 Not perfect, but the only one that does the job |
| Review Date: October 12, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Ben Franklin, Oregon |
Needed a 120 volt dryer for my apartment. We got the spacesaver after trying brand-X and returning it.
We had the DSKP...(P)portable with wheels, not the DSKS...(S) stationary without wheels. According to the literature they are identical except that the some DSKS... are made to be stacked above a washer in a combination frame with a washer on bottom, the labels/dial readings are "upside down" because they flipped the dryer over and put the controls on the bottom so they are easier to reach.
This GE dryer is more expensive than the competitors but well worth it, and you'll save electricity. It is much quieter than the other brand too. The GE heated air enters the tumbler drum from a large rear grating and exits the front door, forcing heated air through the clothes before it exhausts the machine.
Tried one other brand of 120 volt electric dryer, which is the same unit as all others on the market, with simply different cosmetics. They all look the same. All others had air entering in the left rear of the tumbler and exiting the right rear of the tumbler. That kind of design makes the heated air simply bypass the clothes, exit the machine, and the clothes just take forever to dry. Also, with the other brand's design you have to reach inside the tumbler to get to the lint cleaner, nightmare. You have to reach into the rear of the tumbler to get, and disassemble it just to see if the lint needs cleaning. I had it and returned it.
The GE design puts the lint cleaner in the front door. One slide and you can check it out. I did have to file down little catches on it to make it jam less and not require jiggling.
My GE was made in Mexico, which is much better than overseas for quality control, materials. Also, toxic fumigant, like fungicide and pesticides are not necessary when trucking from Mexico, as they are needed when shipped in containers from Asia. The quality and workmanship in my GE dryer (from Mexico) was better than the other dryer (which I returned,) which I believe was made in USA.
I am very sensitive to toxic odors from paints and materials. I have a severe case of MCS. This GE machine had no real problems for me. The Dura Drum is just a hard metal paint coating and gives off no vapors or fumes. So I was pleasantly surprised. The other competitor's dryer I tried had an fresh paint type of smell, that sometimes gave me headaches if I got too close without holding my breath. (It wasn't a Dura Drum.)
There is one thing I did not like about the GE (but I corrected it) and could be a major problem for people with weak hands and/or arthritis. There is no door handle, per se, but you pry the door open from the doorframe with your hand. There is just a recess, pressed into the design of the chassis door frame, to pry it open. It is hard, maybe impossible for an elderly person. To make the prying even more tedious (and possible more damaging to the hinges in the long run) the location of the latch is offset from the location of recess in the door frame, used to pry it open. So some of your prying force is diverted, twisting the door hinges a bit, before it pops open.
The dryer door does need to be very tight, since the rubber stripping around it needs to keep it airtight, because the door holds the lint filter and exhaust port. This is good design for cross ventilated drying, as stated above, nowithstanding the absence of a descent door handle.
When you get the dryer, you might want to keep a piece of wood handy with which to pry the door open, (about 1/2" X 2" x 12") instead of using your hand.
To remedy this, soon after we started using it, I drilled four screws in the dryer door to install a metal gate handle (that I could grab) on the dryer door - dead center over the latch (which is not the center of the door, by the way.) I used nylon insert lock nuts on machine screws, so my handle will never come loose.
Putting a metal handle on the door, as we did, directly over the latch, was tremendous help. It was tedious handyman surgery, but we have been very happy with the dryer, since I made this customized improvement.
Filling the dryer up a little less than halfway, dries clothes in about an hour. Filling it up more than that causes the clothes to "ball up" and not get enough air between them.
That seems like a long time to dry, but that's about the best you can expect from a 120V machine, which makes less heat than a toaster-oven. It runs for hours on washday, but we don't mind because it is very quiet, and hate doing laundry in the apartment's laundromat, where our clothes they get contaminated with some of the most toxic vapors under the sun. We like our fragrance-free, chemical-free clothes, and this dryer doesn't cook them either.
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Not perfect, but the only one that does the job
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| Review Date: October 12, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Ben Franklin, Oregon |
Needed a 120 volt dryer for my apartment. We got the spacesaver after trying brand-X and returning it.
