LG Heat Pump Dryer - Way Better than I Expected - DLHC5502 Teardown & Review

today we're reviewing the giant brown box from LG no oh wait there's something else in this there's a heat pump dryer that is ventless in this uh let's go ahead and take it open and see what's inside this is brand new no reviews on it whatsoever I don't know what's going to happen so let's get to it I want to let everyone know that it's not sponsored by Home Depot or LG or anything else so let's see what terrible things we can find in this package unpacking the unit is like many other appliances but once once you get the box totally moved away you do have some interesting different things inside you get this small baby drain hose and a very thick manual with a lot of important things you can do with your new heat pump dryer inside the unit it absolutely doesn't look like a normal dryer all the holes in the unit make this look like a giant washing machine and if it wasn't for the filter of the very front unit you would be absolutely mistaken that it is so we start the journey on this video not at the front of the dryer but the back the thing that makes this unique is that it is ventless meaning there is no giant ducted metal vent that protrudes from the back of this so you can put this dryer in a whole lot of different places than you would normally the next thing about this unit that is very interesting is the fact that it is a heat pump dryer meaning there is a compressor in this that more or less dehumidifies the clothes to get them dry and the third thing about it is that unlike a lot of other ventless dryers there's no large catch tray in this unit this unit drains all the water that gets away from your clothes into your drain line just like your washing machine would so it it's really really unique to start this out but there's a lot more to this dryer that most people aren't going to talk about so we're going to tear it apart do a lot of different tests on this because again first in the world to do this not because I'm special I paid $1,300 for this and I want to get my money's worth so you can get your money's worth too so let let's look at some more things unlike the other heat pump systems that we've discussed on the channel this one does require a 220 volt Outlet in the American version so pay attention to that when installing this use a strain relief for the longest life of the terminal block once you have that done on bootup you'll get the request to use the LG think app and also clean the filter after every load the unit has about 10 different drying features on bootup including normal bedding Ai and power dry among others you can add multiple other modes to the unit through the option menu as well if you have Wi-Fi available you can install the think app which will give you extra options and capabilities for this dryer and if you watch my other video on the LG 2 in1 I already had this app installed on my phone so part of the process was done it did take some time to sync the dryer with the Wi-Fi in the phone correctly I had to restart the phone in the dryer I think to get this done but once it was installed it went flawlessly through every test that we did the app has a lot of good features it has remote start adding different Cycles to the machine's default setup an online manual for the unit some sort of diagnosis mode and then a watt meter to show you how the unit operates on a general level to test the dryer you really need a washer so I'm bringing back my LG 2in1 washer dryer combo to the test room but I'm using it literally as just a washing machine as you can see here the measurements between both units are identical the dryer measures 20 27 in wide 39 in tall and about 32 1/2 in deep so it's nearly identical to the LG washer combo beside it it's also at 165 lb now talking about the heat pump you do need about 5 in of clearance behind the unit so you don't want to press it directly against the wall because it does need some air to recirculate going to the baby drain pump you need to ensure your stand pipe can support both a standard washer drain hose as well as this baby drain hose or whatever you're using to drain the water out of the dryer the heat pump dryer hose is about 5/8 of an inch and this fits very well the standard water vent hose and a 2-in stand pipe unlike some of the foreign units of this there's no catch tray for water it has to be pumped or caught in some way you theoretically could even use just a gallon jug to catch all the water in finally let's go ahead and try some clothes for the first load we're testing a 9 and 1/2 lb mixed load of clothes mostly shirts and thinner items but a hoodie or two in the unit water extraction on your washing machine is important the less water your clothing has in it the faster the dryer is going to work so we typically use high or very high modes in the frontload washer if you use a top load washer with this dryer do expect worse drying times top loads will not extract as much water by Nature unloading the clothes from the washer we find that there's about 3 lounds of water that got added loading the heat pump dryers like any others other than the fact that this unit does have a monster capacity that makes the laundry load look very small and this could probably handle 25 lbs of dry clothes if you needed it to there are many modes that you can use but we're just going to use the normal test to see what happens the unit takes a while to sense but once it finally comes out of that it shows a run time of 2 hours which is quite a bit but with the sensors it probably will adjust since doing some of the last tests I installed an Emporia energy monitor into our system to show how the dryer uses wattage it allows us to see exactly how the unit uses wattage and although we can only see one leg of power being used it's already using more wattage than the typical twoin one unit did as it has a larger heat pump system also while we're at it we should talk about noise the dryer averages only about 60 to 61 DB running I don't have a tumble dryer in here to compare it to yet but it's very very quiet but we will run head-to-head tests in upcoming videos just to see if this is actually more quiet than what I think tumble dryers are with the the first load of clothes done these feel much different than the other heat pump dryers that we've used in the past this has zero moisture around them much like a tumble dryer one issue that we've seen with