ᐅ Utility Room / Technical Room on the Upper Floor – Opinions?

Patience and the understanding that eventually you'll just hang the laundry on countless drying racks in the utility room and turn on the heating.

By hanging laundry indoors in the utility room or under the carport during bad weather, you save a lot of money and it is gentler on your clothes.

In frost conditions, without rain, laundry can also dry outside. It just needs to be dry. (Yes, hanging it up eventually hurts your fingers, since it’s cold.) In my opinion, the ideal place is the attic drying space; unfortunately, it’s the farthest from the laundry room in the basement, but in modern single-family homes, practically speaking, neither usually exists anymore.

In the past, when there were combustion heating systems in the basement, laundry dried very well there. Since condensing boilers draw air from outside, this is no longer the case.

Does anyone have experience drying laundry indoors with a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery? Does it work well? Quickly?

BeHaElJa schrieb:
Patience and the realization that eventually you just hang the laundry on countless racks in the utility room and turn on the heater

You are funny.
In our freezer room there is no heating – and as I’ve mentioned before, it’s a bit cooler than elsewhere so the potatoes don’t sprout.
The laundry/utility room has underfloor heating, yet I still don’t want to miss the comfort of not having cold hands or having to move my car out of the carport first.
I already have a small issue drying delicate laundry; I’ve installed a small clothesline on the wall for that.

Bieber0815 schrieb:
Does anyone have experience drying laundry indoors when a mechanical ventilation with heat recovery system is installed? Does it work well? Quickly?

Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery is not designed for drying laundry… it’s not meant to dry a full rack of wet clothes. In some cases, with dry and warm air, it might help, but over time, that would contradict the whole purpose of such a system, which is to prevent moisture problems like mold.

In our utility room, laundry dries quite quickly and can often be taken down the next day, sometimes even sooner, depending on the type of clothing. The room is connected to the controlled ventilation system’s exhaust, and of course, the heating is on (as it is throughout the rest of the house). This is important to prevent mold caused by temperatures that are too low.

In the living areas, there is usually only fresh air supply, so I wouldn’t recommend drying laundry there.

There is no drying rack in the way either; instead, we have clotheslines stretched across the room, where we can easily hang laundry, including larger items like bedding.

Of course, it also depends on how convenient you want it to be. It’s obviously easier to just put everything in the dryer, but for us, the space and money simply weren’t worth it. We didn’t have a dryer in our old house either (there wasn’t enough room), and we didn’t miss it at all in the six years we lived there. So why change things just because we now live in our own house?

ypg schrieb:
Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery is not designed for drying laundry... it is not intended to dry a whole rack of wet clothes.

But is cooking, bathing, and showering allowed? In my opinion, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery ensures an air exchange rate (depending on design and operation). Whether laundry dries quickly or slowly and whether the relative humidity remains at a "comfortable" and healthy level naturally depends on other factors... The ventilation system itself will certainly not be damaged, and neither will the house—unless the user is completely negligent (figuratively speaking).

I am more interested in practical experiences, like those reported by Teyla.