After 5 years I finally made the temporary position of the tumble dryer in the garage permanent. When I looked underneath it I discovered that there are vents. The vents were blocked solid with fluff. Worth a look at?
Well if your time is not charged for, certainly, but it might still be burnt out. Brian
Tumble dryer fluff is a major cause of fires. Needs to be cleaned out.
Nar, it has been working fine for about nine years................ Gulp!
I cleaned them out. The fluff collector thingee is cleaned after every use. I did not even know there were vents in the bottom the machine until I angled it against the wall to clean underneath. How many people look under a tumble dryer?
So, are you saying that the dryer discharges some of the hot air through the base, or more likely perhaps, there are grilles to allow some ventilation of the space in which the drive motor sits?
Chris
I would say that the vents are there for ventilation. To be honest I have never taken one apart.
There are two styles...
There are none I am aware of which discharge throught the base, back into the room. Likely it will be just general dust which has collected
- no harm in cleaning it out though.
Ours draws air in at the bottom from the room. An equal amount is discharged via the exhaust hose through the wall. Our previous dryer used a 4" plastic pipe from the front of the machine to the rear discharge point - this regularly moved, filling the interior of the machine with fluff.
The filters always seem to let quite a lot of fluff escape through the exhaust. I also have a feeling that only some of the air is fresh/exhausted and the remainder is recirculated - allowing the loose fluff to accumulate nicely in the heater!
SteveW
It was not dust, it was thick fluff and came out in lumps. I used the sucker thing on the Dyson to suck it out. There was handfuls of it.
It's cat hairs.
The cat's sneak in and leave them there:-)
And why did you have to use the Dyson? Have Mrs Pounders arms dropped off?
No cats dare enter my garage. If they did, I have a large stock of tough plastic bags. The Dyson sucked the fluff out very well. Mrs Pounder is riddled with arthritis.
Actually I think most of these don't continually circulate the air, they just dry it a bit on the way out. Some more successfully than others.
If we leave the utility room door open it gets all hot and sweaty in there, if we leave it open so it stays cool the condenser works fine. And this is a heat-pump one :(
Andy
Yes. Vented dryers draw in dry air from the room heat it, use it and exhaust the warm, humid air outside the house. Condenser dryers recirculate and dry their air, leaving the water in a waste tank to be emptied once in a while, but they will require cooling air to be drawn from and returned to the room.
SteveW
If you're buying a new one (eg redoing a kitchen, where making a hole in the wall isn't impossible) are there any pros and cons of each type?
Stale water in a waste tank sounds like a bad plan - if it's next to the washing machine (as many are) do they not have a means of plumbing into the washer waste?
Theo
The open vented ones are supposed to use more energy (the condensing ones recapture the heat). Open vents also cause cold draughts in winter if you leave the dryer door open!
Ours (a high end Bosch) doesn't. Not an issue though. The tank is long and thin and fits along the top LH edge of the machine; the front looks for all the world like a washing machine soap drawer, and just slides out. Youre meant to empty it after each drying run, at the same time you clean the fluff filter. Takes all of 15 seconds or so. Do that and there
*is* no stale water.
I prefer the simplicity of a vented one. It also means that if you need to dry things quickly (such as school uniform items that have been messed up) during the summer, the heat mainly goes outside the house instead of heating the kitchen even more.
Condensers are more energy efficient and during the winter, the waste heat warms the house. They can also be positioned anywhere, not needing to be against an outside wall. Some do have the option to be plumbed in.
SteveW
We've had both sorts, and I prefer the condenser. One only occasionally has to use it during the summer (and to be honest I don't find it generates a lot of heat), but you're using it a lot in winter when the heat is useful anyway.
I'd rather have the rather substantial saving in running costs!
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