RE: Fw: [OT] Condenser Dryers

["Kenneth Watt" <kwatt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Check out the forums at www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk .

Sorry, missed this.

There is specific advice on UK Whitegoods, but as a general comment here's
a
post I made a short time ago on another board...

" A condensor can still produce condensation in the room due to the
increase
in heat, they're not foolproof. They are also more complex and therefore
more prone to breaking as well as being harder/more expensive to put right
when they do break.

On the upside you don't need to hang a hose out the window or knock a hole
in the wall.

Vented dryers on the other hand are desperately simple things and tend to
be
very reliable on the whole, although the usual caveat of the cheap ones
tend
to go more often. Performance wise I find them superior, but the price is
the vent.

There's also the new heat-pump dryers about which not a lot is known at the
moment, but they're damned expensive if efficient."

The AEG mentioned earlier is a heat pump dryer, new technology which is
unproven in a domestic situation. Before AEG introduced it there was only
one other (US) targeted at the domestic market. To save me typing it all
again, from the same thread...

" The dryer is indeed a heat pump one that I discussed at length with
a
really geeky tech dude a few months back, scary that was.

Basically these have been used for a while in the commercial environment
and
they are very good at reducing the energy used from the plug. But (and this
is where a lot of eco people make massive mistakes) the cost to produce and
maintain can be far, far higher than the energy saved out the plug.

To put that in perspective, a heat pump dryer requires a compressor much
the
same as you would find in a domestic fridge as well as a massive condensing
unit made from aluminium and a whole load of tubing not normally required.
Then there's the additional weight being transported and consider the raw
materials and how they get to factory.

So yes, they are good in terms of energy use and, in a commercial situation
where they are run for many hours a day they would likely pay back the
investment on energy use as well as carbon cost to produce. I have strong
doubts as to whether this would be the case in a domestic situation where
the use is far, far lower.

Whether the dryer is any good or not I honestly don't know as we've no
history on them. The commercial ones work fine but they are a lot bigger
and
clunkier so only time will tell with the domestic derivatives.

It's no Miele though, AEG is owned by the Electrolux Group who manufacture
most all of the John Lewis own brand appliances and, from memory, I don't
think anything is now produced in Germany on the AEG brand, most of it is
Italy, Poland etc. If anything is still made in Germany it isn't
much."

Bearing in mind that most people buy these things because they think that
they are saving the planet and so the environmental implications are
important, if poorly explained.

Hope that helps.

K.