Tumble Dryers

[DDY]

Web search for anything these days and the top 100-odd results will be along the lines of;

Top 10 best [product-type]

With marketing guff copied and pasted straight off the manufacture’s product page, no actual useful info, but lots of advertisements and affiliate links.

I'm after a vent hose-free dryer. The only spot in the house I have available for a dryer is remote from an external wall - nowhere for a vent to go.

I broadly understand the function of condenser and heat-pump dryers, what would you recommend considering the operating costs vs purchase costs between the two types?

What are the more value-oriented ones (i.e. cheaper ) like between the two types, e.g. reliability? What are your recent experiences with tumble drier shopping?

No affiliate links, please

[Dashers]

If I was in the market, I'd go for a condensing heat-pump based one. Tumble Dryers are a power hog, so capturing and reusing excess waste is the responsible thing to do. If you use it a lot, you should make some of that back in terms of energy savings. There's usually a sweet spot between having the functionality and getting silly things like WiFi and go faster stripes.

Tend to just spec-browse somewhere like ao.com and then look for reviews on a few models/brands for reliability.

[Fabula]

I got the cheapest heat-pump condenser I could find, a Balay, about 3 years ago. Working fine so far. It came with touch-sensitive buttons which are fine unless you have cold wet hands when trying to activate them. Which you of course will have after transferring the washing to it. So avoid them if possible. Apart from that it works, and detects the moisture content so turns itself off when the clothes are actually dry. Which is great as you only use the energy you need, instead of trying to predict the time needed and overshooting by 20 min of wasted heating, or checking to find still damp clothes.


For me, with a family, the extra cost compared to a basic condenser would probably have paid itself off by now, but obviously it depends on your individual use case.

A heat-pump is not complicated technology, so I wouldn´t think there would be any particular reliability problems. And remember that energy costs will only go up in the future.

[smargh]

Why do you need a tumble dryer? Just put wet clothing on a rack, point a low-speed fan at it, and after around 4-5 hours it's dry.

[Saracen999]

Why do you need a tumble dryer? Just put wet clothing on a rack, point a low-speed fan at it, and after around 4-5 hours it's dry.

I've no idea why DDY wants a dryer, but a relative of mine tried that in a relatively small area and found that putting all that extra moisture in the air caused her breathing problems, due to humidity. Mind you, she was susceptible to that anyway due to a lung complaint.


As for DDYs question, my experience is limited. Miele I have found to be extremely good, but bring a truckload of money or your bank manager when buying. Also very good (from my sample of ONE) are Siemens, and about half the price, but still not a cheap model.

[Jonatron]

Quoting myself from https://forums.hexus.net/home-garden...ml#post4145840

The only place I could find them reviewed was "Which?", so I joined for a month purely to find out which washer dryer to buy.

[DanceswithUnix]

My current dryer is a Bosch, and I hate the useless pile of crud. It has one job, and clothes come out damp if you use the automatic setting. Now mine is a vented model, but I'm confident the useless moisture sensor would be just as pitiful in a condenser version as well.

[jimborae]

Current dryer is a cheapo Beko condenser, sat in the garage. Have to say I was totally against one till we got one. Life with 2 kids is more managable with one, damp house full of drying clothes is not such a common occurence now.

[jimborae]

My current dryer is a Bosch, and I hate the useless pile of crud. It has one job, and clothes come out damp if you use the automatic setting. Now mine is a vented model, but I'm confident the useless moisture sensor would be just as pitiful in a condenser version as well.

The Beko is the same . We just put it on automatic and then put it on again manually for another 20-40 mins and everything is bone dry and 2 sizes smaller.

[DanceswithUnix]

The Beko is the same . We just put it on automatic and then put it on again manually for another 20-40 mins and everything is bone dry and 2 sizes smaller.

Previous tumble dryer was an Indesit. It had a safety recall for potentially burning the house down, and I got fed up of if eating through bearings every year or two. The bearings are not a difficult replacement job, and self fitting not expensive, but I wanted to go buy one that just works, and got it horribly wrong.

I believe the Indesit had a moisture sensor in the vent so it was measuring the water in the air coming out of the washing. You could set whether you wanted enough moisture left to iron the clothes, or say you want them dry enough to hang up and it pretty much got it right.
The Bosch has a couple of metal contacts that brush against the washing to detect conductivity. So if you have a light shirt near the door where the contacts are and say a bunch of socks at the back then the shirt might be fairly dry so it stops drying but the socks are still wet. If the thing mixed the laundry as it tumbles it would work, but it doesn't. As part of that the Bosch only tumbles in one direction, so things like duvet covers end up as a bit ball dry on the outside and wet in the middle. The Indesit would reverse the direction of tumble, reducing creasing and avoiding everything ending up as one bit knot. The Bosch wasn't cheap either.

Apologies for the rant, but hopefully some of that will avoid people making my mistake.

