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Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
Go on Google and type: Hotpoint WDL540 overheats
I suspect another BBC Watchdog expose’ to come soon. 😉Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
The most likely scenarios are that the NTC has deteriorated so it is under reading the drum inlet air temperature or the PCB heater relay has stuck on. Either way, the element’s built-in cut out did not work satisfactorily, either due to poor design or faulty manufacture.
My guess is no action will be taken by Indesit unless they come across a significant number of appliances actually catching fire.
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
stratfordgirl wrote:The most likely scenarios are that the NTC has deteriorated so it is under reading the drum inlet air temperature or the PCB heater relay has stuck on. Either way, the element’s built-in cut out is not working satisfactorily, either due to poor design or faulty manufacture.
Yep, wish I’d taken time to test the NTC just to satisfy my curiosity,a relay sticking is another thought that crossed my mind.
The older style thermal bead externally mounted TOC’s were pretty reliable but were no doubt dropped by Indesit for the usual reason they change anything…the bottom line :rolls:Some things need to be right though, thermal protection especially, the thing was still heating when the customer smelled the burning plastic smell and switched it off.
She said she would phone me once Indesit came out.
Will be interesting to hear how they play it 😉
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
The TOC is in the heater but not sure of the rating. I have seen lifters melt when the relay on the board has failed or a slug has decided to make the module its new home. The way it was put to me when I made some enquiries was the TOC will prevent fire but a slow gradual increase in heat can go beyond its rating and could melt the drum or lifters. Iv seen the same thing with wash heaters as well.
Its a bit like overloading an MCB, you could easily draw 20-25A through a 16A MCB if you build the load up. A fast 30A short and it would trip over but slow gradual increases in current and they don’t always go.
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
Martin wrote:Go on Google and type: Hotpoint WDL540 overheats
I suspect another BBC Watchdog expose’ to come soon. 😉From that I don’t think there’s enough. Or, not that I can see anyway.
Sure there are a number of complaints about the performance which, with a washer dryer is pretty much a given. A few overheating but again, with a washer dryer… 😉
The thing is, every time that something happens that is even slightly untoward people exaggerate it, often behind belief. I’m not saying that is always the case but it becomes more the case when they smell blood in the water in my experience.
A puff of smoke from a dishwasher, a blown oven door glass, a cooker hood PCB that pops and all of a sudden it was going to burn down the house, kill the children, the neighbour’s cat, dog and their children and so on.
When the reality and the actual danger is nothing like what is often portrayed. Usually in the media as they just love a good yarn, which is very often different from the actual story.
K.
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
I think these cheap lifters are polypropylene (marked ), which according to Wikipedia will melt between 130 deg C and 166 deg C depending on manufacture. This is within the overheat cut out temperature of many dryers. For example, the previous Hotpoint WD range had a 160 deg C cut-out. The old WD range thermal fuse cut out at 115 deg C if I remember rightly, but was sometimes too quick to activate in normal use.
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
Okay, I can run with that.
But… 😉
If polypropylene will “melt” at 130?C, at the lower end of the scale so let’s assume that, then why didn’t the tank melt as well, after all, it’s much the same material?
So you would need to have a sustained temperature >130?C at only the drum paddles but such that it wasn’t the drum itself or, the mounting would just melt, the paddles would fall off and no more harm done other than the laundry with melted plastics on it.
If the paddles melted or rather deformed universally then the sustained temperature across them would have to be 130?C or greater to allow that to happen.
Given that the temperature in the drum shouldn’t get anywhere close to that or you’d melt the laundry, especially on mixed or synthetic fabric, then how can the the mean temperature get that high? Keep in mind that any manufacturer is going to err hugely on the side of caution here and anticipate that every customer is a complete moron so as to cover their backside from any possible litigation.
I can’t for the life of me see an average temperature just deciding, you know what I’m just going to melt these paddles and leave all the other bits intact just to confuse the attending repairer. Somehow, that just doesn’t cut it for me.
I would think that you’re looking for a localised cause of the heat build up inside the drum or, something in there that soaked up heat to the point where it got so hot that the paddles got deformed. This before the poor little remotely situated TOC could detect that there was a problem going on or the control stat figuring out that the temperature in the drum was too high.
If it was a fire risk, trust me, from examples I’ve seen first hand in the past where a WD poses a fire risk it’s so obvious it’s untrue. You would know 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} for sure that the thing was about to go up as the dryer housing especially is not just toasted, it’s incinerated.
Even after all that, the RCD should trip it and cut the power as soon as the whole lot shorts to earth. Quadruple safety but, only if an RCD is present however, even where it is not, the fuse should pop with that bad a short.
My point being that, even although I loathe washer dryers as much as anyone and I think that the performance of them is at best questionable, they are as safe as safe can be.
What isn’t so sure is what people put in them or how that they use them as is the case with most wet laundry product. Our job is in part to play Sherlock Holmes and work out why it failed, how it failed and advise accordingly.
