On 11/11/2019 14:59, GB wrote:
On 11/11/2019 14:00, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sun, 10 Nov 2019 14:14:02 +0000, Matthew Mitchell wrote:

Hi, I was just given a Creda Excel mini dryer.

Check it's not one of the ones that have a recall (at last..) for
catching fire.


Our Miele dryer stopped working, and on checking the code I discovered
it was stuffed up with fibres. The back of the machine was full, and the
exit hose was solid. Goodness knows how it had kept going for the last
20 years without ever being cleaned out. The point, though, is that it
stopped working, without drama. It can't be hard to have a temperature
sensor in the machine that shuts it off if it gets too hot.

From experience with a faulty Hotpoint dryer: some fibres always got
past the filter. The filter housing was at the front of the machine and
the vent pipe was at the rear, with the two connected by a 4" rigid
pipe. That rigid pipe was *NOT* securely located and came loose more
than once. The loose fibres escaped and built up on the floor, under the
machine - where the air intake was. When enough had built up, it would
suck up a clump, which would pass straight through to the heater section
and lodge on the hot, wire elements, where they would smoulder and could
then ignite. There was no overtemperature or flow blockage to be
detected beforehand, simply a smell of burning and the next stage being
a fire.

If the huge number of faulty dryers being recalled have similar design
problems, they too will not be suffering from a blockage and/or
overtemperature that can be detected.

I appreciate that Miele is more expensive than Creda, but this is a
foreseeable and serious fire risk, pretty easily avoidable with
appropriate sensors. It's an obvious design criterion.

See above as to why it may not be the same problem.

I extracted a few kilos of very dry, finely shredded fibres from the
machine plus the hose. Normally, the fact the fibres are compressed
would help suppress fire, but when the dryer is running there's air
being blown in to fan any embers.

If Creda have sent out machines that catch fire easily, that's sheer
idiocy.

If our experience is at all common, it is poor design, but perhaps not
an obvious problem. They presumably did not consider that a failure of
one part would cause a build-up of fluff that could then be pulled in by
the fan and onto the heater elements. Obvious with hindsight, but I
suppose that they did not expect the poor fitting of the pipes and
therefore didn't plan for a build-up of fluff under the machine.

SteveW