People looking to save money on appliances quickly learn that gas dryers typically cost between $75 to $150 more than their electric counterparts, primarily because the components are more expensive; for folks on tight budgets, that price premium can be a deal breaker. That’s one reason only one of every five households in the United States use natural gas clothes dryers.
The thing is, when it comes to home appliance energy use, only the refrigerator consumes more electricity over the course of a year than an electric clothes dryer. Then factor in that, in most places, natural gas is currently significantly cheaper than electricity and it begs the question: Are gas dryers worth the extra money over the long run?
First, Some Basic Assumptions
To keep things simple, let’s make the following assumptions:
- The heating elements for natural gas and electric dryers are on for the same amount of time
- The amount of electricity required to turn the drum for either dryer type is identical
- Gas and electric dryers take the same amount of time to dry an equivalent amount of clothes
- All electrical and gas lines are already in place
- There are no installation costs
- The efficiency of gas and electric dryers are essentially equivalent
- Maintenance costs are equal
Calculating My Energy Costs
Because the amount of electricity and natural gas my household uses widely varies from winter to summer, I decided to calculate my energy costs across an entire year in order to help offset the seasonal effects of tiered usage-rates.
With that in mind, I spent $561 last year for 540 therms of natural gas and the obligatory taxes; a therm is equivalent to 100,000 British Thermal Units (BTU). That averages out to $1.03926 per therm over the course of the year.
As for my electric bill, I was charged $1676 last year for 9533 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, no pun intended. That averages out to $0.17578 per kilowatt-hour, all taxes and surcharges included.
Calculating Dryer Costs per Load
When we bought our natural gas Kenmore Elite Steam Dryer a few years ago, it was $86 more than the electric, including tax.
The gas version has a heating element rated at 22,000 BTU. Multiplying my natural gas cost by the rating gives the following result:
(22,000 BTU) x (1 therm per 100,000 BTU) x ($1.03926 per therm) = $0.22864 per load
But since the heating element is only on about half of the time, that reduces my estimated cost to roughly 12 cents per load.
The electric version has a heating element rated at 5.4 kilowatts. Multiplying my electricity cost by the rating gives us:
(5.4 kW) x ($0.17578 per kWh) = $0.94921 per load
Again, assuming the heating element is only on for about half of the time, that reduces my estimated cost to roughly 47 cents per load.
Based upon those numbers, it would cost me about 35 cents more per load if I chose to use an electric dryer.
Calculating the Break Even Point
To determine how long it takes to recover the $86 price premium commanded by the gas dryer, we need to know the break-even point, which is calculated by dividing the gas dryer’s price premium by the cost difference per load. In my case:
($86) / ($0.35 per load) = 246 loads
The Honeybee does about 25 loads per month. That means the extra money we paid for our gas dryer was recovered in slightly less than ten months. Not bad!
Some Final Tips
Your results will obviously vary depending on the number of loads you do each week, the price premium of the gas dryer, and the rates you pay for electricity and natural gas.
Also, keep this in mind: If you prefer the advantages of natural gas appliances, but your house isn’t plumbed for them, sticking with an electric dryer will probably be the best option because of the high cost of running a new gas line.
Finally, Consumer Reports offers the following tips to consider when looking for either a gas or electric dryer:
- Use a moisture sensor. According to the California Energy Commission, they cut energy use by up to 15%.
- Don’t focus on capacity. When if comes to everyday use, the differences aren’t significant.
- Don’t pay for extra “bells and whistles.” Heat level, timed and auto-dry features, and a few fabric options are all you need.
Oh, and one final tip: a dirty lint screen will cause your dryer to expend up to 30% more energy — so keep it clean.
In Conclusion
In our case, it looks like we’ll be paying about $36 this year drying clothes with our gas dryer. If we owned an electric version, we’d be spending $141. Over a dryer’s expected 18-year lifetime, that’s a significant difference in operating costs.
Then again, for those who are looking to save even more money, there’s always Plan C: hanging your clothes out to air dry.
