I have one of those washer/dryer units where it’s one piece, with the washer on the bottom and the dryer on top. They came with the apartment I’m renting, so I have neither the money or permission to replace them.
The dryer takes well over an hour to finish a normal load of clothes. We’ve had the apartment repair guy out, who says there’s nothing wrong with it. I’ve swabbed inside the pocket where the lint trap sits to remove any lost lint, but no improvement. Next step, I imagine, is sliding the thing away from the wall so I can swab the exhaust port. Any other suggestions for me?
The apartment is 800 square feet with cathedral celings. If it’s over 90 degrees outside, the AC has to run non-stop to keep the house hovering at 80. Doing this eats through $100 of electricity a day. We’ve gotten some good fans and make do whenever the temp outside is cool enough. Anyone got any other ideas?
Any way to hang clothes outside, or on a drying rack? If you have a ceiling fixture you might consider replacing it w/ a fan., this will also help w/ heating bills in winter.
Can’t hang the clothes up. They have sticky rules about how our balconey looks (hamocks are okay, but not our punching bag ). And no celing fixtures. The fans we got are all the floor variety. Vornados.
If they would let us install a screen door, we could really catch the nice breeze that’s been about lately. Sadly, all of the windows that open are only on one side of the house. Any ideas how I can rig up a removable screen door?
drying rack might be somthing. With the cathedral celings, we could hang it out of the way. Small kine ghetto, but. We’ll see if we can’t get the electric bill under $200 some other way.
They make a retractable screen that’s installed on the side of the door frame. About $350.00, but you can always take it w/ you. Check w/ your local building suppliers.
An hour to an hour and a half seems about right to me for a dryer.
$100/day? Are you serious? If you really are getting $3000 electric bills something’s wrong, and it’s not the AC.
As for helping it run less, make sure to keep your blinds/drapes closed. You want to keep the sunlight out of the apartment. If the temprature drops below whatever you want the apartment at at night, open your windows and setup your fans to draw in the cool night air then. What type of AC do you have, central or window/wall? Make sure the filter is clean also make sure the evaporator is free of ice (if it’s iced over, switch the unit to FAN ON for a while until the ice is gone) and make sure the condensor is free of dirt. Let us know what type of AC you have and we can tell you where to check these items and how to clean/replace them.
I have the same sort of washer/dryer machine. My exhaust port seems to be partially clogged with lint so it takes a long time to dry clothes - 90 minutes for three pairs of jeans. When I vent it inside the house it only takes about 45 minutes to do the same job. Not sure if this is an option for you as that will only make your a/c work harder.
As for the a/c, is there a significant volume of cold air coming out of the registers? A dirty filter will reduce air flow. Also, check the metal fins inside the air handler just past the filter. They can get clogged with lint and dust, too.
What is the Btus rating on the A/C unit? At 800 ft², you need about 12,000 Btus. (or 1 ton of cooling) If the apartment is poorly insulated, or has poor windows etc, you may need 18,000 Btus, but I doubt it. Twelve thousand Btus should do it. If the A/C unit is under 12,000 Btus, it is probably undersized and there is little you can do. You need a bigger unit. (however even undersized it probrbly would cool the apartment on mild days)
In any event, running flat out 24 hours a day shouldn’t even approach $100 day. Something else is going on there.
The evaporator should never ice up if it is operating correctly. The most common causes are:
Low on Freon. (if it’s a window unit, this is less likely but possible)
A dirty/clogged filter
A dirty/clogged evaporator
A bad blower motor
Setting the t-stat too low; typically lower then 69ish
If you are spenind anything close to $100 a week(not to mention a day!) for electric, it is cheaper to pay a professional technician to service this unit than pay those utility bills.
My bad. I ment to say $100 a week. Slight difference. So, a little more that $10 per day, but still way too much. Our old apartment of similar square footing, but normal celings, took only $50 a week for all the electric including the AC, when it worked.
We’re doing the windows open at night with fans trick, which gets the house to the same temp as the outside by about 4 in the morning. It will probably work better when the daytime high stops being above 95.
It’s a central cooling unit, with the beast of the machine outside at ground level. I’ll go get whatever specifics I can off the casing and post back in a bit.
