JML Dri Buddi

He's Jake the Peg, deedle eedle eedle um,
With his extra leg, deedle, eedle eedle um.

As a wife and mother I am used to not having any say whatsoever in what we watch on television. During the day when Holly is not at pre-school she wants to watch CBeebies and in the evening when Darren gets home from work, the programme schedule seems to consist of Top Gear, The A Team and any other manly programmes he can find whilst surfing the Sky channels. One thing he does hate is adverts, so whatever channel he is watching, as soon as the adverts come on, he starts channel hopping. So one night late last year when the adverts were on and he was bored, Darren started channel hopping and ended up on one of the shopping channels. However, he paused too long on the JML channel which was selling an item called the Dri Buddi. Before he even had a chance to change channels he knew the damage to his wallet had already taken place. I already had the JML Dri Buddi page up on the internet.

In the past during the winter and on wet days I had always used the dehumidifier to dry my washing but this had recently decided to only sometimes work for about ½ hour before switch itself off, thus leaving me with a room full of still wet washing. So the Dri Buddi seemed the perfect answer. I checked out the website and found that the Dri Buddi (from here on in the Dri Buddi will be known as Jake) used hot air, circling in a large bag to dry your washing. Uses 1/3 less electricity than the standard tumble drier (this I can not confirm as I have never had a tumble drier). Leaves your clothes uncreased and with the smell of the outside. Sounded great and it was cheaper than buying a new dehumidifier. That was it I had to have one, but at £59.99 is it not cheap. I noticed on the JML website that Tesco on-line sold them so that was where I decided to buy it from. I would get extra club card points, cash back through Cashback Kings and they were offering free delivery on anything over £50.00, plus I knew if I was not happy with the product I could just send it back. Credit card in hand I set about ordering and waited for delivery. I had planned to put some washing in over night on the Tuesday night ready for the expected Wednesday delivery. Then horror upon horrors I received an email on Tuesday evening saying that my delivery had been delayed until the Thursday. I sulked for the rest of the evening. Low and behold a courier man knocked on my door Wednesday morning and there in his hand was Jake, I grabbed Jake, nearly kissed the courier man, signed my name and rushed in to open the box.

A bit about Jake.

Jake has three legs, is 5 foot 2 inch tall and rather skinny. He is made mostly from aluminium and comes in 8 pieces. Above his three legs sits the motor unit, sticking out of this is a tube which connects to another tube that looks rather like an umbrella with 6 arms. Jake took me all of 1 minute to put together and is quite light when you pick him up, so light in fact that I can pick him up one handed when empty although his height makes him wobble about a bit. When his arms are open he has a spread of 64 cm. Each arm is 25 cm long with 3 x 1 cm slots 6 cm apart. He holds 18 hangers worth of damp washing and is enclosed in a large bright blue plastic type bag which has 6 holes in the top to allow moisture to escape and zips up the front and about 1/3 of the top. On the motor unit is a timer switch, which allows you to set the time you want the machine on for, left for continuous or right for up to 3 hours in 30 minute sections.

Using Jake.

Hang your washing on up to18 hangers (not supplied), pop them on the arms making sure the the clothes are not touching to ensure that the air can circulate easy, zip the bag up and turn the timer to the required time. The hot air from the motor rises up and dries your washing. Jake uses around 900 watts of electricity per hour when in use. I have checked this out with our electricity monitor meter and have found this to be correct.

My thoughts on Jake.

Jake has some good points and some bad points. For me it is convenient for drying my washing. It would be nice to hang the washing out, however even on the sunny winter days that we get, the sun does not reach my washing line in the back garden. We have economy 7 electricity metering so I always do my washing one night, hang the clothes on Jake without using the bag during the day then at bedtime, zip the bag up, switch the machine to fill the bag with hot air, get down on my hands and knees to make sure there is a proper seal on the bottom of the bag. Jake is plugged in to a timer, so he only ever comes on over night. The first time I used Jake I set him for the maximum time on the clock of 3 hours during the day, kept going upstairs to check how he was doing. After the 3 hours I found that my washing just wasn't dry so set the clock for another 3 hours and this seemed to do the trick. With Jake only having a clock that works for 3 hours, I was expecting my washing to be dry, so was disappointed that this was not the case. I now set Jake on continuous and set the timer that Jake is plugged into to come on for around 6 hours to dry my 18 garments.

