The general advice seems to be (at least for certain models) don't use it until it has been modified/repaired.
So does anyone know what the modification/repair is, or do they just clean it?
I've got a 40+ year old small Creda (3kg, 2Kw), doesn't get used very often, but the heating has gone (drum still turns ok). Wondering if I can do anything to make it safe before spending out on a new heating element, or replacing it with a new machine. I know about cleaing the fluff filter, and haven't yet had the back off to check inside, there may even be a cutout that's tripped or heater fuse blown.
I'll try from memeory of watching the guy do ours, it takes a good two hours to do and involves quite extensive disasembly of the machine. A complete new back panel with a better seal to the back of the drum is fitted, A hole is drilled in the back of a drum and a pin fitted into it, this pin clears any build up lint on the new seal. A new rigid strut is fitted diagonally across the back of the machine and drum bearing. I think that is to ensure that the thicker/better back panel to drum seal doesn't distort the back panel reducing the effectiveness of the new seal. They also clean the fluff out, Ours wasn't bad, it doesn't get a lot of use, the chap said some are half full of lint...
A machine that old won't be one of the affected ones (It pre-dates them by a couple of decades...) but wether it has other issues due to it's age is another matter.
Can you get a new element for a machine that old? TBH I'd be surprised if you can.
A good clean of all the internal air paths is probably not a bad idea. We had a washer drier that stopped drying, one of the single shot thermal fuses had gone. Found lint caked around the air heater elements, lint that was lighly charred...
In our previous tumble drier, I think I replaced the heating element twice over a period of 30 years. About 2 years ago we bought a new one which was delivered about a month late probably because it had to be modified.
And what useless advice it is, considering that 2-years on they still have a large number to modify.
Under the circumstances, if ours had been one of the effected ones, I'd point out that when our last one broke beyond me fixing it (yet again) at an economic cost, we bought a new one within days, as school uniform for three children often means stuff being washed dried and ironed during the evening, ready for the next morning and in wet weather, we're stuck without it. I'd have contacted them by phone and follow-up email for the record, given them a week to give me a reasonable timeframe for modification, bought another and then seen them in the small claims court for the cost.
Our previous one flexed at the backplate, causing air/fluff leakage at the front and had a badly retained 4" pipe from front to back that regularly came loose and allowed escape inside the base of the machine.
Large quantities of fluff built up rapidly and were sucked by the fan straight into the heater, where it smouldered and stank, but fortunately never burst into flame.
Very likely a standard element in a number of machines and so possibly still available.
They're normally only a wire coil on a heat resistant board, so it should be possible to transplant elements from another machine onto the original board if necessary.
If yours is one of the ones affected get it registered one the website and they will offer you a new one for £60 including taking away the old on e. Simple. We did that and very quickly had a brand new replacement tumble drier, even a better than the old one.
As it happens about a year before we replaced the old one I had to repair i t (just a blown PCB). It was *full* to the top with fluff (right to the top of the drum)
I had one of the affected ones (quite an old one) and at the time I applied I could wait 6 months for an engineer or pay £19 and take it to Currys to swap for a brand new one.
I wouldn't like to bet on it being "a nice safe" dryer. There is still a heat source and presumably a heat exchanger with lots of nice dry fine lint about to clog it up and overheat...
No heat exchanger. Any lint that gets past the normal lint filter only contaminates the ?exhaust? side of the system. Lint getting to the heating elements of the electric ones that have been catching fire seems to have been a design/construction flaw.
Of course nothing is ?absolutely? safe but it seems to be well designed with plenty of fail-safes and has been astonishingly reliable.
Quite, bear in mind that the advice changed from "it's safe just don't run it unattended" to "do not use" without any changes to the affected driers. Whirlpool have not handled this issue very well at all, they have only done the barest minimmum required to sort it out and most of that has come from being legally obliged to do it.
I sometimes wonder if the owners of the Creda and Hotpoint brands knew of the problem when they sold out to Whirlpool. IIRC the issue came to light when Whirlpool audited their aquistions...
1 million has been banded about but Whirlpool have said the free repair will be done within 2 weeks of registering your drier. What planet are they on? It takes two hours to do, lets assume the engineer only needs 1/2 an hour travel between each one, he can do 3 in a day provided they are happy with a 30 min lunch break. 3/day,
30/fortnight (5 working days/week), Lets say there are 500 engineers available, that's 15,000 out of 1,000,000 done in two weeks. At that rate it'll still be just over 2 1/2 years before those million driers have been fixed. That's also assuming that the engineers do nothing but this fault repair, they don't they have the normal broken appliance work to do as well and assumes that they all work a 5 day week, 52 weeks of the year...
I'd urge anyone not to buy any Whirlpool, Creda, Indesit, Hotpoint or Proline appliances. If something goes wrong, they'll do their damndist to wriggle out of doing anything but the absolute bare minimum.
Have you entered the "new" ones serial number back into the registration site? It appears that (some of?) the faulty ones they took away were "repaired" and the sold as *new* driers with the "safe" green sticker.
When this came to light, they slightly altered the model numbers so the serial number and (full) model wouldn't flag up as faulty but remove the model number alteration and lo up pops that faulty flag...
I think so as well but can't quickly find a reference.
No idea myself , but a friend has a hotpointwhich seemingly is self generating red fluff and smelling of charred plastic. It is over 10 years old though so my guess is that some material internally is breaking down. Brian
10 years is within the period when Hotpoint et al, were flogging defective dryers (2004 to 2015 is the window IIRC). I suggest your friend enters the serial number and model into the Hotpoint registration site and get the thing looked at/repaired.
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