the GE and LG units is that they come kind of damp from the heat pump dryers and if you shake them they dry out this was not the case in this unit at all in any test that we did also as a note about dry times we had that stated initial 2 hours but it actually finished in about 1 hour and 40 minutes using 950 watts of electricity although you may care about drawing times a lot your app features what I really care about are the condenser coils because this is what will make or break the unit and unlike the twoin one combo condenser coils these are at the very bottom of the dryer which is different and takes a little bit of getting used to you have to press in on this access door then adjust the locks toward the center and that will let you access the coils from here you can see these larger blue coils which look a lot more like the GE 2in1 unit than the LG immediately to our right these are directly behind the housing making them very easy to clean with a vacuum cleaner but harder to do a deep servicing as a technician the coils look very robust and unlikely to be damaged if you use a coil brush or a vacuum cleaner next the filter is much larger than any of the other heat pump systems we tested and it's easy to remove this inner filter from the housing the filter cannot be cleaned from the outside it needs split apart in the middle the unit actually has three filter sides to it a front a rear and and then this small middle strip that will need to be separated to get all the nooks and crannies you can tell that LG took lint way more seriously on this unit than the twoin one unit the surface area to capture lint is way more robust there's also a secondary filter in the housing that LG suggests that you clean every 10 loads I'll have separate video to discuss this in some of the other cleaning tips as there's some amazing features in this regard my goal with this machine is to put it through every kind of load test that would be logical so next let's put some bedding in the washing machine it's a mix of towels and blankets that we used in one of our last videos it's about 12 1/2 lbs dry and 16 lbs wet loading this bedding cycle into the dryer the initial run time for these blankets and towels is 3 hours and 15 minutes depending on your goal with the heat pump dryer this could sound extreme or reasonable this unit does again feature delay to remote starts so you could run the unit literally whenever you want to at night or when you are at work coming home to being able to pull it out as soon as you get home so it can work on your time the unit ended up running for 2 hours and 55 minutes it came in a little bit better than expected but the one thing that's very interesting about this is the LG app and energy meter that we have the cycle actually ended way earlier than 2 hours and 55 minutes with 20 minutes left I caught it running the auto condenser care cycle meaning that it was working to clean the coils at the end of the cycle at any rate the towels came out extremely dry and even according to the scale it seems like they dried out more than even before we measure them in the wash since we're able to run two loads at once we're going to go ahead and start a test for a comforter as well to see how this works it was one of the more difficult tests we had on the heat pump units yet again when we put this in the unit sets a default bedding cycle to 3 hours and 15 minutes and it's a good thing we have two units so I can test more and more loads quicker on this since we want to take it apart later to look for failure points in the end the comforter with two sheetss required 2 hours and 37 minutes of drying time this was pretty disappointing giving that the GE ran quite a bit faster but all the tests have had absolutely dryness which the GE definitely did not have in its much faster cycle one thing that I want to point out also about drying times is the ambient temperature of your washroom unlike a tumble dryer the temperature of your room matters quite a bit if it's too cold you will see increased drying times additionally if you want to run mult loads consecutively the dryer will end up ramping up its drying times going faster and faster getting your clothes done quicker and quicker proper ambient temperatures need to be roughly about 70° fahr or 20° C for optimal drying times if you go below 60° fah you're going to see worse and worse drying times for the next five loads I decided to run a data loger talking about heat in the dryer to check the Cycles using this same 10 1 12 lb clothing mix that we are going to use on different drying speed settings to see what happens there's Echo normal and speed dry settings on the normal mode this is the chart of the four cycles that we ended up running and then the labels for them you can see that the temperature varies quite a bit based on mode and the drawing times varied from about 1 hour and 30 minutes up to about 1 hour and 45 minutes for Echo but the temperature in the room did vary a little bit between these tests I think the speed setting would have been a little bit more Superior had the room been the same temperatures each time in the process of running the same load of clothes half a dozen times I was trying to test the various response times for the dryers and put as much strain on the lent and condenser filters as possible I also ran a power dry cycle which makes no sense it ended up running the unit for 2 and 1/2 hours on essentially a timed dry it used a ton of wattage and it does show that this mode is probably best reserved for your absolutely largest wet loads I probably should have use this for the beding load it probably would have done a better job finally off camera due to some issues I ran two loads on the AI dry setting first with the bedding which completed the cycle in 1 hour and 20 minutes and it came out slightly damp and then the same 11 1/2 lb mixed load which rained for 1 hour and 33 minutes which was similar to the normal settings Okay so we've gotten through I don't know how many loads of closes so far I think we're nearing about two dozen dries on on this machine as well as legitimate wash and dry we're not just throwing a load of uh dried clothes in there and just forcing it to run these have been uh almost two months of washes if they were at a house so where are we at so far on this the drying times on the units have been as low as about an hour and 20 minutes on a small load the average 11 and 1 12 pound load we've