Fire risks prompt tumble dryer recall http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34901765 A "significant" number of tumble dryers sold in the last 11 years in the UK may need a repair owing to fears about fires. Owners of large air-vented dryers and condensing dryers under the Hotpoint, Indesit and Creda brands may need to have them fixed. Indesit said that excess fluff could catch the heating element in the machine and cause a fire. It is recalling many dryers bought between April 2004 and October 2015. Hotpoint Indesit Creda http://safety.hotpoint.eu -----------^
So I guess the manufacturers now just can't count on the common sense of the buyer to clean the filter? Should they just employ a gnome to accompany the dryer and clean it for the buyer if they're that dumb?
Yeah but you shouldn't have to worry about a fire starting! Maybe it breaking down etc but if I'm being sold a dryer and some one said clean the filter or it will catch fire I'd probably look for someone selling one that said it'll just break.
I have a Candy (which I hate) and I empty the filter every time, thing is I'm aware that it bypasses slightly and I worry that little bits of fluff might be getting caught up inside. Not that I lose sleep over it.
We ditched our dryer a while back, because it was horrifically expensive to run. I noticed a £15 a month drop in electricity bills once it was gone. TBH, we could do with one, but the A+ rated models are all north of £500, and I'm not convinced by the energy efficiency claims anyway.
I did some *** packet math when we were looking at getting one with our littun' taking up literally 3 out of every 4 washing loads with either clothes, nappies, or both. Still came out to 50p per cycle. Doing that 4 times a week to circumvent the need to dry clothes on radiators, just doesn't seem worth it along with the initial £500+ outlay.
Ours bypasses it quite a bit, and is one of the Hotpoint models affected. It's never yet caught fire, and is 7 years old iirc, but we won't be leaving it on and toddling off to bed now!
What I like with the dryer is that it pumps the humid air directly outside, so there's no concern with condensation or damp. That, and I can stick the bedding in and put it on the bed an hour later. How do you dry a duvet cover without one?
In the winter months, when we cannot dry anything on the line, there might be two or three loads a day, esp. with two school age kids. Tumble drying does reduce the amount of ironing required, which saves time, effort and will offset a little of the cost, but £500+ is still a bitter pill to swallow - especially when you can get category B big brand vented models for a third of the price, and B-rated condensers for half the price. I seriously doubt the savings between A and B rated models are all that great.
I ran the numbers and the expensive efficient units are barely worth it, and that's assuming they don't fail in the ten year period. I went with the most basic vented design as it gets rid of the moisture directly. Add about £20 to the cost to drill through the wall and it makes winter a lot less of a faff.
Well, I've been living without a tumbledryer for the past 15 years and I've never had an occurrence of my t-shirts growing fungi, so I think i'll be fine just now
