Talk:Clothes dryer

Old comments
Removed the line: "(also spelled drier)" - the word "drier" is an adjective, not a noun. Also, wikipedia is not a dictionary, and as such does not exist to provide alternate ways of spelling a subject title. Alternate spellings should redirect to either a disambiguation page or to the article itself. ▫Bad▫ harlick♠ 13:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The Heat Pump Dryer section states "As with condensation dryers, the heat exchanger will not dry the internal air to as low a level of humidity as the ambient air". I'm fairly sure this statement is false. Much like a room dehumidifer, a heat pump dryer should pass the the return stream of air over the cold evaporator coil. The lower temperature condenses out extra water ("extra" relative to ambient temperature.) When the air is returned to ambient temperature, it's relative humidity is lower than ambient. --Mwnug (talk) 02:09, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Energy Star
removed the line about Energy Star not rating clothes dryers "because most of the clothes dryers marketed in the U.S. consume similarly massive amounts of energy", as the statement is not true (both gas and electric models are marketed in the US, e.g., with considerable difference in consumption). I suspect there are other reasons, but don't know of the official one.Tgoyle (talk) 21:16, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Tumble dryer history
Be more specific on history of the home electric clothes dryer. Currently it says "Electric tumble dryers appeared in the 20th century" which narrows it down to a 100-year span. Mathglot (talk) 05:53, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Any idea why History doesn't mention George T. Sampson?
 * From ChatGPT "The first clothes dryer was invented by George T. Sampson in 1892. He patented his invention, which he called the "Sampson Mangle-Drier," and it was a combination of a mangle (a device used to press clothing) and a drum dryer. The Sampson Mangle-Drier used heat and tumbling to dry clothes, and it was the first practical solution for drying clothes indoors without having to hang them up to air dry." (https://chat.openai.com/chat)
 * A search on Google Patents reveals a filing of what seems like an earlier contraption: https://patents.google.com/patent/US476416A/en Raphaelschaad (talk) 22:57, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

dehumidifier drier link
more info on dehumidifier driers 82.31.207.100 (talk) 03:31, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

This link is not active. It just leads to an error message.

I have searched the Internet high and low for any info on a dehumidifier dryer that tumbles clothes like a standard dryer, and it seems that they don't exist. Im not referring to a standard dehumidifier drying clothes on a clothes horse. I will remove that section from the article as it looks suspiciously like original research. Diamondblade2008 (talk) 18:34, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It did seem like a lot of machinery for a clothes dryer. Kill it. --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:02, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Done. Diamondblade2008 (talk) 17:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Dehumidifier Dryer is often mistaken for a Heat Pump Dryer. There is no such thing as a dehumidifier dryer. an ordinary dehumidifier works very similarly to how a heat pump dryer does. That's why people messing with definitions.

habitat loss calculation
The formula that is present on that website is completely unsubstantiated; they just multuply co2 in kg by .77 and claim that this is the land loss in m^2. Using this formula, there would be nothing left already! Assuming that the world produces 28,431,741,000 metric tons of co2/year (from wikipedia), wolfram alpha gives http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28%2828431741000++metric+tons+%29in+kilograms%29%2F%28land+area+of+earth+in+meters+squared%29 a value of about .2, meaning that in 3.8 years, the entire world will be uninhabitable, assuming that there has been no habitat destruction already. I've removed those rediculous claims. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rob33322 (talk • contribs) 06:18, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Dubious
The carbon footprint is not exactly wrong, but too categorical and biased to the high side, probably more representative of the US electric grid than a typical global value. It depends on which dryer you have, whether it is electric or natural gas, and where your electricity comes from. The source given is not terribly reliable. For example, see these links: --Yannick (talk) 02:37, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
 * alternative number for the UK
 * the formula
 * comparison of different UK dryers

