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Washer dryer


Karl

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Hi all. We currently have a washing machine and a separate dryer for our washing on board boat but can only have one on at a time as our 3kw Victron inverter/charger doesn’t like them on both together. This is also I might add whilst being on shore power. I have just realised though that if I run the engine at the same time I can run both washer and dryer and the inverter appears to be fine. 

I am now considering a washer dryer all in one to save space. I am concerned though that the drier side of things might not be able to work properly with the inverter. I have heard stories of washer dryers not being suitable to boats. Can anyone recommend a suitable appliance. The Victron multi inverter/charger 3000  is only a couple of months old so I have no issues with that. As you will appreciate I can’t afford to make a mistake on this as once I’ve bought a machine I’m basically stuck with it.

many thanks.

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Why would you need to run the washer and the dryer at the same time?  Ok, so you could start a second wash while the first one is drying, but if you have a washer-dryer you can’t do that, so what is the advantage?

What you have works, so why change?

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1 hour ago, Karl said:

I am now considering a washer dryer all in one to save space.

Having a washer dryer will mean that you don't have to worry about them running at the same time :) Your space will have been saved, and your problem solved.

 

I have not heard any stories about washer dryers not being suitable for boats - where have you seen these stories. If a washer and a separate dryer are suitable, it's hard to think of a reason why a combined unit doing the same things should not be suitable.

Edited by Richard10002
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10 hours ago, Karl said:

Hi all. We currently have a washing machine and a separate dryer for our washing on board boat but can only have one on at a time as our 3kw Victron inverter/charger doesn’t like them on both together. This is also I might add whilst being on shore power. I have just realised though that if I run the engine at the same time I can run both washer and dryer and the inverter appears to be fine. 

I am now considering a washer dryer all in one to save space. I am concerned though that the drier side of things might not be able to work properly with the inverter. I have heard stories of washer dryers not being suitable to boats. Can anyone recommend a suitable appliance. The Victron multi inverter/charger 3000  is only a couple of months old so I have no issues with that. As you will appreciate I can’t afford to make a mistake on this as once I’ve bought a machine I’m basically stuck with it.

many thanks.

We had one on a a boat a few years ago, it was an expensive make and to be precise it was crap!! BUT by far the worst thing about washer dryers is, well ours did is that they use water in the drying process from yer tank which is a bloomin waste of water on a boat with limited resources. Present boat has seperates in designated laundry room, way better idea.

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My ownership experience of a washer dryer was that the dryer was rubbish - terribly slow to dry.  That was donkey's years ago, but my son has had one recently in a rented property and found exactly the same.  I'd suggest needing to keep a heavy 240v load running for any longer than absolutely necessary is a bad thing in a boat, so you may wish to consider the fastest dryer you can find even if it is less efficient with power overall.

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When we had a washer dryer in a flat the issue we had was the load capacity was smaller for drying than washing so you either washed a partial load and then dried it or washed a full load and took some wet washing out before the drying cycle.

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8 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

My experience of washer driers is that they’re crap. Takes ages to dry and washing comes out more creased than a creased thing. A vented drier is massively better at the job.

 

Yeah, they are all a bit Swiss Army knife ... sort of does the job but not as well as a dedicated appliance.

 

1 minute ago, Rob-M said:

When we had a washer dryer in a flat the issue we had was the load capacity was smaller for drying than washing so you either washed a partial load and then dried it or washed a full load and took some wet washing out before the drying cycle.

 

The worst issue with the only washer dryer we ever had was the bad habit of catching fire every now and then.  Ours didn't actually burst into flames, but it did have scorch marks when I checked it after getting the recall notice from Indesit!

 

 

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If you're running from an inverter it's more important to have an efficient drier than a fast one -- the newest heat-pump driers use about half the total energy to dry a load (and are not vented) but take longer to do it. If you're running from a Travelpower then faster is more important than efficient...

 

Combined washer-driers can dry a smaller load than separates (and take even longer) and are also complex and have a reputation for being unreliable, but they do fit in half the space. There aren't many heat-pump combos...

