Japan's clothes-drying bathrooms

I have one of these in my home (in Tokyo). Honestly... they kind of suck. The lint from your clothes clogs your drains and vents even faster than normal (you're supposed to use a plastic slab cover thing over your bath, which requires a lot of maintenance or it gets gross very quickly). It renders your shower unusable for hours at time, so if you live with other people it makes coordination of laundry/showers much more complex. Would not recommend. I got a regular washer/dryer combo unit recently and it markedly improved the quality of my life.

How about we continue using something more convenient like a standalone dryer and focus our energy usage reduction on the largest target -- which is manufacturing by a whopping 76% of the total electricity consumption in the United States (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eia.gov&#x2F;energyexplained&#x2F;use-of-energy&#x2F;industry.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eia.gov&#x2F;energyexplained&#x2F;use-of-energy&#x2F;industry.p...</a>) as well as transportation. Nothing else comes close.<p>Quirky Japanese technology is not the solution.

We used a yokushitsu kansouki a lot when I was traveling in Japan and they were were awesome but I felt it was not as practical if you had a lot of laundry. Plus the having to shower thing made it annoying sometimes.<p>I do hang dry some clothes at home but at the end of the day, I accept the damage that a dryer does because it allows me to spend a lot less time to clean a lot more clothes and therefore I do laundry way less and spend less time on it.<p>I did like it for drying out the bathroom quicker so it wouldn’t grow mold though.

Modern heat pump tumble dryers dont use really hot air, so dont damage clothes as much, and are very efficient.

&gt; <i>It consists of a heat pump embedded into a bathroom ceiling that blows out warm, dehumidified air onto clothes hung below. Heating the room to up to 35C (95F) to 40C, this room-sized clothes dryer can make short work of a load of washing (hung on a rail straddling the room) in about three hours.</i><p>This might be fine in cooler climates, but here in Texas, I&#x27;m using AC more often than not, and this would fight against the AC, which seems wasteful.<p>Point being, when something is done differently in different parts of the world, sometimes it&#x27;s because a different solution works better in different circumstances.

I had a small studio apartment in Japan. My gas powered regular clothes dryer sat above my washing machine thus taking up no space. This article is stupid. And most of this pontificating about the article is a waste of time.

Very cool, I didn&#x27;t realize this was a thing. I&#x27;ve actually had the same idea, of having a pole over the tub to hang wet clothes on with a heat pump to blow warm air over them. Even if you don&#x27;t mind how energy-wasteful tumble-dryers are, the amount of damage they do to your clothes is just astonishing. Every time you clean out your lint trap, you&#x27;re collecting the shreds that have been torn off your clothes by the dryer. It just feels terrible.

I wonder how useful this is to be placed inside a van for that tiny &quot;bathroom&quot; area. We drive most of the day so the clothes can be dry in there, if the energy usage is efficient.<p>Of course, clothes can be hung outside for the warmth of the sun, but this seems way cooler.

I would like to have this to avoid the mold that seems to appear inevitably in indoor bathrooms.<p>When I lived in Japan, we used air dehumidifiers, clotheslines on the roof, or the huge tumble dryers at the coin laundry. Tokyo summer sun and wind make clothes dry real quick.

It’s interesting that even in Florida and Arizona with so much natural sun, how little of Laundry is dried in Sun.<p>Or how few Solar panels there are on roofs.<p>Kinda feel like Sun Belt states leave a huge opportunity on the table.<p>Washington has their grand coulee and 145 other hydrodams. Even has some wind farms and nuclear plant giving it the cheapest electricity.<p>The sun belt states ought to have the cheapest electricity.<p>Really it’s a mystery why electricity is &gt;$0.10&#x2F;KWh in all states.<p>I remember reading books how Electricity would be too cheap to meter.<p>I have a feel our grandchildren may go ahead and build it. Laugh at how dumb our generation was. “Had everything figured out, just couldn’t will to make it happen.”

