Martin LewisThe popular TV money-saving expert has outdone himself in 2022, helping millions of Britons navigate the Great Depression cost of living crisis By dishing out important personal finance tips at a time when many people need all the practical help they can get.
Bringing compassion and expertise to your presence on your ITV program martin lewis money show liveThrough his BBC podcast, his website and newsletter and through his regular media interviews, Lewis is providing a welcome public service for those who are struggling to make ends meet.
No concern is too small to get their attention and, in the latest episode of Martin Lewis PodcastThe financial guru revealed a simple approach to drying wet clothes for just 7p an hour without turning on the central heating or running a dryer, a very welcome tip when energy bill are so high
He suggests using a dehumidifier for the job instead, which promises significant savings this Christmas—as long as you factor in the cost of buying one in the first place, as Lewis himself admits.
“Many dehumidifiers have different wattages, the one I checked was 200 watts (W),” he explained on the show.
“Once we know it’s 200w and we know a kilowatt (kw) is 1,000w, which is how electricity is priced, we know it’s one-fifth of a kilowatt.
“And you pay roughly 34p per kw per hour. The fifth is 7p, so you’re going to pay around 7p an hour to run a dehumidifier at 200w, assuming it uses full power all the time. Which is generally much cheaper than turning on the heating.
“If a dehumidifier works for you there will of course be lower electricity bills but of course you have the initial capital outlay of buying a dehumidifier and see how it works for you.”
Likewise, he encouraged the audience to consider whether getting an air fryer Likewise cooking with an oven or microwave on the same basis can prove to be cheaper.
“The problem with the equation of heating appliances is an oven is going to be around 2,000w,” he said.
“A microwave I think, from memory… gives you consistent heat whereas an oven is heating up to full temperature and then topping it off so it doesn’t run at full power all the time.
“But if you’re doing a jacket potato for 10 minutes it’s going to be a lot cheaper than doing a jacket potato in the oven and keeping it for an hour and a half.
“However, if you were having a full roast dinner and you were cooking several of them, it’s probably cheaper than putting five or six jacket potatoes in the microwave because for every extra item you put in the microwave, you have to cook it.” need to be kept for a long time because microwaves only heat individual objects.
He concluded: “The general equation is: find the wattage of an item, then calculate how many kilowatts or fractions of a kilowatt it is using, then multiply this by 34p per hour of usage.
“If you had a 1,000-watt microwave and you keep it on for 10 minutes, one kilowatt for one-sixth of an hour, one-sixth of 34 paise is about 6 paise, shall we say? It takes 6p to turn on. So yeah, it’s a very useful equation.”