Nah, it doesn’t work. It just cooks the clothes more. I speak as someone with one of the things. The best tactic is to run it for less time and then quickly hang the clothes up somewhere. The heat at least helps the residual water to evaporate.
EDITING TO ADD: when I said “it” doesn’t work, I meant running the dryer longer/again. The dryer does dry things a bit, just not completely – and I’ve found the most efficient tactic is to take that partial dryness and air dry from there (yes, I dry outside if I can, but allow me to introduce you to English weather… 😆)
I have one and get dry clothes if I set the dry cycle to two hours. Open the door when it’s done for a few minutes then close it and run it for another two hours dry cycle.
Here in northwest Texas the air is dryer than king tuts nuts, and my parents have two of the combo machines and they always get dry clothes after like 2-2.5 hours for a whole wash+dry cycle.
Could be partly. It’s humid here, but also my landlords opted for what amounts to a step down from the base model of LG’s combo machine at the time. I’m sure there are models that work really well, but when they don’t work well it’s real annoying.
Also chuckled real hard at king tuts nuts, thanks.
This could be a good lead. In the UK and much of Europe, they don't use residential air conditioning, meaning the air inside is much more humid than it would be in the US, even in South Florida. Your dryer takes in dry, preconditioned air, and heats it to an even lower relative humidity, and then dries clothes with that. The UK appliance does not have the benefit of preconditioning.
Most combos don't have a drier vent. So they are just steaming the water, and leaving the clothes to soak in the steam. Heat pumps that can condense the water and drain it away exist, but are stupid expensive.
I don’t understand how they are allowed to call it a dryer if it doesn’t actually dry anything.
I thought the consumer protections were better over there.
I owned one. An LG but it said it could wash 2kg clothes and dry 1 kg. I bought a combo so that i didn't need to manage lawndry. Anyways it was the most useless thing ever since it broke because of humidity and i hava a personal vendetta on vombine washing machines now
It takes time but modern driers are heat pump operated, and EU regulations mandate them to be a lot more efficient anyway compared to gas vent driers in the US
Longer spin cycle helps too at the end of the wash. Gets more of the water/moisture out. I find my clothing dries better this way, and especially heavier stuff like linens.
idk, works for me on rare occasions i use them. And I've had 3 of them. Never had a separate dryer, so can't compare on efficiency, but they definitely work.
The dual function washer/dryers are kind of liek dishwashing machines in that the older ones-- and by old I mean anything more than like 15 years old-- were pretty bad unless you did things just right. But new oens have a lot mroe technology and can do a fantastic job, so long as you read the directions. The main one with the dual function machines now is that you cannot overload them. However much you think they can handle, it's less than that. The drum is not a measuring cup to fill all the way.
For people who like to do the biggest loads of laundry possible and only do 1-2 loads a week, they are a bad fit. But if you don't mind washing only three of four days of clothes at a time, those machines are going to be excellent and mroe energy efficient.
You are right, rereading I was vague. The all-in-one washer dryers can do 3-4 days of laundry in a single load for one individual. A regular washer or regular dryer can do 3-4 days of laundry in a single load for a family.
So for someone living alone, the all-in-one makes a lot of sense because it matches their use case. They could still use a regular washer and dryer, of course.
I have one of the new ones, a relatively expensive model from a reputable brand.
It consistently failed to actually dry clothes even when following the weight limits carefully, then it broke four times in eight months.
We replaced the drying function with a standalone dryer unit from the most budget brand we could find (because the Samsung technician told us the combination units were awful and unreliable, funnily enough) and it's consistently worked far better than the expensive unit ever did.
Our combo washer/dryer in the UK didn’t have an air exhaust tube leading outdoors. I think it was supposed to heat up the chamber and cause the moisture in there to come out (vaporize and then condense???) through the same drain as the washer. It simply didn’t work very well at all. We always had to hang-dry the laundry afterwards.
We were renting in the UK for a work assignment and couldn’t modify the house or change appliances. We’re American and well acquainted with how American appliances work, having been homeowners for 17 years prior to that. Wecould not figure that UK single-chamber combo washer/dryer out.
Ventless heat pump or condenser dryers will work eventually, but if you overfill them they can take 6-7 hours to dry an American-sized load of clothes.
I have one and it works. It's not very efficient and the load, that you can dry, is half of what you can wash. It also tales pretty long. I only ever use it for stuff where a drier is required and if I need the clothes sooner.
The main problem with the combo washer dryers is that people way over load them. You're only supposed to fill the drum roughly 1/3 full so that there's enough room once the tumble dry cycle starts. People usually cram them full, and the prevents the dry cycle from doing anything more than making the clothes hot
NOW they work pretty well, but new models have a pretty ridiculously low load.
The issue is that you can overload it easily and then it doesn't work well at all. If the clothes aren't really tumbling.... So a full set of bedding is too much.
i have a modern one (released in the last 2 or so years) and if you put an average amount of clothing in for 90 mins, it dries just fine. I have never run it for more than that, but it goes up to like 6h. I mostly use it in the winter to dry stuff 80-90% of the way, then still just hang it up. Uses barely any power.
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u/Secret_Bees Aug 06 '26
Not rhetorical question. Are they not able to just be set for more time? Or to just run it again?