We use a clothes drying dehumidifier when it’s too cold or humid for line drying [1]. I don’t really love it because it emits a sort of strange smell when it’s running. But it works for drying a large amount of clothing reasonably quickly in the rainy season.<p>Or in winter when we are running our mini-split heat pump to heat the room, we’ll often just set up a drying rack in front of the indoor unit.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.co.jp&#x2F;-&#x2F;en&#x2F;Panasonic-F-YHVX120-W-Clothes-Dehumidifier-Equipped&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B09VX9JXQD&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.co.jp&#x2F;-&#x2F;en&#x2F;Panasonic-F-YHVX120-W-Clothes-...</a>

I used them for when I was traveling in Tokyo. I bought 2 cotton shirts, washed them then use those bathroom dryers. my 2 shirts shrink… maybe the hear was too high on them? idk… learnt my lesson

<i>and it’s fairly environmentally friendly, as the energy demands of a yokushitsu kansouki are modest compared with a tumble dryer.</i><p>[citation needed]<p>What I really want is a dryer that uses the hot air from my AC to dry clothes.

In college my roommates and I discovered way to get free washing, but not drying. This meant we had to hang out clothes in the bathroom. The biggest problem with this was that it made the bathroom off limits to showers for two days, and the clothes were quite stiff and rough.<p>I&#x27;m not entirely sure how the Japanese solution works, but I&#x27;m not convinced by this article to dispense with my tumble dryer. There is certainly a need to reduce energy use and the space washer and dryers take up, but not sure this is it.

Is this more energy efficient than a normal dryer?

Do all in one units just not work very well? Putting the heat pump dryer inside the washing machine sure beats using the whole bathroom in terms of efficiency, both electric and effort.<p>I feel as though America’s “dryer culture“ is based on General Electric and others simply wanting to sell you two appliances instead of one.

We have airing cupboards in the UK. Cupboards with shelving that keep the hot water tank, so it&#x27;s built around using waste heat from that to now and then dry damp clothes. It&#x27;s not a one-to-one replacement for full clothes drying, but it&#x27;s a nice complement to it.

We loved them when backpacking through Japan in early spring. The whole modular bathroom culture was super convenient as every place had a predictable, clean bathroom with core amenities that always felt cozy and welcoming.

in Sweden I recall using standing wardrobe-like dryer which was amazing as it actually functioned as a wardrobe most of the time: after drying I&#x27;d just leave clothes hanging there until I needed them

bathrooms tend to be damp if there is not a proper ventillation system in place, and this seems to be fighting against it. it could be an added benefit for some places, but don&#x27;t think it is the most elegant solution for everyone.<p>to get dry, 40+ degree air, i just need to open the window during the summer in the city i&#x27;m from! but you might still value it for clothes that can&#x27;t be dried against direct sunlight.

Too cold to hang washing out? Below freezing wet laundry starts to sublimate which when you hang it out.

Dehumidifier in small closed space, like bathroom, Works great. Tumble dryers are horrible for clothes.

It&#x27;s not in every household. It&#x27;s common to have drying poles in the bedrooms.

It isn&#x27;t just Japan. I stayed at a house in London (Richmond, actually) that had this.

My first thought was of the old “Ronco Shower&#x2F;Blow Dryer in a Briefcase” skit with Martin Short on SCTV (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;eTHvF2aAi50?si=JmPQsvjV6YtpWjQw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;eTHvF2aAi50?si=JmPQsvjV6YtpWjQw</a>). “Why you….”

I am surprised to hear about the high statistics of tumble dryer usage in the US compared to us europeans.<p>I mean, it looks to me like people tend to have more space on average in the USA, why wouldn&#x27;t they want to prefer to dry their clothes outdoor and makes them last longer? Even when I owned a tumble drier, I only used it for emergencies or wet days. I also found out that on wet days a deshumidifier in a large room was still better for the longevity of my clothes than tumble drying.

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Heat pump dryers dry at a lower temperature, have auto-shutoff with sensors and no venting so are far better for your clothing and the room.<p>Normal dryers can do some of this, but it seems heat pump dryers are making the leap.<p>Blurb - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bosch-home.com.sg&#x2F;experience-bosch&#x2F;living-with-bosch&#x2F;fresh-reads&#x2F;6-reasons-why-you-need-a-bosch-heat-pump-dryer-in-your-life" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bosch-home.com.sg&#x2F;experience-bosch&#x2F;living-with-b...</a><p>The catch is heat pump dryers cost more ﷼