Our vented cheap Tumble Dryer has packed up. Its is vented to the outside of the house.

You can buy them from about £120, but I can see that one with a ‘dry sensor’ would be useful and save money.

Are vented ones more/less efficient than condensing, or are they just cheaper to make, and less faffy as you do not have to empty the water?

Whats good currently?

Ta

We have a Zanussi Lindo 1000 heat pump condenser dryer, works very well except on smaller loads when the humidistat tends to cut out before it’s actually finished drying. Much cheaper than a tumble dryer to run (only a few 100 watts).

We have a condenser dryer. Whilst they work well the tank will need emptying, condenser unit cleaning and still doesn’t work as efficiently as a vented dryer.
When this packs up a whole is been drilled in the wall for a vented dryer.

We have this Beko condenser with heatpump one (£380 from ao.com)
http://ao.com/product/DPU8360W-Beko-Condenser-Tumble-Dryer-White-23590.aspx

Pricier than budget options, but we’ve got young kids, laundry is pretty much constant, so going for a drier with an A+ energy rating means we save money in the long run.

My maths at the time was as follows:
[other B-rated drier] consumes 4.48 kWh per cycle, so ~55.73p a cycle or £144.90 a year
8360 consumes 2.68 kWh per cycle, so ~33.34p a cycle or £86.68 a year

It doesn’t bake clothes to a crisp like our old drier did, but it does take a bit longer to get them dry as a result. I like it though.

I found this site useful when comparing them:
http://www.reevoo.com/browse/product_type/tumble-dryers

We have a condenser dryer. Whilst they work well the tank will need emptying, condenser unit cleaning and still doesn’t work as efficiently as a vented dryer.

I just plumbed it in to avoid ever having to empty the tank. Not too hard.
Filters on the Beko are accessible from the front and pretty easy to clean.

Agree that vented is better for cheaper if you have that option.

We have a siemens condensor, 5 years in and no problems so far. I prefer the condensor dryer because it pumps the heat into the house. Ours is under the stairs and heats the hall when it’s on.

Cost a lot more than a normal one though so I doubt I save anything in the long run, just feels wrong pumping heat OUT of the house whilst running the heating…

curve ball howabout a Gas fired one (white knight brand)…. v cheap to run only downside is it needs a suitable gas connection

Hotpoint Ultima condensing dryer here. Just had man out to fix it this morning. Thermostat issue. £20 to fix. I’d been drying a duvet in it which probably caused the problem. First issue in 6 years. It’s been on nearly every day since we got it.

Thanks for the info.

Not thought about the venting just pumping the hot air out in to the environment.

Do all the condensing ones vent warm air in to the room? I would see this as a benefit as it would reduce heating bills. 🙂

To be fair I had looked at a Beko 8kg Condensing one with B energy rating. Will have to look at the power consumption compared to an equivalent load vented.

Do all the condensing ones vent warm air in to the room? I would see this as a benefit as it would reduce heating bills.

Could be a downside if the warm air is also moist.

FWIW we keep heat-pump Beko I mentioned in a cupboard, often with the door closed, and although machine gets warm to the touch it’s not blowing out loads of hot air that I notice.

(Which is good in my view as escaping hot air would mean it is wasting energy).

Could be a downside if the warm air is also moist

^ this.

‘Wet’ air takes much more energy to heat, so you end up getting a damper house that costs more to heat.

Vented, a washing line and a de-humidifier.

I recommend a white knight gas tumble dryer. Best kept secret of our times. A rated energy efficiency and 3 times cheaper to run. These modern high efficiency condensing tumble dryers are horrendously complicated, expensive to buy and run, and have been the cause of quite a few house fires. A house near me event had a fire due to the new Eco tumble dryer. My brother in law’s best friend lived next door and was chatting to the fireman who said house fires due to tumble dryers is on the rise.

Downside to a gas dryer is it can be a pain to find a plumber with the right ‘Gas Safe’ rating to install – you need to look for a commercial plumber – almost all commercial tumble dryers are gas, but they are fit and forget and good for at least 10 years, can’t remember the last time I hung washing out to dry.

It’s not intuitive, but condensing dryers are typically better rated in energy efficiency than vented dryers. Even if you can vent, you’ll be ending up paying more in electricity. My Bosch A+ condensing dryer has given 4 years of flawless service so far.

Go through them quite regularly at work and would always go vented and simple. Having said that have a white knight condenser at home that must be 6 years old now and with 2 boys in the house is still going remarkably strong. Buy simple is my advice, fewer components in it means less to go wrong.

