How a Washing Machine Dryer Works Leave a comment
If you plan on acquiring a washing machine and you’re wondering how the dryer feature works, then this post is just for you. You may already own a washer and might be wondering how its dryer function works; if so, keep reading.
Arguably, the most interesting thing about technology is how it evolves our daily lives. In terms of household chores, technology greatly reduces our workload and speeds things up.
When it comes to doing the laundry, rather than using our bare hands to scrub, squeeze, and wash garments, we just dump them in the washing machine and wait for it to do the dirty job (pun intended).
However, despite allowing the machine to wash our linen, we still have to ensure they are dried properly. So, we take them out to be hanged so they can dry out.
But with washers that come with built-in dryers, the need for manually hanging clothes to dry is lessened greatly.
These washer-dryers come fitted with a washing machine and a clothes dryer in one single cabinet. If you’re not too familiar with this appliance, then this post is probably what you need before stepping out to purchase a washing machine. Let’s understand how the washing machine dryer works.
How a Washing Machine Dryer Works
In order to understand how the dryer works, we need to take into consideration the following:
- How much water is in wet clothes
- How to remove the water from your garments
- What conditions are required for drying fabrics
- How the washer-dryer works
How much water is in wet clothes
A washing machine uses roughly 20 litres of water for around a half-load of washing. A large percentage of the water is spun out of your garments at high speeds before they’re drained away.
However, regardless of this, even the most expensive washers still leave some amount of water in your fabrics.
According to a physicist, even after being spun vigorously in the washing machine drum, a 2kg load of laundry can weigh 1.1kg more.
Basically, this means that after each wash cycle, your garments are at least 50% heavier than they were before they were loaded into the washer. This newly added weight is completely water.
How to remove the water from your garments
To remove water from an object, the easiest way is to vaporize it. Basically, this means heating it up. Thus, one method of drying wet clothes is by heating them up.
This means turning the water contained in fabrics into steam and then extracting the steam while leaving the clothes dry. Hanging your clothes out in the sun to dry is one way to achieve this.
As a matter of fact, the clothes dryer also follows this simple drying mechanism.
What conditions are required for drying fabrics
Water evaporation is necessary for washed clothing to dry completely. For this to happen, the following conditions need to be present:
High temperature: This helps transform the water on the garment into vapor.
Air circulation: This is required to blow the vapor away from the clothes.
Low humidity: This is also very crucial as it ensures that water from the atmosphere doesn’t go to the clothes.
How the washer-dryer works
Now, we will understand how the washing machine dryer works in this section. However, note that there are two categories of washer-dryers to take into account; vented and ventless.
The vented unit works just like a front-loader washing machine and a conventional dryer. When washing, the appliance tumbles the garments with soap and water until they get cleaned.
Next, it spins to rid the clothes of most of the water it was soaked in. Afterward, the vented washing machine’s dryer takes charge by sucking in air from the surrounding environment and heating it up.
It then spins the garments with the hot air which removes the moisture from the clothes. The steam generated from the entire process leaves the room via the vent as new air comes into the unit to repeat the whole process.
On the other hand, a ventless washing machine unit doesn’t require an external exhaust. In the ventless system, while wet clothes stay in the drum, a condensing chamber gets cooled in the unit.
Next, the unit heats up the air within the dryer drum. Now, as the drum spins, the heated air draws out moisture from the garments which is eventually circulated via the cooled chamber.
This process creates condensation which transforms the moisture in the air into liquid form. The condensation is then drained from the unit via the drainage tube.
Finally, the unit circulates dry hot air with the fabrics as the entire process starts all over again.
Final Words
The washing machine helps make the laundry chore simple and fast. With a washer-dryer, all you’d have to do is add clothes to the unit, detergent, and then take out the clothes after they’ve been washed and dried.
If you’re looking to buy the best washing machine to aid your household laundry task, be sure to consider some of these excellent brands.