 

Edited by IanD
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59 minutes ago, IanD said:

If you're running from an inverter it's more important to have an efficient drier than a fast one -- the newest heat-pump driers use about half the total energy to dry a load (and are not vented) but take longer to do it.

Are you suggesting running a tumble dryer through the inverter off the domestic batteries Ian?  I'd suggest you'd be better with the engine running in such a scenario, in which case we're back to shortest period of drying trumping efficiency of power usage. If the batteries are supplying the load (crikey it's hard to find the wattage of these things, but they must draw a good 200 amps at 12v I'd have thought) then any savings from power efficiency will be offset by frequent battery replacement.  

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I find that if I run the engine for an hour with doors etc closed, the engine room warms up enough to dry my nick nacks, but in sn emergency they dry in half an hour if above the stove, don't know if this helps, I take my laundry to the launderette, it's a dedicated hub, accessible to all, and they provide hand sanitiser.

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Keep them separate I say.

 

I have an old Indesit WD 12X washer Dryer and have to remove half or more out to dry! Takes ages. Like hours. Not tried running from the 3kw Victron Inverter but runs on mains as Marina Based.

My Nan has a new BOSCH washer Dryer and loves it. Cost £630

 

I finish the drying by leaving in Salon to dry overnight/ finish damp washing. Stove/room heat dries them well.

 

James.

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Like you I have (a small) automatic washer and a separate small dryer. At 2.6kw max load for both i could actually run both at the same time from either shore power or generator, but I never need to.

 

I also think that if you're living on a boat with this much white goods convenience, then expecting to be able to run everything at the same time is an expectation too far. At some point we'll forget we're living on boats.

Edited by blackrose
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14 hours ago, Sea Dog said:

Are you suggesting running a tumble dryer through the inverter off the domestic batteries Ian?  I'd suggest you'd be better with the engine running in such a scenario, in which case we're back to shortest period of drying trumping efficiency of power usage. If the batteries are supplying the load (crikey it's hard to find the wattage of these things, but they must draw a good 200 amps at 12v I'd have thought) then any savings from power efficiency will be offset by frequent battery replacement.  

A heat-pump dryer uses around 1.5kWh to dry a full load and takes 2.5h to do it (figures from Beko), so average power draw is 600W. At 12V this is 50A or 125Ah, which most house battery banks (and inverters) are easily capable of supporting.

 

A conventional dryer might use double the energy (3kWh) in less time (1.5h), so average power draw is 2kW which at 12V is 250Ah and 170A -- a very different prospect for onboard power, as you say.

 

So a modern technology (uurgh, that nasty word again...) dryer can easily be powered from onboard batteries/inverter (even a small one), even if the power comes from the engine this means running it for a much shorter time (and maybe some or all of the power comes from solar?). An old-style dryer really needs shore power or the engine running, as you said.

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4 minutes ago, IanD said:

A heat-pump dryer uses around 1.5kWh to dry a full load and takes 2.5h to do it (figures from Beko), so average power draw is 600W. At 12V this is 50A or 125Ah, which most house battery banks (and inverters) are easily capable of supporting.

 

A conventional dryer might use double the energy (3kWh) in less time (1.5h), so average power draw is 2kW which at 12V is 250Ah and 170A -- a very different prospect for onboard power, as you say.

 

So a modern technology (uurgh, that nasty word again...) dryer can easily be powered from onboard batteries/inverter (even a small one), even if the power comes from the engine this means running it for a much shorter time (and maybe some or all of the power comes from solar?). An old-style dryer really needs shore power or the engine running, as you said.

Our tumble drier is 2kw, vented, and dries a normal wash in about 45 mins.  It is quite a small one but nevertheless can take the full load of the (admittedly small) Zanussi compact washer. Clothes come out uncreased so can be folded and put away - no ironing required. I have never used a heat pump drier but I wonder if they are a bit like other condensing washer-drier things in that they mainly seem to dry the clothes by cooking them to death, and the clothes come out severely creased and barely dry. And they are very expensive.

 

We do often used the “delicates” programme on the washer, which cleans the clothes perfectly adequately but doesn’t run for hours, then (because the spin speed on that programme is reduced) we put them onto another spin programme at max speed, before drying. The moral being spin as much as you can, before drying.