Do condenser dryers really use less power than vented? I thought the opposite.
Every source I've ever read has said that condensers use more power than vented. For example see these sources: I found dozens more examples of quotes to back this up. Even the cited source given in at the moment in the article says the same, that condensers are less efficient.
 * Which, a UK consumer guide - "Electric vented tumble dryers are cheaper and generally use less energy than condenser models."
 * confusedaboutenergy.co.uk: "There are two different types of tumble dryer:  a vented dryer and a condenser dryer (which needs no venting) and each has its own energy rating scale.  Condenser dryers are slightly more expensive to run that vented dryers"
 * Bennetts Electrical Experts: "Vented tumble dryers tend to be less expensive and more energy efficient than the more recent, "condenser" tumble dryer design."
 * Laundry Room: "All else being equal (i.e. not including household heating/cooling issues), condenser dryers are slightly less efficient than their vented counterparts, typically on the order of ~15%." Going to change the article. Penguin2006 (talk) 15:36, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Reference 9
Reference number nine "Home Appliance Energy Use, General Electric, retrieved 2010-08-23" leads to http://www.ge.com/visualization/appliances_energyuse/index.html which redirects to http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/appliances_energyuse/index.html wich yields a 404 error. I think it should be changed to http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/appliances/. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.247.178.135 (talk) 08:21, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Prevalence of Dryer Types
The lede equates "clothes dryer" with "tumble dryer" --- this may be a US-based view. The standard type of dryer in the US is much less common in Europe, but I am having trouble finding statistics on this. The closest I found is this dryer report. Figure 3 shows "market penetration" below 50% for most of Europe, but whether this is market share vs. other dryer types or vs. some other notion of potential market size is not clear. Similarly, figure 6 shows that the numbers are small for A-class tumble dryers (sales share averaging under 10%), but does not give numbers for other classes. In any event, these data do not support the lede's flatly stated claim that most dryers are tumble dryers. Matt Cook (talk) 08:49, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You may have a point here; dryer cabinets seem to be common in Europe, but are almost unheard-of in the US. Reify-tech (talk) 14:27, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Article name.....
Is lousy. A clothes dryer can be a simple mechanical stand on which to spread clothes to dry. Any support for just changing 5he name of the article to ‘Tumble dryer’? Gravuritas (talk) 17:32, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Gravuritas (talk) 17:32, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Any info on mechanical steam compression dryers?
I'm planning to send a letter to my old teacher about existing of these; does anyone have any info? KOTYAR (talk) 13:38, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Microparticles from clothing
There's no mentioning of the lint that goes through the filters and out to the world in a vented dryer. It seems that, most of the visible house dust in a modern domestic environments, comprises mostly of fabric fibers. 176.231.64.208 (talk) 10:33, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Temperature
There seems to be no indication of the temperature that tumble dryers and washer dryers (when drying) operate at. There must be a range in which they all operate, ie hot enough to increase the amount of moisture the air can hold so that it will absorb more moisture from the garments, but not hot enough to damage clothes (eg by melting plastic fibers or potentially causing a fire). What is this temperature range (and can we add it to the article)? Thanks FreeFlow99 (talk) 17:43, 21 January 2021 (UTC)


 * I have reason to believe that temperature range would be about 50-80 degrees Celsius. However, unfortunately I cannot provide a source... If somebody could find a source for that temperature range (or near enough), that's progress. Mindlessdrone123495 (talk) 09:41, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Emphasis on Ventless with Little Vented Discussion
Reading over this article (at this revision), it seems to omit substantial coverage of vented dryers. In particular, I am thinking about the gas-based dryers that are common in the United States. The subsection on ventless dryers includes nine sections, so it seems the vented ones deserve more coverage in the article. I don't suggest this because I think it's unfair for them to be omitted in terms of technology advocacy but rather for sake of completeness. Would anyone feel comfortable filling that in? I think it would be interesting to compare combined energy use of conventional gas vented (BTU for heating and kWh for operating the motor) against the other vented ones. Matttproud (talk) 20:15, 15 November 2023 (UTC)