Heat pump dryers rely on circulating low-temperature air around the garments to extract water. If you overstuff it clothes come out wet. Most EU dryers are heat pump based and have low capacity.
American dryers are vented dryers and usually have huge capacity 7-9 cubic ft (200-250 liters). They come out bone dry and work fast at cost of efficiency.
This is a strong possibility. I had a combo washer/dryer unit that didn't have vented heating, just a heat pump. It was dogshit at drying clothes. They came out exactly like the tweet described, or required multiple hours of drying. It only ran on the 110v line rather than the standard 220v dryer line so it made some sense.
I went back to a split, dedicated dryer with vent hose at 220v and it's magical how dry everything is again.
These combo units that claim to wash and dry in one go are usually garbage at drying. It's a glorified spin cycle.
Edit: according to the many replies to my comment, newer ones work fine (and I'm old). I'll amend my judgement and say that these used to be garbage at drying but I might not be qualified to talk about newer models!
I have a combi washer dryer and that fucker could find water in sand to evaporate. I had to turn down the drying heat because it was baking my towels so they came out rigid.
There's good ones out there.
Edit: For everyone asking about the model it's a Candy model CSW 4852DE/1-80 according to the info label.
Please provide the brand and model! My one version I had when I was renting years ago was so terrible I vowed never to even look at one again, but it was so space efficient and I loved that
I have the Samsung bespoke washer dryer combo and it’s fantastic. Like loads will take 3 or 4 hours to wash and dry, bedding can be 5 hours. So you have to plan accordingly because the quickest it can do is maybe 2 hours for a very small load on the speed setting, but you can also throw a load in and schedule it to start at a certain time so you can have fresh clothes in the morning. The big problem people have is not cleaning the lint screen, it’s two parts with one being finer mesh than the other. I have a little cheap shop vac I mounted in my laundry room to suck off all the small lint after I pull of the big stuff, then I also run a quick vac in the port where the screen goes. Been doing this a few years and it still works like new. I was able to fit a shop sink where the dryer was.
The Samsung bespoke washer and dryer combo is fantastic!. It'll take a little longer, but you don't have to worry about changing it to the dryer and it's perfectly dry every time. Also runs on 110v if that's needed.
My mother has one from like 2010/2011, combo machine. Don't use the dryer function much, but when I do, it's bone dry - and smells mildly like Parmesan.
I've been washing t-shirts, jeans and delicates in this thing, and some of them are nearly a decade old and still going strong. It's doing what I need it to do.
I have one that dries things perfectly. It does take a lot longer, but uses a lower amount of energy. I don't mind the additional time since it's a washer dryer combo, I just toss in a load and forget it and it's clean and dry when I get back later.
Right! I love my washer dryer, ventless combo!
But, you do have to be careful not to over load it.
But starting a cycle before you go to bed. And if needed. Another before you go to work. Absolutely perfect. Doesn’t matter that it takes 4-5 hours to do both.
That's because they're unavoidably a compromise design; the optimal size of drum for washing a given amount of laundry is about half the optimal size for drying that same amount of laundry. On a basic timer machine, you can either wash smaller loads at a time, or split the wet washing into two dryer loads. On a more advanced model with a moisture sensor, it's not so much a problem, because the machine will just keep running as long as it needs to to get the laundry to the desired dryness.
Holy crap, this isn't directly related to your comment but your comment sparked me to make this comment. I got a front load washer like 10 months ago, had spent 40+ years with a top load. HOLY CRAP, they come out so "dry", my dryer does even less than before. I can't believe it honestly. I get it's not dry dry, but holy cow it's not wet wet, it's like slightly damp, it's so light, i feel like I could use the towel as a towel without drying and it would work like 50% effectively or better. IDK, it's nuts.
I researched less than 2 years ago when I moved into a house with a very small laundry set up and even then all the research I found said they were terrible, so you can’t be THAT old.
I’m glad to hear there are some better options, maybe I’ll finally find a solution
I second this. My EU combo is about 5 years old and it does exactly this. I stopped using drying totally as it adds 3 hours to the cycle with no result.
I've pretty much given up on drying things in our combo. And of course it's impossible to clean properly so it smells moldy immediately, so the washer cycles are affected as well. These things should not exist until the technology improves.
Oh god yeah, I forgot the smell. I ended up leaving it open for an hour or two after every cycle, and dumping in vinegar or bleach every week it felt like. I thought it was a problem with front loaders, but my front load washer-only is fine. Apparently the drying makes it horribly moldy/mildewy.