[Unique]

Why do you need a tumble dryer? Just put wet clothing on a rack, point a low-speed fan at it, and after around 4-5 hours it's dry.

when my old washing machine broke down i replaced it with a washer dryer. put stuff in, leave it a few hours, and take it out and it's dry and can be worn. crushed to hell, but that doesn't matter too much for some stuff like underwear and towels. but it saves the hassle of pulling it out then having to leave it on radiators and racks and stuff and wait more hours for it to dry. one of the best things i bought. i only do about one or two washes a week, stick stuff in at night and it's ready in the morning. WFH requires no ironing

[Dareos]

Miele or Siemens imo

dont expect completely trouble free perfectly dry every time because without various sensors and moving parts its not going to happen, and that would reduce reliability.

duvets and sheets are always going to get tangled and have damp bits, socks and other small items are bound to get stuck down the legs of jeans and so on.

Condensing best option i believe, remember to clean filters (fluff is a bitch) after every use (2 second job) and empty water tray when finished. Theres usually another filter or 2 that need cleaned every few months.

[Spreadie]

Previous tumble dryer was an Indesit. It had a safety recall for potentially burning the house down, and I got fed up of if eating through bearings every year or two. The bearings are not a difficult replacement job, and self fitting not expensive, but I wanted to go buy one that just works, and got it horribly wrong.

They last for years if you don't overload them.

The biggest mistake most people make is taking the full load out of the washing machine and dumping it all into the dryer; completely ignoring the max recommended load rating. Pro tip: it weighs a lot more when it's wet. Then it's all: the bearings are wearing out, it doesn't dry properly, it's making horrible noises and, finally, the motor burnt out.

I did about a thousand of the Whirlpool recall/retrofits and I saw and heard the same thing over and over. Rinse and repeat.

[Xlucine]

If I were designing it I'd just use a temp sensor in the exhaust to detect the dryness - it's a much more robust solution, and the water evaporating will hold the temp at a certain level until the clothes are dry (like boiling a kettle).

They last for years if you don't overload them.

The biggest mistake most people make is taking the full load out of the washing machine and dumping it all into the dryer; completely ignoring the max recommended load rating. Pro tip: it weighs a lot more when it's wet. Then it's all: the bearings are wearing out, it doesn't dry properly, it's making horrible noises and, finally, the motor burnt out.

I did about a thousand of the Whirlpool recall/retrofits and I saw and heard the same thing over and over. Rinse and repeat.

It's not hard to spec tumble dryer bearings to handle a full load at once - washing machines handle more weight at ludicrous RPM in the spin cycle (more weight as they haven't wrung the clothes out yet at the start of the cycle) without issue. If the bearings die then it's just cost cutting to blame, although I accept that you need more space to dry clothes than wash them so it's harder to make a tumble dryer that dries well with a washing machine full

[DanceswithUnix]

They last for years if you don't overload them.

We tried quite hard not to, the model we had was one with a larger drum and load rating so it about matched our washing machine. On towel washing day it probably had a bit of abuse.

To be fair to it, with a family worth of washing it felt like the thing was running all day every day and whilst it had clear design issues (hence the recall, and I wasn't impressed with the "clamp the drum harder" fix that seemed to wear out the seals faster) it actually worked rather well. With hindsight perhaps I should have just put a yearly service in my calendar, the work involved in dismantling the thing wasn't *that* hard but it always failed at the worst possible moment

If I were designing it I'd just use a temp sensor in the exhaust to detect the dryness - it's a much more robust solution, and the water evaporating will hold the temp at a certain level until the clothes are dry (like boiling a kettle).

Or you could use a moisture sensor and get a direct reading, or use a sensor that gives you both readings and see if you can integrate them:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/MakerHawk-D...dp/B072391SJV/

the trick is going to be dealing with the lint that gets past the filter.

[Saracen999]

If I were designing it I'd just use a temp sensor in the exhaust to detect the dryness - it's a much more robust solution, and the water evaporating will hold the temp at a certain level until the clothes are dry (like boiling a kettle).



It's not hard to spec tumble dryer bearings to handle a full load at once - washing machines handle more weight at ludicrous RPM in the spin cycle (more weight as they haven't wrung the clothes out yet at the start of the cycle) without issue. If the bearings die then it's just cost cutting to blame, although I accept that you need more space to dry clothes than wash them so it's harder to make a tumble dryer that dries well with a washing machine full

I guess there's a market for everything from naff minimum-price items to the likes of Miele, etc. Not everyone wants to, or can, pay for top quality, and unless you do, everything is designed and built down to a price.

A lesson I learned (the hard way, and in several instalments) over the years, is buy right, buy once. Cheap out, and you buy over and again. Of course, by the time I learned that, I was old enough to be able to afford to buy right. That usually isn't a young person's option.

My first washing machine, an AEG, was a gift from parents when I first bought a house in the 80s, and they'd had it nearly 20 years. It then lasted me 20+ years. Okay, I had it repaired twice .... but both those repairs consisted of replacing rubber hoses that had perished. We only gave up (regretfully) on that machine when, despite a national hunt, we couldn't find a third replacement rubber hose. I seriously considered trying to have one made.

But by 'eck was that thing built. I think the case was made out of ex-battleship armour plate, and the bearings were designed to spin planets on. There wasn't much subtle or elegant about it, but it just washed, and washed, and washed. And gave very good results too. Jeez, I miss that machine.