Meanwhile, I’m off to pull the washer away from the wall and swab it’s exhaust tube. Ew.
In addition to the other excellent suggestions above -
For the dryer, check that the exhaust hose is not crimped or kinked in any way and doesn’t have sharp or excessive bends before going through the wall. Second, depending on how the dryer vent is routed to outside, you may have an air restriction there as well. If it vents straight though the wall to outside, make sure the flapper can open freely and is not clogged with wasp or bird nests. If the vent runs up through the wall and out the attic, check the last joint of pipe before it exits. This can become very clogged with lint and cause extreme drying times.
Also check that the washing machine spin cycle is extracting sufficient moisture from the clothes - nothing should drip when you take them out of the washer (or not much, anyway).
For the A/C, first I have to disagree with Joey P a little bit. in my part of the country, and Davis, CA too, 800 ft[sup]2[/sup] with vaulted ceilings will require a minimum of 1-1/2 tons (18,000 btu) of cooling. The most common causes for poor performance from a properly sized system are dirty evaporator or condenser coils, dirty filter, low freon and duct leaks. When you check the outside unit, make sure the condenser coils are clean. If the unit is louvered, you will have to get down and look up through the louvers. If the coils are dirty, clean them or have them cleaned. The same is true of the evaporator coil. It is located in the fan unit in the house. It is not uncommon in rental homes for these to have become very dirty from poor filter maintenance by prior tenants. If dirty, it is essential that these be cleaned as well. Anything that interferes with the heat transfer is your enemy here.
Cleaning the dryer vent, both the flexible hose from the dryer to the wall and the rigid duct in the wall is very important.
For example, earlier this year, I noticed that the average drying time for a load of laundry had increased from 35-45 minutes to 75-90 minutes. This didn’t happen all at once, it probably had been getting progressively worse for months.
I cleaned the flexible hose, but it didn’t get any better. I didn’t have a long flexible hose to clean the duct, but I was able to clean it out with my shop-vac (whose motor can be turned around and converted into a leaf blower). It blew out great globs of lint that had collected in the duct. After that cleaning, the average drying time was back at 35-45 minutes.
If you have a flexy hose, ditch it. Dryer makers no longer recommend them; they’re fire hazards, and they clog up much faster than rigid ducts. You can get elbows and straights at Home Depot, and it’s simpler than it looks.
If the duct is longer than you can clean by getting your arm all fuzzy, www.improvements.com sells a dandy round brush with a ten-foot flexy pusher. My duct is longer than that, so I hook it up to an electrician’s fish tape. I hook the two together with duct tape, of course.
Apologies for bumping my own thread, but I’ve only just now had a chance to be home with enough daylight to look at my AC.
It’s a GE, model number BGTA718B1B. I hope that’s enough information to help. All the rest of the ID label has been bleached and sandblasted away.
Check out the big box home improvement stores. The two in this are have some nice pull across screens that can be removed when you move out. may have to do some minor patch & paint.
Can you verify that it’s clean all the way through? Is there a strong output of warm humid air when you’re drying clothes?
That’s the outside unit right? What about the air handler inside? That’s where the filter goes and behind the filter are the coils that can get clogged up with lint, especially if your dryer is anywhere nearby.
Extended dryer run can be caused by another problem-only part of the element is working. Typically, dryers have a low setting for knits and delicate fabrics, and high for sturdy fabrics like cotton. If the low element is 500W and the high element is 1000W, you should be getting 1500W when the unit is on high setting, but if the selector switch or the high element is faulty, you’re stuck on low, all of the time. Presence of warm air at discharge doth not a quality diagnosis make.
Yeah, could see daylight. And wedged my hands in as far as they woud go into the back of the unit and the pocket where the lint trap sits. Very little lint. Danceswithcats, how do I check the wattage if the dryer does still warm up? Time to call a mechanic?
Yeah, that’s the outside unit. And it looked clean. The inside intake actually had no filter on it. Bought one, so it’s a month old. Didn’t see any coils beyond, only ducting, which looked clean. Will have to see where those lead. The dryer isn’t near the air conditioner intake, but who knows how long it was sans filter.
). And no celing fixtures. The fans we got are all the floor variety. Vornados.