The only time I use the machine to full capacity is with the whites, which contains most of Holly's clothes, so these are on small children's hangers with a few items of mine on adult hangers. I peg any smalls on to adult hangers. I have found that after 6 hours about 95% of the washing is dry, the parts that are not dry tend to be sleeves on t-shirts, any socks that have not been opened up to their full length and some corners of clothing that are touching. I normally remove all the dried items and leave the slightly damp items on Jake without the cover on and within a couple of hours the clothes are dry.

Darren's work clothes which consist of high visibility trousers made from a thick cotton material and two fleece jumpers and some t shirts seem to fair about the same even though there only seems to be about 12 items and I try to jig the hangers about to ensure the are not touching. I peg the trousers onto the hanger during the day, then before switching the machine on remove the pegs and fold them over the hanger otherwise they are too long for Jake.

Jeans are a nightmare, they are just too thick, so I leave them in the machine for 6 hours then put them on the radiator to finish them off.

Thick woollen jumpers are not bad as I normally only have about 7 or 8 items in this load, so they tend to have a lot more room to themselves to dry.

Towels are an absolute no no. I washed three bath towels, three medium towels and 1 hand towel. The bath towels were folded over two hangers but Jake did not dry these at all. I haven't even attempted our super king size quilt cover or king size sheets. These just go in front of the dehumidifier along with any towels.

I do sometimes struggle putting the bag on without pushing some of the hangers back, this then means trying to manoeuvre your body around to grab the hanger that has moved to put it back in the correct position. If you do not do it that means those two articles will not dry.

JML claims that Jake dries your washing and reduces the amount of ironing you need to do. Well I'm sorry but that is complete rubbish, I still need to iron 90% of my washing, the other 10% is smalls so these don't get ironed anyway. They also claim that your washing smells as fresh as when you have dried it outside. OK so the washing doesn't smell musty but I can say I have not smelt the outside freshness. When I first got Jake, the room smelt rather plasticy however this smell dissipated quite quickly. As for their claims that your towels come out soft and fluffy, my towels just came out still wet, so maybe you need to leave them in for around 24 hours.

Another of JML's claims is that Jake makes a quiet whistling noise, well the people that came up with that claim must be deaf. He is quite noisy but I have him working in a spare bedroom with the door shut so it is not too noisy when in bed, however if I wake in the middle of the night I can hear him working away although he does not keep me awake.

In the morning after I have dried a batch of clothes the windows are saturated with condensation so it is worth keeping a window slightly open to relieve this. Jake does not heat the room up at all, Darren was expecting the heat to come out of the top of the bag and was surprised when he walked in the bedroom one morning when Jake was still on to find that the room was of a normal temperature, unlike using the dehumidifier which heats the room up so much, you could cook your dinner in there.

I purchased some cheap plastic hangers to use with Jake but I have found that some heavy items and the heat has made them bend, so I found some really strong plastic hangers and these seem to have lasted better.

I do find Jake cheaper to run than using my dehumidifier. The dehumidifier would need to be on from about 10 at night to about 7 or 8 in the morning, which would be round about 10 hours of electricity at approx 1.5 KW thus costing, on economy 7 (approx 5p per unit) about 75p per night, however Jake uses around 6 units of electricity over night thus costing about 30p. If we had a standard tariff of electricity I would wash and dry my clothes on the same day, but to keep costs down my washing machine, dishwasher and Jake are only used on cheap rate electricity. My normal everyday usage, on my electricity monitor is approx., 11 units per day when I use Jake it goes up to 17 units per day.

One annoying thing is that for some reason, whenever I am loading the machine up with washing I find myself singing the Jake the Peg song which is why I have nicknamed him Jake!

I am keeping Jake because he does not do too bad a job. Jake now costs £58.71 with the VAT discount and is available at the JML website, JML TV Shopping Channel, by ringing 0871 221 2677 or Tesco.com. Ebay sell a similar item called the Tornado Dry for between £45 and £50.00 which I spotted when I was searching to get the best deal for Jake, however I had never heard of the company selling it so decided to steer clear.

JML say that the Jake would be ideal for camping trips. Yes he would be as he is quite light and compact when packed up, however I have no idea if caravans or tents come with the standard 3 point domestic plug which is what Jake is supplied with, as the last time I went camping it was about 25 years ago, so I'm sure things have moved on a lot since then.

You can watch the demo video of JML's claims of Jake at http://www.jmldirect.com/Dri-Buddi-PD200​1/

Many thanks for reading, Anna and Jake.