Chris Martin

Drying rod

Laundry drying system above the wood stove:

This was inspired by seeing somebody who had built a whole drying rack with a pulley system to hoist the rack from waist height to the ceiling. Thought about it for a while and simplified my project to $40 and a few hours.

Most of the labor was just in going to the attic to find joists to screw the eye hooks into. (Stud finders don't work through the plaster.) The bar is an electrical grounding rod, copper-plated steel. Kinda surprised it was only 22 bucks. Bows a little but not very badly under a load of wet laundry, copper looks pretty nice. The only thing "permanently" installed is the eye hooks, so should be decently reconfigurable if need be, though so far it's been good.

Air drying puts less stress on your clothes, and (if your clothes are made of plastic, aka polyester) does not spew so much microplastic into the air. It also eliminates one big noisy machine from your home.

The clothes line outside actually does work in subfreezing temperatures, but very slowly. Inside by the wood stove, things dry about as fast as they do outside in the summer.

This use of energy makes a lot more sense than a drying machine in all seasons. In the summer, the sun is free. In the winter, we're getting dual use out of heat that we would be producing anyway, whereas the machine would be wasting the heat it produces by venting it to outside.

I write about Haskell and related topics; you can find my works online on Type Classes and in print from The Joy of Haskell.