Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryl00 | Hacker News Reader

I think it depends. We recently had an issue with our fifteen-year-old Kenmore dryer not heating anymore. A little scouting around showed new dryers around the $500 mark, so I decided to do a little more research into diagnosing what might be going on, before just buying a replacement.

Fortunately the online Sears parts outlet has a great DIY video section that helped me use my very rudimentary multimeter skills to pinpoint the issue to a bad heating element. $50 later and we have a working dryer again (and I'm not so mystified by my dryer anymore :) )!

View on HN

This article prompted my to do a quick search to see what was available in terms of repair guides for dryers and I found this: https://www.familyhandyman.com/appliance-repair/washer-and-d...

Th belt on mine is going but replacing it seems to be well within my comfort zone. For $30 I can probably get several more years out of it at least. I'm hoping by then someone like dyson will come out with a much more efficient dryer anyway, surely they could tumble at a much slower rate and waste less electricity.

>> surely they could tumble at a much slower rate and waste less electricity.

Tumbling uses a fraction of energy heating does. The motor used for rotating the drum will use about 20-30W, while the heating element will be rated at 2000-3000W.

I suppose it could use less heat for longer, but then I'm not sure if it actually works out favourably(as in - if you just use 1000W of heat, is the process 2x as long, or longer? Because if it's longer or the same then it's more efficient to use full 2000W of power for heating).

The motor for the dryer also needs to power the fan that draws air through the unit. Without anything attached to the shaft, I previously measured the no-load power of the electric motor to be 200W.

I would expect the full load current to be considerably higher, as the dryer's drum rides on friction pads and not ball bearings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com