Heat pump dryer
joenorm
| Posted in General Questions on
Does anyone own this dryer specifically?
If so, do you recommend it?
Thanks
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I have the W1 washer and T1 dryer and would recommend both.
In my search for a heat-pump dryer, I found that pretty much all of the competition in North America had some sort of design flaw relating to the filters protecting the heat exchanger. Other dryers either lacked sufficient filtration or the filters were difficult to access for maintenance.
The Miele units have two lint filters in the drum and an additional foam filter before the heat exchanger that is easily accessible from the front of the unit. I dry a lot of pet laundry that is covered in fine dust and the foam filter catches everything.
Otherwise, I find the T1 to be fast (loads are usually under an hour) and efficient (about 10ยข/load with my local rates). The drum light is nice, the controls are easy to use and the fact that it's 120v with optional onboard water storage makes it really flexible. There's also a configuration menu which allows you to adjust things like settings memory and how "dry" you want your clothes to be.
The T1 doesn't have a problem with my queen size down duvet. The only minor issues I've had are with drying the centre of a very thick down pillow and shirts that were tangled up inside bed linens. I used a long time-dry cycle for the pillow and threw the shirts back in separately, which was quick, as a sensor automatically adjusts the drying time depending on the conditions.
I think it's tough for heat-pump dryers to do their job if air can't get to the clothing to transport the moisture away and it's harder for them to just brute-force the drying with (damaging) high temperatures like other types of dryers.
I do. It's a great dryer. I think the direct energy benefit is modest, but the indirect benefit of not sucking vast quantities of freezing cold air into the house in cold weather is big. I will never buy a regular dryer again.
However ... and this is a big however ... the machine recently quit drying, at about 9 months age (mercifully still under warranty). Miele service has been TERRIBLE so far. Unreachable. Incompetent. Slow. I can't come up with enough adjectives to describe how dreadful the service experience has been so far. The only silver lining has been that the local service tech is good. But he's tethered to a national organization that can't even keep it's phone lines working, and takes a week to answer an email.
I'd be happy to elaborate for anyone who's interested, but in the interest of civility and my blood pressure I'll just leave with the current status: it's day 30 from my initial service request, and we still don't have a valid work order for a warranty repair.
For the sake of completeness, Miele "service" through conventional channels totally failed to deal with this. They just promised to ship parts for a repair the next week ... for six weeks. Finally, after I complained on various social media, I penetrated to a higher level, and received a replacement dryer and transfer of warranty. We were without a dryer for exactly 90 days. I'd still say it's a great product when it's working, but it's hard to get enthusiastic about the service experience.
I have owned for two years or so. So far so good. Can't complain about dry times but if I was in a large family doing tons of laundry I might. Appears to be very well made.
I pray yours stays that way. Ours is "so far so bad."
It worked great until about 45 days ago. Then it quit drying. It took us a little while to figure out that there was an issue. We're not huge laundry users.
I called Miele service. Their phone lines weren't working at the time - failed over to the phone company fast busy signal. Instead I filled out the online service form. At the end of the process, it indicated that it couldn't schedule a service date automatically, and offered me a calendar guessing game. I never could find a date.
Failing that, I sent a note via the online contact form. After three days, they responded with a case # and suggested that I call to schedule service. I did. After navigating the voice mail tree, I was placed on hold. After 2-3 minutes, the line went dead and I was redirected to their after-call satisfaction survey. I repeated this process ad nauseam until I finally connected. Hours wasted.
Eventually they connected me with the local service tech. He came by, pulled the data from the machine, and did some preliminary tests. There weren't any error codes, so he called Miele tech. They wanted to blame us - too much soap, or slow spin on the washer. Perhaps these are valid things to check if the average customer is a moron. But, no, these are not the problem.
When it came time to troubleshoot the machine for real, he discovered that Miele had not marked the work order as a warranty job. So, experimental replacement of parts was out. I called Miele and again could not get through on the phone multiple times. So I went back to the contact form. After four days, messaging each day with a more urgent (but still civil) note, they responded to say that they'd updated the service order with the purchase date.
Today I heard from the local tech that, not only was the service order updated with warranty authorization, it had disappeared from the system. He called Miele, and was to be connected to a supervisor, but the call disconnected instead.
Hopefully Miele will get its act together tomorrow, but as things now stand, it's been 30 days since we reported the problem, and we have neither a working theory about the problem, nor parts on order for experimentation (nor a working dryer of course).
I'm sure Miele will sort things out eventually, and I recognize that supply chains are screwed up right now. But that's really no excuse for the incompetent communication and execution from Miele USA.
I bought this machine as part of a bunch of efficiency upgrades to lower our carbon footprint. Evidently no good deed goes unpunished.
Miele service continues to disappoint. It's day 60 from reporting the problem, and we still don't have parts. Miele USA originally scheduled delivery for 4/25, but each week they move the date back when they miss the target - 5/4, 5/11, now 5/17. They can't or won't provide a realistic estimate. We'll see what happens on the 17th.
Day 90 - we have a replacement dryer.
I have the T1 unit and have been happy with it to date. Tough to see all these customer service complaints and my fingers are crossed that I don't need it.
The dryer has 3 normal settings and I've learned to always put it on 'Normal Plus' or 'Extra Dry' as the regular setting doesn't quite get the laundry all the way dry. With the aforementioned settings selected the clothes come out bone dry and hot. Even with the longer settings the cycle is less than my wash cycle, so no problem there. I'd say it clocks in at just shy of an hour. The plinth filter needs to be cleaned every dozen or so cycles which is a hassle, but isn't specific to this dryer and it has an important function. It isn't hard to do, just an extra step when handling wet laundry.
We did have a 'get service' code show up once, but I turned the machine off and back on and it hasn't shown up since. No idea why this happened.
I am pretty happy with the machine overall and have been installing it exclusively in our projects. To date I am unaware of any complaints from any of our clients.
I have it. It's great, but:
- Don't overload it
- Buy an extra plinth filter that you can alternate with while you wash/dry the dirty one.
- You need to occasionally deep clean the lint traps with dish soap and a sponge.
- If you use the condensate tray instead of the drain hose, remember to empty after each load.
- The smartphone app is horrible, if that matters to you.
One other tip: there's an air intake grille on the right side of the plinth filter that may also require cleaning once in a while. To release it, open the plinth hatch and look for a slot on the right edge. Sticking something thin in the slot, like a spoon handle or small flat-blade screwdriver, will release the catch. For some reason not all versions of the manual mention this.