![]() ![]() It only takes a minute or two, but is important to maintaining airflow through the coils. Of course, those screens still aren’t perfect–I’ve found that every 50-60 loads there’s enough on the condenser fins that there’s enough buildup to wipe/peel it off. I find that makes the lint easier to remove. The lint screens are nothing you’re not familiar with, though you’ll generally find they have a finer mesh on a heat pump dryer. While a relatively minor task, you will want to stay on top of cleaning the lint screens and condenser fins. Without much heat, the dryer sheet will still contain most of that surfactant. They rely primarily on heat to release the fatty molecule that coats your clothes to make them feel softer. While your fabric softener in the washing machine will work the same way as before, you won’t be getting much use out of dryer sheets. You’ll be pulling in less moist outdoor air, have less condensation in your RV’s air conditioner, and have less hot outdoor air to cool again.Īgain, this is a small effect overall–unless you’re doing a lot of laundry or tracking energy consumption, you probably won’t notice. Especially if your air conditioners struggle to keep you cool in the summer, or if you have issues with icing on your AC unit’s evaporator, a heat pump dryer will improve things relative to a vented dryer. It’s mentioned more for completeness than anything. This is a small effect, in most cases too small to notice. A heat pump dryer doesn’t add moisture to the RV, but it doesn’t exhaust your humid indoor air either. That vented dryer depressurizes the RV interior by exhausting air, and the makeup air is the cold dry stuff that gets sucked in from outside. If you already have issues with high indoor humidity in the winter, you may exacerbate the problem by not doing laundry with a vented dryer. That’s not a big difference, but it might be relevant depending on how your dryer is fixed in place or what cabinet it’s in. The model I’ve been using weighs 110 lbs, while the comparable vented model only weighs 88 lbs. WeightĬompared to a conventional vented dryer of the same size, a heat pump dryer will be heavier. I haven’t found that to be a big deal–most conventional dryers have a “cool-down” cycle to prevent wrinkles the heat pump dryer doesn’t need one as the clothes aren’t hot in the first place (we’ll revisit this when talking about cycle times). The other downside to not getting very hot is that there’s not much in the way of a wrinkle release cycle. As someone with a dog, I’ve noticed I wear his coat to a lesser degree with the new dryer. On the other hand, the lower temperature drying means less static, clothes last longer, and you don’t need to take them out of the dryer right away at the end of the cycle to prevent wrinkles. If there’s some need to get clothes hot beyond simply getting them dry (I’m thinking of some sort of hypothetical craft project, not normal laundry), a heat pump dryer might not be for you. Do you really drink the water that drips from your air conditioner? Didn’t think so. It’s far cleaner than what’s in your grey tank, but it may have traces of material from clothes/detergent or other contaminants. It should go without saying that this water isn’t potable. If you happen to have a layout where the washer drain isn’t in the same cabinet as the dryer, you’ll either have to figure out how to route the drain line, or empty the small tank every 5 or 6 loads. If not, there’s a shorter list of models that will work simply by plugging them in to a standard receptacle. The long and short here is that if you can get 240V power to the dryer, you have tons of options (including a standard dryer cord). A follow-up post will address other options in more detail–including a small voltage transformer, a dedicated inverter, and a few others. ![]() solar, batteries, generator), or on 30-amp (120V) service, you still have a number of options–the most straightforward (not necessarily the cheapest) being to select one of several heat pump dryers that operate on 120V power. If you want to run your dryer away from hookups (i.e. If you’re normally connecting to 50-amp shore power, that at most means wiring a new receptacle for the dryer to plug into (assuming you don’t have one already). Most heat pump dryers, while requiring very little power to run, operate at 240V. After you decide you do, head on over to the next post to look at the characteristics you’ll want to consider when deciding which heat pump dryer you want. Here’s a quick rundown of some things to consider in trying to decide whether or not you want a heat pump dryer in your RV.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |