Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors

Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by toyg on Friday October 19, 2018 @03:18AM (#18254751)

It might also be the cultural influence of the UK, where dryers are a basic necessity (because of very high humidity and poor weather most of the year). I grew up in Italy and didn’t even know what a dryer was before I moved to England, where they’ve been ubiquitous since forever.

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by mike-cardwell on Friday October 19, 2018 @04:58AM (#18255245)

I've lived in England for nearly 40 years, in various different cities. Probably lived in a dozen or more houses during that time. Not one of them had a drier. I don't recall seeing one in any of my friends houses either. Always see clothes on washing lines all over the place.

So I think you might be stretching it a bit to say that they're ubiquitous here.

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by toyg on Friday October 19, 2018 @06:30AM (#18255611)

Seriously? In the North literally every house has one.

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by mike-cardwell on Friday October 19, 2018 @07:13AM (#18255808)

I grew up in the North. I live in the Midlands now. They're uncommon in both locations.

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by toyg on Friday October 19, 2018 @11:19AM (#18257280)

I just asked in my work chat, about a dozen Englishmen, based around Lancashire and Yorkshire; all have either a dryer or a washer-dryer; one guy in London has a washer-dryer. These are not rich people, just middle-class IT guys.

In my experience, the only flat I've rented that didn't have a dryer was a student hole in Preston that didn't have a washing machine either.

Maybe it's a sign of the times, maybe Lancashire is a cluster of dryer-lovers, but this is my anecdata.

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by mike-cardwell on Friday October 19, 2018 @11:40AM (#18257486)

Yes. Some houses have them and some don't. I'm also referring to mostly middle class people. I think the only thing that we can take from this thread of anecdata is that the following two statements are false:

"In the North literally every house has one."

"they've been ubiquitous since forever"

Clearly, neither of these things are true.

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by Symbiote on Friday October 19, 2018 @05:00AM (#18255255)

No-one I knew in the Midlands or south of England used a dryer. I lived in 10 houses in London, and never had a dryer.

(I can't comment on the north, Scotland etc; I haven't been in enough private houses there.)

There's usually a breeze, and unless it's actually raining the clothes dry soon enough outside.

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by roxya on Friday October 19, 2018 @09:39AM (#18256606)

I can't access the source of these statistics without registering but:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/289140/tumble-dryers-in-...

Shows that only a little over half even have dryers. One look around from my back garden tells me that this is fairly accurate (if anything, I would say more than 50% of my neighbours dry on a line outside)

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by SmellyGeekBoy on Friday October 19, 2018 @10:49AM (#18257074)

Dryer ownership doesn't tell the whole story either... We use ours a handful of times every year, when we need to wash and dry something in a hurry. I imagine plenty of others go unused most of the time as well.

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by jfk13 on Friday October 19, 2018 @08:57AM (#18256375)

Ubiquitous? Hardly. I grew up in England (in a comfortably-off middle-class home), and didn't live in a house with a dryer until I was around 50.

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by Angostura on Friday October 19, 2018 @04:29AM (#18255074)

for about 8 months of the year our clothes are dried in the garden, here in London

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Re:Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors by C1sc0cat on Friday October 19, 2018 @07:22AM (#18255845)

Only in the last say 30 years

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