 

45mins engine running doesn’t seem too onerous to me - we just arrange to do the drying whilst we are cruising. 

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35 minutes ago, IanD said:

A heat-pump dryer uses around 1.5kWh to dry a full load and takes 2.5h to do it (figures from Beko), so average power draw is 600W. At 12V this is 50A or 125Ah, which most house battery banks (and inverters) are easily capable of supporting.

 

A conventional dryer might use double the energy (3kWh) in less time (1.5h), so average power draw is 2kW which at 12V is 250Ah and 170A -- a very different prospect for onboard power, as you say.

 

So a modern technology (uurgh, that nasty word again...) dryer can easily be powered from onboard batteries/inverter (even a small one), even if the power comes from the engine this means running it for a much shorter time (and maybe some or all of the power comes from solar?). An old-style dryer really needs shore power or the engine running, as you said.

I can't see why one dryer uses more energy to remove the same amount of water... perhaps a misunderstanding?

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2 minutes ago, George and Dragon said:

I can't see why one dryer uses more energy to remove the same amount of water... perhaps a misunderstanding?

No he is right in that a heat pump drier uses much less energy to do the same (ish) job. In the same way that people use heat pumps to heat their houses, for every 1kw of electricity used, you get 3 or 4 kw of heat into the house. It is not magic, it is just using the electricity to pump the heat from a lower temperature (outside) to a higher temperature (inside) in exactly the same way as a fridge works.

 

But as I mentioned, the downside of the heat pump drier is the initial cost and the state it leaves the “dried” clothes in.

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30 minutes ago, nicknorman said:

No he is right in that a heat pump drier uses much less energy to do the same (ish) job. In the same way that people use heat pumps to heat their houses, for every 1kw of electricity used, you get 3 or 4 kw of heat into the house. It is not magic, it is just using the electricity to pump the heat from a lower temperature (outside) to a higher temperature (inside) in exactly the same way as a fridge works.

 

But as I mentioned, the downside of the heat pump drier is the initial cost and the state it leaves the “dried” clothes in.

They are expensive (the cheapest are about 350 quid), as usual you don't get "owt for nowt". Don't know about what state they leave the clothes in but then -- as you said -- neither do you ?

 

What they do offer is a solution that works on a boat when not plugged into shore and without running the engine for hours. If you don't want or need this and are happy to run the engine while drying (even when moored up and not cruising), don't buy one. I'm just pointing out that a blanket (ho, ho) "you can't run a tumble drier off batteries" statement is not true nowadays...

Edited by IanD
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45 minutes ago, IanD said:

They are expensive (the cheapest are about 350 quid), as usual you don't get "owt for nowt". Don't know about what state they leave the clothes in but then -- as you said -- neither do you ?

 

What they do offer is a solution that works on a boat when not plugged into shore and without running the engine for hours. If you don't want or need this and are happy to run the engine while drying (even when moored up and not cruising), don't buy one. I'm just pointing out that a blanket (ho, ho) "you can't run a tumble drier off batteries" statement is not true nowadays...

Well, running for 45 minutes in our case. Our vented dryer at home usually runs for 45 mins or so, so I think "hours" is an exaggeration for a vented type (not for a condenser / washer dryer type, they do take hours).

So 45 mins at 2kw is 1.5kwh. When I FINALLY get around to / allowed to install our 600ah lithium batteries that will be around 7.5kwh available so one tumble drier run of 1.5kwh will only be 20% or so of capacity. Of course that will have to be replaced but with Li charging efficiency being close to 100% it wont make much difference if the engine is run during the drying, or sometime afterwards.

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2 hours ago, nicknorman said:

Well, running for 45 minutes in our case. Our vented dryer at home usually runs for 45 mins or so, so I think "hours" is an exaggeration for a vented type (not for a condenser / washer dryer type, they do take hours).

So 45 mins at 2kw is 1.5kwh. When I FINALLY get around to / allowed to install our 600ah lithium batteries that will be around 7.5kwh available so one tumble drier run of 1.5kwh will only be 20% or so of capacity. Of course that will have to be replaced but with Li charging efficiency being close to 100% it wont make much difference if the engine is run during the drying, or sometime afterwards.

