are seen as one of the most convenient appliances of modern life. Where the space and utilities are available, a dryer is the natural companion to a washing machine. Even more convenient is the washing machine. Long gone are the days when clothes had to be scrubbed on a washboard and hung out to dry in the air, hoping for the best.
All clothes dryers perform the same function the same way: They tumble clothes while blowing hot air.
Gas dryers have a gas burner that does the heating and electric dryers have electric heating elements. Both use electricity for the motor that turns the drum, operates the fan and the controls. Because gas dryers are combustion appliances; they give off noxious carbon dioxide gas and have to be vented to the outdoors.
If the dryer’s spot in the laundry area is equipped with a gas line and an appropriate vent that exhausts to the outdoors, a gas dryer is usually favored over an electric one because gas is less expensive in most areas. If there is no gas line but there is a 240-volt outlet, homeowners opt for an electric dryer.
Fundamentally, a washing machine is fairly simple. It connects to the hot and cold water supplies, has a motorized tub that fills with water and churns the clothes, and has a drain that empties the tub. To do their job, automatic washers use a considerable amount of water and electricity. Just how much of both depends upon the efficiency and performance features built into a particular model.
The key to selecting the right one is to choose the most energy-efficient model that fits the homeowner’s lifestyle and space. In terms of lifestyle, homeowners should think about how often the washer is used and what kinds of clothes are to be washed. Those that wash more frequently will get the best performance from a stainless-steel tub. Those who wash less frequently will probably do fine with porcelain-coated steel or high-grade plastic.