Photo Credit: David Goehring
We’re looking to buy a new washer and dryer soon and this overview was really helpful. We use an electric dryer now that is 12 years old but we also have a gas hookup, so we can go either way. After I dig up a years worth of utility bills I plan on running my own numbers but I bet they’ll confirm your findings that gas is the best bet. Its probably time to switch over.
“Dig up a year’s worth of utility bills.”
Heh. Very clever, Jim!
And I am certain you’ll love your new gas dryer too. We love ours!
I’ve always had a gas dryer. When I bought my first place, I was given a dryer that was gas, and I paid the gas company to come out and run a line as there wasn’t one there. When we moved, we bought a new one and didn’t even consider electric. I think they last a lot longer than electric dryers as well.
Len, I am with you on having as many natural gas powered appliances as possible. The cost difference of utilities makes it a slam dunk. Where as a stove or furnace is always fixed and not moving, the dryer sits usually next to a washer that shakes and shimmies a lot. Although a small chance of worry but have you any ways to protect the gas line connection staying firmly connected to the dryer in this case? A gas leak is rare, but, uh, a rather explosive possibility.
“… a rare but explosive possibility.” Bravo, Bill!
Anyway, here in California — earthquake country, of course — gas water heaters must be physically strapped to the walls by code. The same is not true for washers and dryers. However, they do make straps for them too.
I think so! We had one while living in Costa Rica and it was cheaper with electricity than my friends paid for theirs. 😀
It did burn my clothes once because at first I started using it like I used electric ones.
We have never had any gas leaks or problems.
Yep, Marina, as you discovered gas dryers do tend to operate a little hotter than electric ones.
But my experience is that gas dryers don’t run as long either; if I had to venture a guess, I’d say electric dryers tend to run about one-third as long as gas dryers.
Our current house is only set up for a gas dryer, which I considered a bonus at the time we purchased.
I’ll have to admit I didn’t do the math at the time, but I reasoned it this way: Business DO calculate the costs, and invariably laundromats use gas dryers. Therefore gas dryers must be more cost-effective.
And now, you’ve proven it. 😀
While I don’t normally recommend making decisions based upon anecdotal evidence, DC — I think that line of reasoning was pretty clever!
I never thought about the laundromat angle, but if you had made that case to me before I ran my numbers, I no doubt would have had to agree with you. It just makes too much sense. 😀
All right… I guess I am the naive one (politely speaking) because I did not even know that gas dryers existed in this world. So it is all new to me. Don’t throw stones at me. I just learned something REALLY new.
As Paula Pant of afford-anything.com put it, “Don’t be afraid to ask silly questions.”
You should read the reply from a reader in Thailand. Being afraid of asking questions or admitting not knowing something is apparently a national pastime. 😀
Most houses in the US are wired for electric dryers, and once in position, there’s nothing to distinguish a gas dryer from an electric – they look the same. You may have seen one at a house and never knew the difference.
That’s a pretty fantastic savings, and you see that savings almost immediately. A matter of months is nothing to scoff at.
Reading through your post and comments, I think I have to consider a gas dryer next time. Though we do not use dryers very often as I have a clothes line in our backyard, which I use when the sun shines brightly and the wind blows well, we still need clothes dryer when it rains and during winter.
How about a clothes drying rack? It’s insurance for the environment and you’d save a bundle on energy. It leads to some inconvenience in the winter but it can be done.
I have a gas dryer aged 13 yrs and have been researching new dryers. Lot of changes since my last purchase. I recently changed out a defective gas water heater for a Marathon electric water heater which has proven to be less costly to operate than the natural gas. Now it’s dryer time. We hang our clothes outside and in the winter in the basement where I added heat to the area by plumbing into the existing hot air duct pipe using an 8 ft 4″ sewage pipe with its drain holes enlarged to let more hot air escape and it has shortened the drying time of the laundry by half. Since we don’t use the dryer except for rainy days an electrical has become my choice because it is less expensive to buy, has fewer and cheaper components for DIYfrs if repair is needed and using google I found the only dryers ever recalled by manufacturers has been the gas models.
