Creda tumble dryer

[Matthew Mitchell]

Hi, I was just given a Creda Excel mini dryer. It has no hose fitting and no condenser tray, is this normal, is the water just coming out as moisture?

Many thanks

[Brian Gaff (Sofa)]

Try running it if the windows all steam up but no puddle appears, then yes! Brian

[Roger Hayter]

The original, and cheaper, tumble dryers just discharged wet air and you have to throw hose through an (open) window or a vent in a wall when you use them. Discharging wet air into the room will *not* be acceptable.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa)]

Well you could charge for it as a sauna? Brian

[John Rumm]

What is the model number?

[Dave Liquorice]

Check it's not one of the ones that have a recall (at last..) for catching fire. It probably isn't being "mini" I think those affected are all "full size".

Hose as in water supply or hose as in 4" vent outlet?

[GB]

Our Miele dryer stopped working, and on checking the code I discovered it was stuffed up with fibres. The back of the machine was full, and the exit hose was solid. Goodness knows how it had kept going for the last

20 years without ever being cleaned out. The point, though, is that it stopped working, without drama. It can't be hard to have a temperature sensor in the machine that shuts it off if it gets too hot.

I appreciate that Miele is more expensive than Creda, but this is a foreseeable and serious fire risk, pretty easily avoidable with appropriate sensors. It's an obvious design criterion.

I extracted a few kilos of very dry, finely shredded fibres from the machine plus the hose. Normally, the fact the fibres are compressed would help suppress fire, but when the dryer is running there's air being blown in to fan any embers.

If Creda have sent out machines that catch fire easily, that's sheer idiocy.

[Steve Walker]

From experience with a faulty Hotpoint dryer: some fibres always got past the filter. The filter housing was at the front of the machine and the vent pipe was at the rear, with the two connected by a 4" rigid pipe. That rigid pipe was *NOT* securely located and came loose more than once. The loose fibres escaped and built up on the floor, under the machine - where the air intake was. When enough had built up, it would suck up a clump, which would pass straight through to the heater section and lodge on the hot, wire elements, where they would smoulder and could then ignite. There was no overtemperature or flow blockage to be detected beforehand, simply a smell of burning and the next stage being a fire.

If the huge number of faulty dryers being recalled have similar design problems, they too will not be suffering from a blockage and/or overtemperature that can be detected.

See above as to why it may not be the same problem.

If our experience is at all common, it is poor design, but perhaps not an obvious problem. They presumably did not consider that a failure of one part would cause a build-up of fluff that could then be pulled in by the fan and onto the heater elements. Obvious with hindsight, but I suppose that they did not expect the poor fitting of the pipes and therefore didn't plan for a build-up of fluff under the machine.

SteveW

[GB]

Okay, I take back the idiocy comment.

[Steve Walker]

I wouldn't completely if I were you.

SteveW

[newshound]

I discharge mine into a shower enclosure. It only has a manually switched fan but as long as you use that and close the doors it is fine.

[Chris Hogg]

And oh-so convenient for extinguishing the fire when the drier catches light :-)

[T i m]

<snip>

Our old Zanussi appears to *suck* air in from the outside world *via* the heater elements, draw it though the drum and front filter before

*blowing* it out the exhaust plumbing (up some rigid plastic trunking and out though the wall).

I do have to clear the exit grill and flexi-hose between machine hand rigid exit duct once-in-a-while and generally clean the internals of the machine when I'm in there replacing a belt, pulley, spigot or motor bearings etc.

The coiled wire heater elements (like a fan heater) has generally been pretty clear every time.

Cheers, T i m

[Steve Walker]

That's basically what we had, although our fan was between the heater and the drum. The problem was the rigid pipe from front to back was not properly held, came loose and discharged fibres, that had managed to escape the filter, underneath the machine. That meant that they built up there, until sucked, en-masse, into the heater elements.

Ours certainly wasn't. I took to checking the pipe and cleaning out underneath every fortnight, until we eventually got rid of it (it needed a new heater (one element worked, but the other had failed where it had had burnt fibres on it) and the front slipper pads for the drum needed replacing. With that and the repeated exhaust problems, we decided to replace it - which also gave us the opportunity for a larger capacity one.

SteveW