One of the most amazing breakthroughs in technology is an appliance that is both a washer and dryer in one. Now this doesn’t mean two separate units that just happen to be housed together into the same body, like something stackable.

With today’s modern technology, washer and dryer in one means that a single appliance does both of these functions.

At one point in the not-so-distant past, this would have been unheard of. But these are the days of iPhones and flat screen tvs. Nothing is impossible.

Before explaining how a washer and dryer in one works, here’s a little review of the old fashioned method.

Most people have two separate appliances. The one that washes your clothes attaches to your water input. And the rinse water goes out through a pipe that feeds into your waste water drain.

The other appliance dries your clothes by sucking in air from the surrounding environment and heating it, then circulating your clothes through the hot air. It keeps the air moving and always dry & hot by blowing the used and moist air out a vent and starting the whole process again.

A washer and dryer in one does two things differently. It is meant to be used by people in apartments or houses where they do not have access to a vent to expel the used dryer air or water input and waste water drains.

The unit can usually attach to an ordinary sink faucet. And the used water drain can also be put into the sink so that the water just flows out down the drain. Simple.

But the other, rather extraordinary, thing that a washer and dryer in one does differently is how it dries your clothes.

Rather than using heating new air and then blowing it out a vent, it actually recirculates the same air over and over. You may be wondering how it then dries anything if the same wet air is used?

The washer and dryer in one has technology (condensation) to sap the moistness from the air, turn it back into water, and expel it out the same drain pipe that the water from the washing cycle put out.

Does it dry your clothes as well as a traditional unit? No. The recycled air is never going to dry clothes as well as fresh, hot air. But there are quite a few advantages to using a washer and dryer in one.

• It uses less energy to condense the moisture out of the air than to heat fresh air. Less energy means (cha-ching) a bigger cost savings.
  
  
• A washer and dryer in one takes up less space. A single appliance is a lot easier to find space for than two big, clunky units.
  
  
• If you live in a place where drilling a big hole in the wall for a vent is out-of-the-question, a washer and dryer in one is a definite advantage to having none at all and having to spend your free time waiting for the cycle to finish at a local laundromat.