Check the energy labels before you decide on one. The energy label contains more info than just how much energy is used. It will tell you approximately how long a full load will take to dry. Heat pump driers use roughly half as much energy (to dry a complete load) but take roughly twice as long.

Vented driers are time efficient, but heat pumps are energy efficient.

And anyone with any type of drier should clean the filters regularly. If you don’t you’re restricting the airflow and reducing efficiency. It’s like riding along with your brakes on.

The vented air on my Siemens is totally dry, it vents straight onto a mirror and I’ve never noticed any condensation at all.

It’s a smart unit, you set how dry you want the clothes to be and it dries to that level rather than a fixed time. It’s also next to the consumer unit so the numbers going round give a stark reminder to get outside and use the washing line asap…

Do all the condensing ones vent warm air in to the room? I would see this as a benefit as it would reduce heating bills.

Could be a downside if the warm air is also moist.[/quote]

The warm air isn’t that moist, they have a condenser to extract the moisture and you just get a bit of excess heat given out. Humidity doesn’t change significantly running one.

Yeah, if your condenser is venting moist air it has a problem.

We have a John Lewis (AEG in disguise) heat pump condenser plumbed in and are very happy with it. Filters are cleaned every run and associated spaces occasionally hoovered. Only disadvantage is that you can’t pull the heat exchanger for cleaning like on a normal condenser.

we sold our dryer. use a small de-humidifier in the kitchen set to run for 4 hrs overnight…much cheaper to run and the clothes are bone dryt by the morning

Fine if you have the room but otherwise, nah…

John Lewis have said we shouldnt use condensing in a confined space. Are utility is in the cellar, and is a small room. Odly they wouldnt/couldnt say why.

I have tried the de-humidifier and it took ages for them to dry, and it leaves clothes like cardboard.

Will just go looking this weekend…

Tumble Dryer Annual Running Costs

Useful page here to compare costs. The best dryer is £22 pa and the worst (full sized) is nearly £100 so a fair variation.

Looks like that list is misses off the least polluting tumble dryers and excludes the initial costs

Gas ones have a far lower impact on the environment

We had to replace our Tumbler and discovered that the vented ones are being phased out as they aren’t green enough. (n.b might be salesman bull…) Condensers will be all you can buy before long. heat pumps work well, but are expensive at the moment. We went for another condenser.

Our condenser lives in a cupboard at the top of the stairs, no outside wall, no window, but we leave the doors open when it’s on. So handy as with the baby it’s on every day. Can’t remember what one it is, but I guess a key consideration is that you’ll have to empty the water and clean the filter every use, and clean the condenser every 1-2 weeks which is a 3 min job.

Pretty sure vented generally have a better efficiency rating than condensing for the same price point.

We have a Bosch Maxx 8 condensing one. It filled with smoke last week due to dust getting up into the element. Bosch came out pretty quick (offered me next day but we were out) and replaced the element and swapped the under door fluff catcher for a new one as we were getting a lot of fluff past it. Can’t complain about the service.

Fluff filter gets cleaned every use (and water tank emptied) but I was cleaning the condenser every 2 weeks (about 4-6 uses). Was advised to start cleaning it every run which is a bit of a ball-ache and will start cleaning out the channel down from the fluff filter to the condenser with a damp towel every run too if we are still getting a build up. Was only the 2nd time the condenser fluff light had come on when the smoke happened (after cleaning).

The heat pump ones are lot better but a lot more expensive and when it’s back to 2 of us being here we will only be using it twice a week max in the winter and not at all in the summer except for waterproofs so not worth it.

Gas ones have a far lower impact on the environment

No they don’t.

On tab so can’t be bothered with an essay but I seriously doubt that gas heating could ever be more efficient than electrical. Gas is also a finite resource.

Depends how your electricity is generated. Do you know how your electricity is generated?

We’ve got a washer dryer that condenses into the washing machine drain.

No air is vented and no condense tray to empty. I reckon it probably runs a bit longer than a normal tumble dryer, but the fact I’m not doing the equivalent of aiming two hair dryers out of the window for 60 minutes (as the hot air in the machine is recirculated and dried) means its probably cheaper to run (never checked though!)

On nemastebuzz’s link the cost per cycle is around 23p for the best machines. However, change the product from tumble dryer to washer dryer and the drying cycle is 7-8p. Common sense would say that would be for an equivalent load but even if its a couple of kg lower (as is often the case as the drum is often smaller in combined models) its still considerably cheaper…

The best tumble dryers on nemastebuzz’s link are under 3p per cycle, washer dryers are under 9p. Much more expensive to run. Washer dryers also use water when on the drying cycle. They are great considering they do it all in one though.