Greetings from Florida’s Space Coast! We appreciate your viewership & have come to realize that our blog readers are not only located in Brevard County, but throughout all of Florida & around the world. This is a blog that will potentially benefit all of you readers.
We frequently get asked: What brands do you recommend for dryers?
Our Answer: We don’t have a specific brand we recommend, however we do recommend a specific model type that’s made by at least 5 different brands. Furthermore we also communicate we don’t recommend any Samsung appliances we do NOT recommend LG Dryers & Electrolux dryers.
A brief note on Samsung, they have been through a few class action lawsuits regarding their appliances. Their dryers are known to be the loudest on the market. They are quite involved to take apart and between that and their expensive OEM parts, they are costly to repair. There are several companies in my area that won’t even work on Samsungs any longer. For this reason I would most especially all the more not recommend them for rental properties.
As for LG Dryers the reason we don’t recommend them is one reason only, for some reason, their dryers have a significant difference in the rate of speed their fan/ motor produces. Simply meaning, the rate of air speed on the back of the dryer is slower than most brand dryers. When it comes to airflow you have air speed and air volume (the amount of air passing through).
Without getting into the weeds to much, air speed and air volume are closely related, as they both describe different aspects of the movement of air through a system. Their relationship depends on the cross-sectional area of the system through which the air is moving. At the bottom of every lint trap is a fan (aka blower wheel). Blowers and fans are rated by both air volume (CFM) and speed (velocity), and the selection depends on the requirements of the process.
How the Fan and Motor Work Together in a Dryer:
- Motor’s Role:
- The motor powers the fan to create airflow.
- The same motor often drives the drum (where clothes tumble) via a belt or pulley system.
- Fan (Blower Wheel):
- The fan pulls air into the dryer, pushes it over the heating element (to warm it), and then circulates it through the drum.
- After passing through the drum, the air carries moisture from the clothes and is expelled through the vent system.
- Air Circulation Path:
- Intake: Air is drawn from the surroundings.
- Heating: The air is heated as it passes over the heating element.
- Drum Circulation: The warm air enters the drum, evaporates moisture from the clothes, and exits via the lint trap.
- Exhaust: The fan expels the moist air through the vent to the outside.
I digress, in layman’s terms, on the top-side of the blower fan (where your lint trap compartment is), it’s acting as vacuum, that evacuates the (humid) air along with any lint. It evacuates into the lint trap, through the blower fan and blows out the back of the pipe in the dryer. This is why if you are attempting to dry clothes while your lint screen has a layer of lint on it, it significantly impacts the dryer efficiency because it’s essentially acting as a blockage and the humid air is struggling to get out. Now, your dryer is drying with more humid air in the drum which is what causes longer dryer times.
Side note: This is why we also do not recommend dryer sheets, we recommend wool dryer balls. Dryer sheets are known to stick to and block the lint trap compartment “grate” which causes a similar effect. In fact, we have seen now in multiple several instances where dryer sheets stuck to the grate, which caused the dryer to overheat, which subsequently caused heat related stress on the parts and one or more parts associated with the heating of the machine “blew” or went bad and it resulted in the dryer needing to be repaired.
It should be common sense that, the better/ harder your dryer blows, the longer your vent will likely stay clean(er). At every single job we conduct an airflow test on the back of the machine using an anemometer. What we have found is LG Dryers blow at a rate between 1900-2400 Feet Per Minute (FPM). We’ve seem similar results with Electrolux dryers as well. In contrast, all other brands seem to consistently blow at a rate of 3000-3500 FPM – quite a difference!
Additionally since COVID year, 2020, we have ran into several dozen dryers now, 90%+ of them being LGs that blow between 1200-1600 FPM. On these dryers we believe it’s a manufacturer defect if you will and not running up to the model’s specs. The reason I reached that conclusion is due to interactions I’ve had with LG Warranty Repairman.
I think it was late 2020 or early 2021 I was hired by someone in Viera to simply come and run a camera through her dryer vent because despite her vent being serviced by a competitor, she was still having problems with her LG Dryer. After my inspection I confidently & honestly told her that they vent was as clean as a whistle & the company she hired did a great job. Well, I get a call roughly 3 days later and she tells me she has LG Warranty Techs on site and they are telling her it’s still a vent problem.
I asked to speak with them, my first question was: Did you conduct on airflow test on the back of the machine? Their answer: No. They proceeded to turn the dryer on & one of them hopped behind the dryer & said, the airflow seems great (using some rudimentary hand test). My response: I can be there in 20 minutes can you wait until I get there? They obliged. By the time I arrived one of them left & appeared I was dealing with the senior tech.
When I arrived the technician wanted me to first test the airflow at the discharge end of the dryer vent on the roof, so, I obliged. We normally don’t do that test (on the roofs) because we can’t get accurate readings on the type of vent covers roofer usually install. However in saying that, when I conducted the test, it showed the airflow was not adequate. In the dryer vent industry there’s a standard of what’s considered good or adequate airflow for a clean dryer vent, which is a minimum of 1,500 FPM.
After we went inside, I tested the dryer and it was blowing somewhere around 1300-1500 FPM ( I can’t recall the exact data, but I do recall it was severely low). That means the airflow SURELY will not be that same speed 15-18ft later at the end of the vent. I immediately told the guy, the dryer is the problem, this is not a good reading. He proceeded to call the LG Tech Hotline and told them the information I gave him. Whomever he spoke with told him it WAS a dryer problem. He gets off the phone, looks me straight in the face & said: I’m going to have to get that tool (anemometer), I would’ve never figured that out & I’ve never been trained to use that tool.
Since then several dozen other dryers we’ve found with similar situations. Interestingly enough, LG contacted me in early 2024 in hopes that I would help them with a few services calls they had about dryers not running well. Ironically in these cases I helped with the dryer wasn’t the problem it was a super dirty vent.
So, with all that said, do as you wish, but I don’t recommend LG Dryers & Electrolux for the same reason or Samsung Dryers & MANY other appliance repairman will say the same thing about Samsungs. Thank you for reading! I hope this has been helpful to you. If YOU have a topic you’d like me to cover in a blog that I haven’t already wrote about, comment, or reach out via call, text, email or social media message & let me know!
LG, If you’re reading this, sorry to not recommend your Dryers, but, in saying that I hope you guys will consider this information & will make this improvement on your dryers!
One Response
So what do you recommend we do to test this if we just bought a new LG dryer – ours was installed August 2024 and we will need a vent cleaning once a year ?