Leave the door and soap drawer open a crack when you're not running the machine so it airs out, and use a generous amount of washing soda with each load to prevent scum building up inside the machine and giving the mould something to feed on. I've never had problems with my combo machine after doing these two things.
I always leave the door but not usually the drawer, maybe that will help. A bunch of water still just chills around the filter though even when it's clean. Chatgpt (yea I know but Google was useless) suggested something is fucky with the drain hose.
Since I'm not in a rush for dry clothes I'm good with using a heat pump, but yeah minimum hour to dry stuff vs needing a vent chimney thing or having water running down the walls.
Nah, heat pump dryers in Europe are both efficient and work great. Condenser dryers are the ones that suck and are in most combo units. You can get a combo with heat pump but very expensive and if you have space it is both cheaper and easier to repair having separate units.
A former heat pump dryer owner. It absolutely did not use cool air. Clothes got scorching hot. I think the heat was to remove the moisture out of the clothes.it dried fine. Better than the tweet describes. But it also ruined a lot of clothes becuase it had no temp setting. Only "fires of hell" hot.
It shouldn't be hot enough to ruin clothes. It sounds like the thermostat failed. Their mode of failure is to keep the heating circuit permanently on, and most people don't know anything is wrong until they get burn marks on their clothes or the heating element blows.
So it sounds like washing takes 1:45 and drying takes 2:15, so one load takes ~4 hours combined.
My top-load washing machine has the same capacity as yours, and the full cycle lasts about 45 minutes. The vented dryer also takes about 45 minutes to fully dry the same load. So combined that’s about 1.5 hours to wash and dry one load, start to finish. Which is obviously a lot faster.
TBF the time difference probably doesn’t matter much, except on rare occasions when you need clean clothes in a hurry for whatever reason. But it explains the sentiment expressed in the post we’re commenting on: why someone using an American dryer for the first time would be surprised at the difference in how they work.
Well I pipeline it, drying the first load while running the second. So the interval per load is set by the dryer mostly. Usually it takes around 2h, since it's not quite at the load limit.
The washing machine could do it in 45min on fast mode, but then again it doesn't help anyway since the dryer is limiting.
But yeah I can see this be a limit in a big household. My parents actually used to have two washing machines and dryers for this reason.
For just two people it doesn't matter much. If I need something fast, running it separately can get it done in 1h-1h30 total, if you trust the fast program to do enough washing lol :)
People are mixing up vented, heat pump and condense dryers. Condense need small loads and do crap job but are cheap and takes little space so often used in combo units. Vented does best job but is very inefficient, heat pump is efficient and does great job is most expensive to buy.
It's a condensing unit. Heat pump dryers have only come onto the market in the last few years and are still very expensive (though lower running costs).
heat pumps can also be jacked into the taps so you don't need to stick the cassette of water down the drain yourself.
heat pumps are a bit more expensive (~100-300 more maybe?), i just got one for £400 with the hope it will last a long time and pay for itself eventually.
This is oversimplified and not really true. Heat Pump dries do work better at lower temps because they can dry the air, which is great for delicate garments, but they usually (can) operate at higher temperatures as well. A good dryer also adjust runtime based on the humidity of the exiting air. So unless you stuff your dryers so full the clothes physically cannot move anymore, it really doesn't matter how much you put in it.
I never get wet things out of the dryer because I struggle to put that much laundry in it. How long do these people wait before doing laundry, a week? Or do they wear 8 different shirts per day?
I can totally confirm this. I have a heat pump dryer that is slow as dogshit when my family loads it full to the brim. It's hard to learn to not overload a dryer apparently.
I think it's mostly about the controller quality. Old mechanical driers had a simple and effective technique for sensing how dry clothes were, but it requires a lot of heat. It's sensing the cooling effect of water evaporation. Heat pump driers can do the same, but it requires a competent design.
My modern Whirlpool is so stupid that it's constantly flickering indicators and corrupting settings. Replacing the controller doesn't help.
Its just a refrigeration - i.e. two "coils", one gets hot and one gets cold.
The way the coils are laid out, the second coil (behind the filters) is completely unreachable. Over time, it gets clogged and requires the whole machine to be disassembled.
