When you realize just how inexpensive and easy to install this clothes dryer vent/heat reclaimer is, you will wonder why every household does not have one, and why you have never heard of one before. The Heat Keeper CHK100 is the simplest of the clothes dryer money saving devices noted in this article series. The Heat Keeper CHK100 provides an easy way to get the heat which your dryer is exhausting into the great outdoors to stay indoors.
Ordinarily, the hot air that is exhausted from a dryer's vent causes a negative pressure in the building from which it is blowing and as a result air is drawn back from the outdoors into the vicinity of the dryer through cracks and gaps in the building to compensate. However, this air is cold. It is just as if you opened a window quite wide. A lot of heat is sent out, and lots more cold air comes back to take its place.
So, even though you are running a heat-producing appliance, you are actually cooling your house down when you opperate a vented dryer. To put it another way, when you run a dryer that vents to the outside, you are discarding your dryer's energy, and you are discarding your furnace's energy as well. The Heat Keeper CHK100 stops this from happening.
When you use this clothes dryer vent/ heat reclaimer not only do you preserve the ambient heat from your furnace or space heating system, but you also recycle the heat that was produced by your dryer itself. You change what was originally a heat losing operation into a heat gaining opperation. When you consider that a dryer heat element produces approximately 5000 watts of heat (the same as two base board heaters) then you start to realize what a saving this is.