In other words, we need to figure it out and speak with authority on the subject given that we are supposed to be experts in it. Some are easy to work out, some aren’t. Some take a lot of time, the bulk do not.
Our job is not to guess or assume.
K.
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
Bearing in mind we are talking about a condenser dryer here and not a hot air blasting vented dryer, therefore the air flow through the heater box shouldn’t be above 100C. Any air flow temperature above that would simply negate the condensation effect and just create a Swedish sauna instead! And for a washer dryer not to have at least 2 fail safe systems of cutting off the heat is fool hardy in the extreme. Nice one Indesit. :rolls:
This heap of poo relies entirely on the NTC to control the heat. I do not have access to the service manual but I would be interested to learn of the NTC’s resistance readings at specific temperatures? And what they are now on the ones that melt the paddles?
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
It’s a 20k NTC, ie rated at 20 kOhm at 25 dec C.
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
stratfordgirl wrote:It’s a 20k NTC, ie rated at 20 kOhm at 25 dec C.
Too bad Eddie didn’t get a chance to test the NTC. 🙁
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
Was all set to but it was stuck into the alloy with a red high temp sealant of some sort.
The customer was minded to push Indesit for a new machine -slim chance of that no doubt- but I didnt want to spoil her chances so left the thing as I found it. 😉Eddie
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
Over the years doing this “stuff”, I’ve learned a few things whilst dealing with technical issues, supposed technical issues and much more so users.
The first and foremost is, keep your gob well and truly shut until you have all the facts. Make excuses such as “I’ll have to check on that”, “I’ll need to take a bunch of photos and send the to technical to let them see what I’m seeing” and so on but whatever you do, don’t get yourself trapped.
It’s a twist on a classic negotiation technique.
But more appropriate is to ask questions, lots of them and to preferably get the answers in some sort of recorded format. The reason being that you can go back with, “Well, you did state that…” if needs be.
In any “fire” case in my experience you need to ask some things like, what was in the machine? What program was it on? How long was it on dry for? When did you last clean the filter? Where the items in there suitable for tumble drying? And so on to allow you to gauge just what happened better but, also to get the user to understand that maybe, just maybe, they might have done something not quite right.
We live in a world where there is always someone to blame, you don’t want it to be you especially.
Let me give you a real world example of what I mean.
ISE customer with a dryer calls in and says it’s gone on fire, it could have killed her kids, burnt down her home, murdered the cat and so on.
We treat it as a priority obviously and route it to the agent in the area who, it so happens is Mark. Now, Mark is a really good guy and has attended this customer before it turns out but, we’ll get to that.
Customer refused to have Mark back in the house.
We ask Toni to go, another good guy who does us a favour by going out of area and bailed us out the brown stuff on this occasion.
Toni gets there, takes a bunch of photos as it turns out that the stupid owner has decided to try to dry a bath mat in the dryer, that’s plastic backed. Toni says Jack Schmitt to the owner thankfully beyond, “I’ll send all this back to ISE to see what they make of it”. But has the good sense to say to the customer that he thinks that the issue may have been what was in the dryer as he’s never known this to happen.
After that I start to dig into it all.
I find out that there’s been several calls placed but none back on this dryer and then find out that Mark has been out several times to clear the dryer of blockages and, charged the owner. Hence, she refused to have him back as she was obviously trying to play us and Mark to get what she wanted, i.e., either to take responsibility when it was clearly her error that led to the issue.
Mark, clearly 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} correct and in the right.
Toni, again, 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} correct and in the right.
Customer, 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} in the wrong and she scrapped the machine as best I know.
We pay Toni no problem because he did the job absolutely correctly and sussed what the issue was, that’s what we do when in the field. I was more than happy to pay of that call because, the alternative was much more expensive.
And, just as a side note, the customer said that M&S said the mat was suitable for tumble dry but, to date, I’m still waiting for confirmation of that from M&S. Almost two years later. I assume that will not be forthcoming.
I tell you this because I want to highlight that all is sometimes not what it appears to be and that users will sometimes have an agenda that you don’t see or are made aware of and that can get you into a lot of trouble if you fall for it.
So, the question/s is/are this, what’s more likely…
The machine suffered a catastrophic cascading failure of several components along with the home electrical safety systems all at the same time?
Or…
The user did something stupid to cause it to fail?
Or…
Something in between those?
I know which I’d put money on and, I don’t bet.
K.
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
The ISE didn’t really catch fire though did it?
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
None of the washer dryers have either AFAIK. 😉
Re: Late model Hotpoint washer dryer, any known recalls?
Yes, I have more than once been shown a fabric care label on a Marks & Spencer rubber backed bath mat saying tumble dry. The problem I have come across many times is with drums then jamming causing the belt to slip on the motor shaft and melt through.
Plastic backed incontinence sheets can be even worse. One belt I had fitted only lasted 24 hours for that reason. Where the belt has failed in this way I always advise the customer not to put these types of product in the tumble dryer.
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