vintagerepairer
Well-known member
Heat-pump dryers
Picking up on this point, if I may, I notice these beasts often feature in my Which? magazine. May I be the first to say I know very little of them?
From what I have gleamed, they cost considerably more to buy, but if used regularly and if they last as long as one might hope, they would make significant savings on the electricity consumption. However, one subscriber did write in to say that his Bosch heat-pump dryer was liable to need servicing every 12 months, which was costly and inconvenient, but failure to do so meant his dryer was running for a number of hours at a time before the washing was actually dry.
Now, on the other side of this completely, my cleaning lady has recently purchased a rather inexpensive 8KG Hoover vented dryer, with sensor dry facility. She informs me her choice was made solely on the basis of what was in stock locally on the day her rather old 6KG Hotpoint Ultima sensor-condenser dryer broke down. The ability to vent the dryer in her home was such that a condenser was not actually necessary, indeed she tells me that some 12 or so years after buying the Hotpoint, she cannot now recall why she went for a condenser in the first place, adding that the bother of emptying water tanks and cleaning condenser units was quite wearing.
So, with all this in mind, she tells me she is astounded as to how fast the new vented dryer gets through a wash load some 2KG larger than her old machine could cope with. Her washing machine -also 8KG- spins at 1500rpm and it now takes around an hour and a quarter or so, ass opposed to double that for her condenser dryer. This got me thinking long and hard about efficiency, because in my own mind I see the equation being rather simple; to get the wet laundry dry as quickly as possible, without over-drying it. Thus, if a vented dryer is doing this faster than a condenser dryer with the same kilowatt loading, surely it has to be more efficient, irrespective of what letter it is rated at on the energy label?
Picking up on this point, if I may, I notice these beasts often feature in my Which? magazine. May I be the first to say I know very little of them?
From what I have gleamed, they cost considerably more to buy, but if used regularly and if they last as long as one might hope, they would make significant savings on the electricity consumption. However, one subscriber did write in to say that his Bosch heat-pump dryer was liable to need servicing every 12 months, which was costly and inconvenient, but failure to do so meant his dryer was running for a number of hours at a time before the washing was actually dry.
Now, on the other side of this completely, my cleaning lady has recently purchased a rather inexpensive 8KG Hoover vented dryer, with sensor dry facility. She informs me her choice was made solely on the basis of what was in stock locally on the day her rather old 6KG Hotpoint Ultima sensor-condenser dryer broke down. The ability to vent the dryer in her home was such that a condenser was not actually necessary, indeed she tells me that some 12 or so years after buying the Hotpoint, she cannot now recall why she went for a condenser in the first place, adding that the bother of emptying water tanks and cleaning condenser units was quite wearing.
So, with all this in mind, she tells me she is astounded as to how fast the new vented dryer gets through a wash load some 2KG larger than her old machine could cope with. Her washing machine -also 8KG- spins at 1500rpm and it now takes around an hour and a quarter or so, ass opposed to double that for her condenser dryer. This got me thinking long and hard about efficiency, because in my own mind I see the equation being rather simple; to get the wet laundry dry as quickly as possible, without over-drying it. Thus, if a vented dryer is doing this faster than a condenser dryer with the same kilowatt loading, surely it has to be more efficient, irrespective of what letter it is rated at on the energy label?