We had the DSKP...(P)portable with wheels, not the DSKS...(S) stationary without wheels. According to the literature they are identical except that the some DSKS... are made to be stacked above a washer in a combination frame with a washer on bottom, the labels/dial readings are "upside down" because they flipped the dryer over and put the controls on the bottom so they are easier to reach.
This GE dryer is more expensive than the competitors but well worth it, and you'll save electricity. It is much quieter than the other brand too. The GE heated air enters the tumbler drum from a large rear grating and exits the front door, forcing heated air through the clothes before it exhausts the machine.
Tried one other brand of 120 volt electric dryer, which is the same unit as all others on the market, with simply different cosmetics. They all look the same. All others had air entering in the left rear of the tumbler and exiting the right rear of the tumbler. That kind of design makes the heated air simply bypass the clothes, exit the machine, and the clothes just take forever to dry. Also, with the other brand's design you have to reach inside the tumbler to get to the lint cleaner, nightmare. You have to reach into the rear of the tumbler to get, and disassemble it just to see if the lint needs cleaning. I had it and returned it.
The GE design puts the lint cleaner in the front door. One slide and you can check it out. I did have to file down little catches on it to make it jam less and not require jiggling.
My GE was made in Mexico, which is much better than overseas for quality control, materials. Also, toxic fumigant, like fungicide and pesticides are not necessary when trucking from Mexico, as they are needed when shipped in containers from Asia. The quality and workmanship in my GE dryer (from Mexico) was better than the other dryer (which I returned,) which I believe was made in USA.
I am very sensitive to toxic odors from paints and materials. I have a severe case of MCS. This GE machine had no real problems for me. The Dura Drum is just a hard metal paint coating and gives off no vapors or fumes. So I was pleasantly surprised. The other competitor's dryer I tried had an fresh paint type of smell, that sometimes gave me headaches if I got too close without holding my breath. (It wasn't a Dura Drum.)
There is one thing I did not like about the GE (but I corrected it) and could be a major problem for people with weak hands and/or arthritis. There is no door handle, per se, but you pry the door open from the doorframe with your hand. There is just a recess, pressed into the design of the chassis door frame, to pry it open. It is hard, maybe impossible for an elderly person. To make the prying even more tedious (and possible more damaging to the hinges in the long run) the location of the latch is offset from the location of recess in the door frame, used to pry it open. So some of your prying force is diverted, twisting the door hinges a bit, before it pops open.
The dryer door does need to be very tight, since the rubber stripping around it needs to keep it airtight, because the door holds the lint filter and exhaust port. This is good design for cross ventilated drying, as stated above, nowithstanding the absence of a descent door handle.
When you get the dryer, you might want to keep a piece of wood handy with which to pry the door open, (about 1/2" X 2" x 12") instead of using your hand.
To remedy this, soon after we started using it, I drilled four screws in the dryer door to install a metal gate handle (that I could grab) on the dryer door - dead center over the latch (which is not the center of the door, by the way.) I used nylon insert lock nuts on machine screws, so my handle will never come loose.
Putting a metal handle on the door, as we did, directly over the latch, was tremendous help. It was tedious handyman surgery, but we have been very happy with the dryer, since I made this customized improvement.
Filling the dryer up a little less than halfway, dries clothes in about an hour. Filling it up more than that causes the clothes to "ball up" and not get enough air between them.
That seems like a long time to dry, but that's about the best you can expect from a 120V machine, which makes less heat than a toaster-oven. It runs for hours on washday, but we don't mind because it is very quiet, and hate doing laundry in the apartment's laundromat, where our clothes they get contaminated with some of the most toxic vapors under the sun. We like our fragrance-free, chemical-free clothes, and this dryer doesn't cook them either.
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All those people who live in upper level apartment buildings find it really difficult when it comes to hanging their clothes outside on a line. Thanks to a great device such as clothes dryers they don’t have to worry anymore. However, after a while the clothes dryer might start to break down and it will be necessary to know how to repair it.
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