Although the raw dollars say natural gas is better, consider also the human and environmental cost of natural gas. Check out the “Gasland” documentaries to see what’s going on in the communities where natural gas is being extracted. Unfortunately the place I rent is wired for natural gas, so I use it too–I just don’t get the same “warm fuzzy” from it that I used to.
Ummm, you do know where electricity comes from right? Coal and Natural Gas is where the vast majority of electricity comes from. By using natural gas directly into your dryer you eliminate a stage of energy conversion. Directly converting natural gas into energy (heat) is cleaner and cheaper than using electricity from your 220v plug for the same thing. One less stage of energy conversion.
Oh and all you smug Electric Car owners…. your electricity is created by gas and coal so, as a matter of fact, you are not lessening gas and coal usage, you are merely adding another stage to your energy production. You add to the damage done, not lessen it. Natural Gas vehicles are an excellent, clean source of transportation, better than electric cars.
Thank you for this statement! I’m so bored with the smug “I use clean electricity.” types WHO HAVE NO CLUE FROM WHERE ELECTRICITY IS GENERATED! Love that “… , you are not lessening gas and coal usage, you are merely adding another stage to your energy production. You add to the damage done, not lessen it. ” part! Thank you!
Hi Len, Thanks for the article. Just was curious, doesn’t the gas dryer also use electricity? How much would that electricity cost to run the gas dry over a year? Shouldn’t that cost be added to the cost of the gas? I would like to see how they would compare after that calculation. Thanks.
Jon, I assumed the amount of electricity required to turn the drum for either dryer type is identical. I don’t see any reason why that assumption would be invalid. So the comparison results should be unaffected.
I assume you don’t have solar panels on your home or don’t plan on getting them any time soon.
Actually, Alex, I do have solar panels on my home.
What about drying clothes on the lowest heat setting? I prefer high heat on the wash cycle (gets the undies and socks clean and keeps the septic tank from freezing at -40) and low heat on drying. If it is mostly for low temperature air movement the price to dry should be comparable. The gap for savings in favour of gas comes from a higher heat setting since the tumble and air dry are electric.
Robin, since the amount of heat required to evaporate a given volume of water essentially doesn’t change, I strongly suspect a lower heat setting won’t save an appreciable amount of money since you just end up running the dryer for a longer period of time.
There’s been a bunch of studies showing the drying time on low is just slightly more than drying as on high, but the energy for a low temp cycle can be less than half of what drying on high uses. The exception is the super energy efficient dryers that use intermittent spinning which use way less energy but take forever to dry anything. We don’t see these often in the US, I know they are more common in Europe, but the way Americans do laundry doesn’t make these ones highly desirable since they can take 5 – 6+ hours to dry a single small load.
But, you can only transfer so much heat/energy into a bunch of wet clothes. Drying on high uses significantly more energy because producing heat isn’t a linear to the amount of energy required to increase the temp, and most of that heat is wasted and vented out. In addition to just wasting energy, it is way more likely to shrink and damage clothing once the water is fully removed from them.
My wife is pestering me about getting a gas dryer for our home so that we can be more efficient. She would really like to buy a new one from a professional so that we can be assured that it will last for a long time and will properly wash our clothes. I was on the fence, but thanks to your article, I now agree with her!
Buy them used. I quickly found out while trying to find a replacement electric dryer that nobody wants gas ones on the used market. At least when I was looking about a year ago, you could get virtually unused high end gas ones for a few hundred dollars while the electric version of the same dryer sell for only about $100 less than retail.
Wow. Very interesting, Jamie! Thanks for the tip.
When our new house was built last year we had the option of electric or propane gas ( no natural gas here). We would have had to pay to have the gas connection installed so we went with electric which is what we have had all our lives in our other homes ( no natural gas in those either). Same with our stove/ oven.