Clothes dryers

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OneEyeJack

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An observation about clothes dryers.

My wife and I help out at an extended care facility where they have 4 clothes dryers. They get a lot of use and get replaced about every 2-3 years. That is 3 get replaced. A forth one has a broken control and only runs on "medium" heat and is now 6 years old and is working just fine. All 4 dryers are exactly the same model and are running everyday. Can it be that running on the "hot" setting causes that much wear and tear on these dryers? Or is running fewer loads because they run longer making that much difference. The dryer on medium takes about 50% more time to dry the same sized load.

I've set our home dryer on "medium" just in case it does make a difference. I'm not so important that I can't wait a bit longer for our clothes to dry.
 
They're just wearing out from all the use. Things get fixed and parts replaced as they go but it gets to a point where they get replaced. They run loads from about 4AM until near Midnight every day of the week. That might be more use than the typical coin operated laundromat would ever experience.

I think it's possible that heat is a big factor and decided to turn our home dryer from "high" down to "medium".
 
I dry my clothes on the medium setting just long enough to release the wrinkles. I have a clothes line in my basement I finish drying them on.
 
a few things can cause a dryer to seem not to "work" correctly. Like clogged dryer vent. I clean those and it's amazing how much it restricts air flow. We check them with a air speed meter, before and after a cleaning. A clean vent will make a big difference. Another thing is if it's electric, one of the heating elements might be broken . So the dryer is only getting 1/2 the heat needed. If the belt tensioner is loose from wear, the belt will slip so the clothes won't get the benefit of the hot air. I bet alot of dryers get tossed when its something simple to fix.,,
 
Why doesn't the place buy more commercial ones?

I dry everything but sheets and towels on LOW. Sure it takes longer but I have it on sensor dry and I am in no hurry. And they will shrink the least.
 
I bought my cheapo gas dryer from Sears in September 1997, it's working as of today after more than 17 years. I always set temperature at low regardless of light clothes or towels or jeans, everything came out with minimum wrinkle. I also don't overload the dryer, usually each wash 2 dries.
 
I do IT for a bunch of skilled nursing facilities throughout NY, MA and OH. Anytime I've been around the buildings and I come across the laundry/housekeeping departments, there have been commercial grade washers and driers.
 
These are commercial units. They are just in constant use and I mean every hour of every day from 4AM to Midnight. They are adding 2 more units this month. Their contract includes service and repairs. The service guy tells me he's never come across units that are used more often, almost always with full loads. He's the one that decides when to replace them. He keeps a closet of spares on site and does preventive maintenance. I think the dryer killers are the blankets. They're heavy and a big part of the job. The one that only runs on medium has been left that way as an experiment and the 2 new ones are going to allow all units to be run on medium. Housekeeping says the blankets last longer, too. For me, I don't know.
 
Well even with service, when one breaks its got to be a pain if you depend upon them. I would guess they need larger ones that are really commercial. Certainly hotels are doing tons of laundry every day and I would guess they do not have the issues you mention.
 
I got tired of washers and dryers wearing out in 5 years or less, so I bought a Speed Queen commercial unit for the house. Just like the ones at the laundromat but w/o the coin slot. Been working flawlessly since January 2009.
 
Their problem is the duty cycle and with an improving budget they are buying more washers and dryers.

What I take from this is that I'm sticking with "medium" heat at home. I can schedule my life around a longer drying cycle.
 
About 2 weeks ago I took our king size blankets to the laundry mat. The gal that runs it was there and I asked her how much these front loaders cost?....$9,000.00 each. They were large industrial Wascomat front loaders... Not cheap! If I remember it was $5.00 per load.
 
I cannot really explain the disparity, but I do have an anecdotal storyline similar to this one. It may help in understanding.

My Whirlpool gas dryer is probably 20 years old. Was NatGas, but converted to Propane about 14 years ago when we moved out of the city. I have replaced the drive motor and belt once, and the gas control valve once, and the HSI once, and the limit switch twice. Probably spent a total $100 on it over 20 years. Still runs strong to this day. We always run on "medium" heat. I have teenage kids at home; this thing runs several times a day, almost every day and has for the last decade. Does the medium heat make it last? I have no ability to contrast another method so I cannot say. But I cannot complain; it is a stalwart!

What I don't understand is this ... Why they are replacing those units every 3 years? What is so worn out that they have to replace the entire unit? Aftermarket motors are not expensive, nor are the fire-control parts. That's about the only thing that would ever go out. The rest of the chassis is just stamped metal and plastic. It is, by far, cheaper to repair than replace. I find it odd that they are getting such short lives out of them. I relaize they are commercially used in the care facility, but they are also commercial units; they should be lasting longer than 3 years, IMO.


It is anecdotal, but perhaps the "High" setting is burning them out early, quite literally. Since they are getting a couple more, you could have them experiment and run one of the "new" units only on Medium, and see if you can duplicate the lifecycle of the older one on Medium. If similar, then the evidence is pretty stout at that point.
 
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