Heat pump dryer system is state of the art for efficiency. I saw some complains by American that it takes too long time for drying, but I don't know why they need to dry things so frequently.
I was thinking about this anomaly yesterday. Then I remembered that most US electrical outlets are at 110 Volts instead of the more usual world-wide standard of 220 volts. So most stuff in the US is under-powered by EU or Australian standards. Being under-powered, it would take longer to dry your clothes.
(That's also why they don't seem to use electric kettles in the US commonly as is normal in 220 volt countries)
I like mine, but it has a small capacity compared to a standard dryer, and we find that over time water slowly condenses inside of it, so we have to drain it a couple times a year to stop it from shorting its control panel. Not 100% if it's design flaw, micro leak, or what. 8 or 9 year old LG unit I think.
If I’m doing 3 loads of laundry for the family, I don’t want a 2.5-3 hour dry cycle to make laundry take all day (or make me do laundry of half the days of the week).
??? That's excessively long. Our heat-pump dryer takes about 20-30 minutes to do one of our loads.* The dryer invariably ends up waiting for the washer to finish.
* Our loads aren't excessively tight in the machine. You have to allow room for the clothes to tumble loosely thus allowing lots of surface area for evaporation.
I quickly googled for “how long does a heat pump dryer cycle take” and got several answers in the 2.5-3 hour range, which is long enough to provoke complaints.
Obviously, if every heat pump dryer took 20-30 minutes, you would not hear complaints about that (that’s much faster than my gas dryer).
Power-input. US dryers would typically work on 110 volts mains. Those similar dryers in the EU or Australia are working on 220 volts mains. Took me a while to click on why the great differences in working-times. 15 amps wiring in the US means 1650 watts, the same wiring in EU is 3300 watts.
That's not it. Electric dryers in the US are overwhelmingly 240V and on a 30A breaker. At 80% of rated, that's 5.7kW available. (Gas dryers here are typically on a 120V, 15A circuit.)
Every heat pump dryer I looked at on the home center's website is 240V. (Edit: I found one Miele on another home center that was a 15A@120V.)
