Heat-Pump Condenser Ventless Clothes Dryer: Whirlpool WED9290FW

Whirlpool WED9290FW Ventless Heat-Pump Condenser Clothes Dryer

Our home has two laundry rooms.  One in our walk-out basement (for the pets) and one on the main floor (for us).  To have an extremely tight house, neither of the two rooms are permitted to vent the clothes dryer.

Up until recently, our available choices for a ventless dryer were pretty limited as the ones that were available in the U.S. market were primarily sourced from abroad and were compact in nature (designed for flats and apartments in Europe).

In the interim, we chose to only use the pet laundry room and a conventional electric vented dryer that was vented to the interior space of the room which had an ERV return.  It wasn't an optimal situation, but it did do the job.  We created a filter housing which captured any lint that was exhausted and the ERV did a fine job at removing the moisture of the dryer's exhaust.

Our waiting paid off because Whirlpool recently released a full-size heat-pump ventless condenser dryer. There is one other full-size condenser dryer on the market as well (LG DLHX4072V), but that unit requires venting.

After years of compromising, I am pleased to write that we are very happy with our new dryer.

We are now able to wash and dry full loads of laundry and the drying times do not seem like they are significantly longer than a conventional vented dryer, even on its most efficient energy saving "Eco" drying mode.

Another wonderful benefit of this dryer is that clothes come out feeling more soft and the drying itself is more gentle on the materials than a conventional dryer.

Typical energy consumption is about 2kW while its running as compared to 8kW of a conventional electric dryer.  My guess is that the effective COP of this heat-pump dryer approaches 3.0 taking into account a slightly longer drying time.

For those that a looking for an excellent drying solution for their Passive House project, I can't recommend the Whirlpool WED9290FW, highly enough.  The additional cost of the dryer, while a little higher than a conventional one, looks to be paid back in about one to two years of usage.

So far we have not had any mechanical or reliability issues with the more complex configuration of a heat-pump heating source.

What is nice is that the Whirlpool WED9290FW dryer basically acts and feels like a conventional dryer.