When we moved in to our current house, there was inexplicably no space in the utility room for a dryer, and ours lived in the garage for a bit (Nov/Dec time) until I got around to "adjusting" some cupboards. I can't really say I noticed a difference in performance in the change - but I was also unaware of the garage not being generally recommended, so I neither was I looking for a difference.
Our utility room is actually the repurposed back end of our integral garage (we don't need it for vehicles) with a basic stud wall divider and some floor and ceiling finishing to make it match the kitchen in appearance. Of note, there is no radiator or heat source in our utility so it used to get cold in there over winter. The issue was the common up and over style door.. thin alloy and gaps around all four sides. A chunky rubber weather seal along the bottom edge, thick brush strips around the top & sides and adhesive thermal insulation sheets cut to fit the inside of the garage door sorted it out for ~£60. Once we did that, the garage was only a couple of degrees cooler than the kitchen at worst, even in winter and the added benefit is the room above is also warmer. If you have an integral garage, I'd recommend having a look into it and I'd be happy to link the products I personally used if it'll help.
All the houses I see with a built in garage that’s way too small for modern family cars makes me wonder why nobody just bricks the door up, slap a window in it and gain and extra room.
I literally shake with anger, have a small swear and flip the bird at every house where I've seen that happen, it's even worse when I see new (mostly social) housing without garages. Won't somebody think of the kittens, erm sorry, motorcyclists, cyclists, hobbyists, home gymers, DIYer's, service engineers etc etc etc etc
I've always wondered, does throwing ice cubes into dryers with shirts make the shirt come out no crease? It's one of those life-hacks that I never gets to try but keeps cropping up in my mind and don't understand how it works. For drying, my wife hangs everything in conservatory or garden. We had bought a portable hot air drying rack when we had our baby, was April time and we found didn't really needed it. I guess it's easier when there's enough space to hang laundry and good airflow in conservatory. My house is like this, it's now the study. Very handy to have an extra indoor space. We honestly have absolutely zero use for a garage and glad the work was done well by the previous owner. Bought the house for vast in-door space it came with plus having driveway for charging, both are paying off now (going no-ICE on both cars soon and WFH last 2 years). The exercise thingy goes into conservatory, the DIY stuff goes into utility room, the clutter goes into loft, utility room or conservatory, the mower and kid's bike/scooter goes into the shed.
Our house has a separate garage which has then been joined onto the conservatory with a bizarre sort of semi-permanent extension which has enough space for the washer and dryer. The garage is crammed with tools and it's actually pretty good to be able to go in and out without going outdoors, but with the advantage of the noise being kept at bay. It's really weird but it works. I've considered a heat pump dryer before but unfortunately when our useage was higher they were too expensive and now they're affordable we barely use it any more
Dryer arrived and all installed, integrated into Home Assistant and already starting to pay for itself. It's averaging 1.7kWh for a full load, rather than the nearly 5kWh of the old one. It dries just as well as my old condenser, if not better surprisingly and it's taking on average 90-120 mins, so yeah a little longer but completely manageable and way less than the 3+ hour estimate the machine says when it first sets off. Thanks for all the advice and anecdotes. Very helpful as always.
