Hotpoint heat pump condenser dryer - takes ages to dry

[Bilabong007]

Hi,

I have a Hotpoint heat pump condenser dryer and its takes ages to dry a load (well i think so anyways but haven't measured it). Its about 10 years old and ive not paid much attention to cleaning the secondary filter in front of the condenser itself.

Before ripping the whole thing apart and cleaning the condenser (a full stripdown i think) - Is there anything else i should check? Ive had the cover off and removed the carpeting of dust inside it, but not touched anything else yet.

Was thinking pump unit/float unit as i could get to that from the back maybe.. do the pumps fail? i have it plumbed to a drain and i can see it hovering at a constant head then pulsing a few mm over the drain, falling back and repeating.

Any advice much appreciated - i need that steely glare of "i know what im doing" to front out the missus on this.

Graeme

 

[Bilabong007]

Well i couldn't even get into the pump housing without dismantling everything.

I managed to get it open, drum out and into the heat exchanger chamber without unhooking the front of the machine. It meant i didn't have to take all the wiring apart. As expected it was full of rubbish and i removed the pump+float unit and cleaned it. The hvac bit came out in one piece and i washed it with a garden hose and good Scottish rain.

Tracking screws was the hardest bit - whoever made it seemed to use whatever they had to hand in bits with no reason to switch from 20-25-30mm for example.

I would like to think that i have made a difference considering how much dust i got out and how much time it took. Time will tell and the knower of all things will of course know.

Graeme

 

[Mottie]

Fingers crossed that it works for you. I bought a top of the range heat pump dryer that took ages to dry stuff and then stopped completely in the winter. Turned out that they don’t work in temperatures of less than 5°C and I had it in an outside I heated shed. Ended up giving it to my son as it worked perfectly well indoors and we just bought a basic one. It was only ever used for drying towels and jeans in bad weather anyway.

 

[ericmark]

Our heat pump dryer also takes a long time, but think mainly down to how set. The old dryer had no sensor, if returned and clothes still damp just put it on again. No settings other than time at 1 or 2 kW.

New one has dryness, heat level, and buttons and knob can set all sorts.

All well and good saying cotton etc, but clothes sorted by colour, so wool and cotton all go in together. We simply don't have the storage to sort into colour and type.

So moved from dry level 3 to dry level 2 and all seemed to then work OK.

 

[Bilabong007]

2 weeks after the stripdown and rebuild if im totally honest it has done little if anything to the time it takes to dry a load of washing.

The only way i could tell would have been to collect power and water volume data. Here was me expecting at least a "noticeable" difference.

I seem to collect a good bit of condensation on the worktop edge immediately above the machine. I imagine this comes from leaks on both/either the rear or front drum seal. I may price and replace these, but im not convinced its worth the time/effort as these bits will always leak a bit i imagine.

 

[Bilabong007]

Last night it made a terrible noise - turns out the tensioner pulley has melted. I mush have put the belt on squint and its been running funny on the tensioner wheel. Silly design, of course nothing to do with my fiddling with it...

Any tips for getting the belt on the new tensioner correctly? It looked fine, but maybe i wasn't paying attention to the right bits..

 

[ericmark]

Mine has since been written off due to loss of gas, seems I have to take it back, not looking forward to getting it in car.

 

[Bilabong007]

Its now been running for a while and seems fine.

Strangely it was completely dry - metal on metal which i just don't think even sounds right so i lubed it with gear grease.

If i were to offer any advice on putting the belt on :-
Remove the spring from the tensioner wheel and get the belt on in the middle of each spindle and aligned straight around the drum.
Tension the wheel by inserting the spring - get something to hook into the spring as it requires quite a bit of force to stretch it.
Run it by hand and check alignment.
Run it with power for a few mins then check it.
Run it for a week and re-check the alignment just for good measure.


Until it breaks again