done comes in at about 1 hour 35 minutes the bedding and towels are quite a bit worse and my impression on the drying times is they're a little bit longer than I've expected from this machine given the fact it's a dedicated 220 volt heat pump however the huge difference between this machine and the twoin one combo we have beside us as well as the GE Ultra fast combo unit is that when you pull the clothes out of this they're actually fully dry there's no shake them a little bit and then they get uh totally dry they're just bone dry like they came out of a tumble dryer and on top of this the reason that I think this is happening is when I've observed the drying cycle on the unit is that there's about a 15 to 20 minute cooldown cycle on the unit that is called the auto condenser care system and I believe What's Happening Here is it's pulling out the moisture from the cabin and then using that to clean the coils now the LG combo allegedly has the same features but regardless whatever it's doing in the machine's working really well because we have no lint on the coils after almost 2 months of homeowner use that is a far cry from the GE or the combo unit beside me that's the biggest concern I have as a technician on either of these machines and there are a lot of complaints from people about having to clean the coils well so far we've seen maybe one strand of Lent on this after all these washes which is amazing and if we needed to clean the coils it's a straight access from the bottom for a vacuum cleaner meaning it's a whole lot easier to deal with and on top of it you have a dedicated condenser coil wash cycle where you put a liter of water in this and let it just run and agitate and clean the coils and I find that to be amazing other than the length of time everything about this unit is just really really good but to be sure we need to take this unit apart and see what's on the inside to look for failure points so let's go ahead and get the washer moved and then get inside this and see what we can find if I can get it apart cuz I have no clue what I'm doing since I began the video at the back of this dryer it's only fair that we start the tear down here as well since the heat pump dryer has a Nifty secret behind it LG decided to go with a direct drive brushless DC motor instead of a traditional motor and belt combination there are a few advantages with this first off it eliminates the need for a belt and idler system which means fewer moving Parts it also means that the dryer can reverse Direction effortlessly which tends to be a very complex affair on systems with standard belt driven dryers finally for those really interested in it it uses a pressed bearing to hold the shaft into place making it replaceable if it ever goes bad I do prefer this style system over dryers using felt or bearing Glides which tend to wear down quite a bit after a short period of time now let's go ahead and tear the rest of this unit down to get to the sealed system as a note this unit came out just 2 or 3 weeks before made the video no manuals or tear down guides exist so wish me luck there is no belt to shred and replace and it just looks really odd this is great because replacing heat pump belt dryers is a horrible task that requires far more work than a standard dryer just ask a Bosch technician I'm honestly not sure if I'm tearing this down the right or wrong way so if any LG technician sees this I apologize but if I was to be honest for the most part this comes apart like most LG washers or dryers do and here's our first checkpoint with the front off you can see a few wires in the bulkhead and it may be similar to a condenser dryer but I haven't seen one of those in so long so if you are in Europe or Asia let me know if the front bulkhead looks different or similar to what you have this is where I started to have some difficulties with the tear down and had to look for some online help the sides are similar to The dlhc 1455 which is an order condenser dryer that I never actually dealt with before if you're a homeowner or service Tech removing these sides allow you to access most of the systems underneath without taking the difficult time of removing the bulkhead and drum with the panels removed you can access some of the critical components like the filter housing the dryer control board the compressor and if you move the control board out of place you can access more things like the drain and recirculation pump system on this side and the other side just has the condenser that is not removable yet to access that condenser which is the key to the r review we have to go quite a bit deeper taking out the drum and bulkhead these are the last two parts that were kind of difficult to do because I had no idea what I was doing and did not want to damage anything the drum was the worst part and I lost some filming here as I ran out of battery power there was a metal cover that we had to remove off camera to get to these six screws that you see on the back of the drum for the dryer but once I figured that out the hardest part was essentially done now we can get to the only part that I honestly care about in a review like this is the condenser coils because we need to inspect the housing and see what over a month of use does okay so we are in the very bottom of the unit so I got to like sit down to show you guys this but this is why I do these reviews because I don't know what I'm going to get into you don't know what I'm going to get into what you're looking at is the heat pump system about a month month and a half almost two months of what would be considered normal homeowner use looking at this to determine points of failure is very critical because because you're paying $300 maybe even $400 more for this over a standard tumble dryer and the question that needs to be asked is this system going to be reliable although it's impossible to say exactly how good this system will be for the future I can tell you without a doubt they've structured this in a very very good way at least when you get this open the coils the evaporator and condenser coils are very easy to look at to repair to take care of obviously the front access gives you the ability to vacuum and clean everything out when we took it apart again with this much use there was literally one small piece of lint that made it past the filter which is superior far beyond the GE heat pump unit we've used or the 2in1 LG which is right off a camera so this