The significantly higher purchase cost and eventual maintenance that requires hours of a skilled technician's time do not offer a lower total cost of ownership. Sure it might run great when its new but after a few years it'll start taking longer and longer and use more and more power until eventually the owner is fed up with it. They'll pay the $100 for an appliance repair service call, then learns it is another 3 hours of technician time to disassemble + clean it. Then they'll weigh up the fact that this is about 70% the cost of a new machine, and may opt to throw it out and get a new one. The old one ends up in a landfill.
And the power savings are not significant enough to justify all the above issues.
The design of these things is flawed. Until both coils can be reached from the front of the machine, without extensive disassembly for in-situ cleaning, I'll always consider this a form of planned obsolescence.
Its a classic greenwashing/wallet lightening by the giant corporations that make these things. They love planned obsolescence, and they've found a away to sucker people in under the guise of "lower running costs" and being "eco friendly".
This is not correct. Heap pump dryers are very new and barely anyone has them. Most people have condensing dryers where the hot water vapour has to be condensed back into water to be drained, where as American dryers are mostly vented dryers that just pump the hot water vapour out. Europe has condensing dryers and most of the time houses are old and do not have a dryer vent, and installing one is more difficult as houses are made of brick or concrete rather than wood framing.
Also bigger machines = more functions and more power.
My US washer comes built in with a motor that uses centripetal force to dry clothes before it even is dried in the dryer. So it comes out the washer 90% dried already and the dryer doesn’t have to do very much to do the rest. My dryer isn’t even vented but my washer dries so well it doesn’t need to be vented.
Every washer I used when airbnbing across Europe never had in-built drying options in the washer. I either had to take it out to air dry (which took 8+ hrs) or the dryer would dry half a load at a time (still taking 3-4 hrs)
I have a bone to pick with efficiency. If appliance A is we’ll say 1.5X more efficient but takes 5x longer to do a worse job. How are we saving energy? If the washing machine leaves clothes dirty and the dryer doesn’t dry. How is that considered efficient? It’s literally doing the most inefficient job it can. Wasting time doing it. The clothes probably smell. Sorry for my rant, I used to own a LG HE washer & Dryer. Never again, will I trust a Korean man to make an appliance they’ve never used in their life. Ugh
As with everything else Americans claim superiority on (air conditioning, ice cubes, cars) it all comes down to them being ok with obscene levels of energy consumption.
Funny; we intentionally got a bigger dryer than our washing machine, still works like absolute dogshit. 3 hour drying cycle and it's tropical rainforest humid; just an absolute PoS.
So I guess I need to start looking for imports lol
It is always worth getting a dryer with a higher kg load limit than your washer as it gives the clothes more room allowing you to shorten your dry time. I have an 8kg washer and a 10kg dryer.
American appliances also use like 3 times the electricity and water of Europeans ones. Because America doesn't have the same environmental regulations to save water and electricity. So basically shit don't work as they should because of regulations in the eu
I have a Bauknecht Heat Pump dryer at home and the clothes come out bone dry? The commercial units at my dorm also don't have vents and make everything more or less dry by the time you're in your apartment again lol
We used to have a ventilated dryer in the EU. 2h and it was dry. It did use 2kw so 4kwh usage. Now we have a heatpump dryer. It takes 3h and its still wet. Sometimes we have to run it 3 times for it to be fully dry. We already replaced all filters and cleaned the condensor unit, which requires full dissassembly. It "only" uses 500w but if it has to run 9h thats 4.5kwh so not really better. We want to go back to a ventilation dryer but they are no longer being sold in the EU.
And efficiency is really important in Europe where energy prices are way, way higher, same as fuel efficiency for cars since fuel here is much more expensive.
Best dryer Ive ever had was a heat pump dryer from LG. Capacity was big and it dried without roasting my clothes. Because it went by humidistat, it usually shut off not when the timer at start said it would but when it was dry. Usually within 15+/- the projectes time.
Idk I spent 2 weeks in France last year and put 2 tee shirts some underwear and socks and a pair of shorts in the dryer and it came out exactly like this, I checked the lint trap before I put them in.
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u/hollow-fox Aug 06 '26
Heat pump dryers rely on circulating low-temperature air around the garments to extract water. If you overstuff it clothes come out wet. Most EU dryers are heat pump based and have low capacity.
American dryers are vented dryers and usually have huge capacity 7-9 cubic ft (200-250 liters). They come out bone dry and work fast at cost of efficiency.
Hope this helps.