Difference: airdrying means those 970 BTUs stay inside as heat, dryering means they go outside wastefully? Perhaps there's something I misunderstand about dehumidifiers... Thanks!
The dehumidifiers aren't the only thing you're misunderstanding here. I'm getting on my soapbox, and whether or not you see the love and the concern in the words I've typed is up to you, but it's there. You'll probably get offended, but I suggest you actually read every last word slowly and consider what's being said anyway.
In your quest to be as "mustachian" as possible, you have completely missed the greater lesson by only grasping onto the "cheap" part of the message and you're now progressively spending more and potentially creating more long term problems that will cost you several factors more to fix over the years than the money you're saving not using a clothes dryer or sufficiently heating your home in the winter. This is reactionary, short term planning. It's also called being penny wise and pound foolish. Others might also call it kicking the can down the road. The bottom line is that you're not thinking rationally and
long term about your actions and consequences. I would go so far as to state that you are so short sighted and wrapped up in squeezing every last penny NOW that you don't see the hidden cost that will come LATER. Even now as the costs are coming due, YOU'RE STILL IGNORING THE OBVIOUS!
There's an apt phrase, "
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Have you given this axiom any consideration to unpack its meaning?
Hint: It
doesn't mean that by weight, the prevention is more expensive than the cure. It also doesn't mean that prevention should be avoided because it's always better to get a bulk deal. The phrase is talking about volume of effort and general resources. Realistically, the ounce of prevention financially actually means less effort poured in, and less money spent overall than the pound of cure takes - yet
both fix the
same thing.
Think rationally about this. How much money do you honestly think it would have cost just to have kept the house a bit warmer and dried your clothes in the dryer during the winter months? Let's be serious here, and I suspect you probably have a pretty good idea of how much the cost difference is. Now compare that against the cost of the dehumidifier you've now bought and
the electrical consumption it will take to run and hopefully remediate the mold issue (which it really won't - you're just kicking the can down the road AGAIN). This is just short term cost. Let's go long view on this game.
Once mold sets up in your house, if you don't do something serious to get rid of it and change the environment to ensure it doesn't have the opportunity to set up again, what do you think the cost to fix this situation is going to be? What about the unintended consequences that you didn't think about?
I knew a couple of people with a mold issue in their house. Their grand solution? It wasn't changing how they heated and cooled the house. It wasn't steps to properly reduce home humidity through common sense - such as not making the air moist to begin with leaving them to set up some Rube Goldbergian solution to fix a problem that could have simply been avoided entirely. It wasn't cleaning and scrubbing and replacing mold-damaged items to remove potential sources for continued spore production and further organic waste for more mold to grow in. For 30 years, these people "treated" the mold problem in their house by repeatedly closing it up and leaving for eight hours while they ran an ozone generator to "kill the mold" because they didn't want to put in the effort to actually clean, abate, and do what was needed to make the home unfriendly to mold. They were also packrats. Care to guess how successful that solution was?
Their home is a toxic wasteland now. All of their antiques and rare books that they wanted to hand off to other family members have lost all salvageable value. The wife has a chronic cough and breathing problems now. The husband has had several
health and neurological problems unusual to his family's medical history. Their legacy in this home is now a dumpster filled with moldy trash. How much money do you think they've really saved over the past three decades compared to what they spent on health care and lost in physical possessions?
This is your future if you don't wise up now, Scrooge McDuck. You're already halfway there, but it's not entirely too late for you...
yet.The Torah actually has some wise words on mold remediation. Even in modern times, this advice rings true and accurate. Read
Leviticus 14:33-53 some time. HaShem didn't just say to bleach the mold, paint over the mold with Kilz, run a dehumidifier or an ozone generator; the advice was to REMOVE the mold, stick your possessions out to be bathed in the sunlight for a week (dry heat and UV), and thoroughly wash all fabric from inside the home.
The people in this community have helped tell you repeatedly what you need to do to change and prevent this mess from getting worse. Stop being a cheapskate and open up your pocketbook to do what actually needs to be done, and that starts with an attitude adjustment towards money - it should be a tool in your life, nothing more. The line between frugality and stinginess can be a fine one sometimes, especially in this forum, but the difference between that stinginess and frugality is the latter is financial prudence tempered with
wisdom.... you clearly have not demonstrated wisdom in your judgment process thus far, even with your responses to the solutions offered. Don't do what you want to do, just suck it up and do what actually needs to be done. Certain modern practices have a cost to do
right, stop being afraid of paying what you must to do so.