is always my biggest concern with any sort of heat pump unit is the more lint you get in it the more it grades and the less it's going to dry your clothes the heat pump is going to take longer to work so it puts more stress on your system leading to a lower lifespan the system here is very brilliant you can see right here I have the top of the condenser cover but if you notice that there's channeling here and just below it there is a recirculation pump that pulls water from the tub and then uses that to spray on the coils now where this system ends up being far superior to the other units we've seen is that condenser care feature that requires you to dump that one liter of water into the front of the system right here where your filter would be it goes in through the very bottom of the coils to the recirculation pump that's right here it's at the very bottom of this unit it sucks that clean water up and then we'll use the channels right here to spray water throughout the coils and clean not only the coils but the bottom of the unit to try to remove mold dirt any other things that could build up particles my question for LG on this is if you can use things that are not just standard water such as citric acid a fresh our wash bom system we have bleach or other slightly more costic chemicals to recirculate through this and possibly do even more good or damage the coils I'm not sure I'm going to email LG about this and if they get back to me I will put something in the notice about it uh off camera here I will move this away we have the LG rotary compressor here this is a EST 102 MBA heat pump system um it is a rotary compressor from LG which means that it is not the linear compressor that has been giving everyone fits it's an upsized version of what is on their twoin one combo this has a cooling capacity of about 5100 100 Watts it's about 50% larger than the LG system but as far as I can tell it's smaller than the GE which makes sense because the drying time wasn't quite as aggressive as the GE why is it so small I'm not sure why they did that I would have preferred a larger unit especially on the fact it's 220 but I'm not the engineer that built the system so I don't know why that would have been the case with everything done I guess the question at this point with everything being taken care of is is this unit going to be reliable let's look at the warrant LG has a one-year parts and labor on everything warranty which the government requires you to but the key here is to notice that the unit does have a 10year sealed system warranty on it the compression system uh the condensers and everything are warrantied for 10 years which tells me LG at least thinks that this unit's going to run quite some time the motor behind the unit is also warrantied for 10 years I really like the fact that there is that direct drive motor on this I wish every dryer had it because not only are they reliable there's no belt on this system so there's one less moving part and also the bigger Advantage is that it's going to be able to run forward and backward to be able to tumble dry your clothes in a more efficient way than a standard belt dryer will be uh some companies have used reverse tumble systems and they end up requiring double idler pulley or other gimmicks to get it to work properly and the brushless DC motor does the same thing in a much more efficient efficient easy package um even tearing down the unit to where you see what you see was not super hard other than getting the cover off the drum so with all of these things said is the dryer going to probably be worth it would I buy this um well I bought it whether I like to or not I probably going to put it back together and take it home and use it and have it replace my other dryer ultimately comes down to if you can handle the drying times on this which an hour and a half to two hours I think is going to be standard it's going to save you a lot of money um if you look at the fact that it's going to use about 1 and 1 half less kilow to dry your clothes per cycle that saves between 20 and 30 cents per cycle and according to LG they're targeting this system to last about 12 years before it needs to be replaced and again with a 10e seal system that sounds about right if you can get 12 years out of this unit without having to deal with the sealed system I think it makes quite a bit of financial sense over maybe even more reliable units like a Speed Queen because you're going to save so much money on electricity it ends up paying for itself and paying for the replacement down the road is that really the truth though I don't know we're going to bring a Speed Queen dryer in the room and test it head-to-head against this because they're both $1,300 um but I I do think that this may be the king of dryers but again it has to challenge the queen to make sense I will have links for it in the description to this dlhc 5502 if you want to buy it and support the channel um but at least now you know what this dryer is really made of and at least you can make at a minimum a better choice on your drying unit is it complex yes is there a lot of extra parts in it yes because there's you know the pump system in it but one final thing I want to say about this is this type of units been available in Korea for years now and they seem to think that it's a pretty decent unit it's obviously new to America we're definitely on the starting stages of heat pump dryers whether I like it or not I think heat pump dryers are going to be more and more popular I wouldn't be surprised if the government regulates tumble dryers out of existence in my lifetime I'll probably keep my tumble dryer and just tell Biden that I lost in a boating accident but I may just take this home and use it because I do like the coil wash system in this it is the best on the market and I think that whenever you decide to buy a heat pump dryer that's your number one question does it have a coil wash system in it if it doesn't I would avoid it like the plague but if it has something like this where you can see the channels and it clearly does a great job then it's going to be good and it's worth the $1,300 um and that's it for the video guys I hope you have a great day bye how am I going to put this together

Channel: Bens Appliances and Junk

Views: 55,610

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Id: CpF80DuCzGs

Length: 25min 24sec (1524 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2024