All the manufacturers quote kWh and drying time for a full load, which is where my figures came from -- so unless you have a miraculous vented drier which somehow has double the efficiency that manufacturers claim (and I can't believe that they'd be pessimistic, if anything exactly the opposite) you're using a part load ?

 

The objection was to running a tumble dryer on normal batteries/inverter, not a 600Ah lithium bank that will happily supply hundreds of amps.

 

So like I said, buy one which uses half the energy or not, it's your choice, but at least the option is there if you want it ?

Edited by IanD
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17 minutes ago, IanD said:

All the manufacturers quote kWh and drying time for a full load, which is where my figures came from -- so unless you have a miraculous vented drier which somehow has double the efficiency that manufacturers claim (and I can't believe that they'd be pessimistic, if anything exactly the opposite) you're using a part load ?

 

The objection was to running a tumble dryer on normal batteries/inverter, not a 600Ah lithium bank that will happily supply hundreds of amps.

 

So like I said, buy one which uses half the energy or not, it's your choice, but at least the option is there if you want it ?

Both the drier and the washer on the boat are compact models. A full load in the washer goes into the drier and 45 mins later it’s dry. Well to be honest it takes maybe 55 minutes but the last 10 mins are on the cool down cycle when the heater isn’t on.

 

Exactly the same applies to the house devices, both full size and the drier can take the full load from the washing machine.

 

It does of course depend a lot on what you are drying and how much you’ve spun it, so a full load of bath towels spun slowly would take a lot longer than eg a full load of sheets /duvet cover/pillow cases spun fast.

 

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I'm impressed, Nick!  You seem to be very domesticated and I have learned a lot about washer/driers just from reading your posts. We are still on the wash only machines and at home the washing dries under the car port (which has never had a car in it) and on the boat by hanging it in the cratch. 

 

haggis

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23 minutes ago, haggis said:

I'm impressed, Nick!  You seem to be very domesticated and I have learned a lot about washer/driers just from reading your posts. We are still on the wash only machines and at home the washing dries under the car port (which has never had a car in it) and on the boat by hanging it in the cratch. 

 

haggis

Hmmm, any reason why I wouldn’t be domesticated?
 

Anyway we do tend to use the drier at home even when we could put the washing on the line (and Aberdeen is, after all, one of the drier parts of Scotland). 2 reasons, one being that Jeff has a problem with hay fever and asthma and thinks that washing left on a line collects pollen which makes him ill. Not sure I totally believe that but even if it’s psychological, that doesn’t really matter.
 

And secondly, there is a big difference between line dried washing and tumble dried washing. Even with the use of fabric conditioner line dried washing is always rather hard and nasty. Better if it’s then ironed, of course, but ironing is one step of domestication too far now that I am retired and no longer have to go to work looking like a pilot!

 

Tumble dried washing (from a vented drier) comes out all soft and fluffy, and thus is ideally suited to being put next to my very delicate and soft self.

 

And both of us hate damp washing hanging around on a boat - and we don’t have a cratch cover!

Edited by nicknorman
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On 29/11/2020 at 14:50, Sea Dog said:

My ownership experience of a washer dryer was that the dryer was rubbish - terribly slow to dry.  That was donkey's years ago, but my son has had one recently in a rented property and found exactly the same.  I'd suggest needing to keep a heavy 240v load running for any longer than absolutely necessary is a bad thing in a boat, so you may wish to consider the fastest dryer you can find even if it is less efficient with power overall.

The dryer part of my washer/dryer was naff.

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I thought for a minute , Nick,  you were going to say you ironed things but that was averted ?. I think we have an iron somewhere too, probably last used on a Police shirt. 

I don't use fabric conditioner and as my washing gets a good (Scots) blow under the car port it is never hard and nasty. In fact it often dries lovely and soft  even when it is raining ! 

 

Having been brought up with six brothers and being married to Iain I am not used to the male of the species being domesticated. I think I went wrong somewhere.

 

Haggis

Edited by haggis
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