mount clothes dryer sideways?

Is there any reason I shouldn't mount a front-load dryer sideways?

It means we could put it above the washer in a small room and still twist the knobs...

Reply to
jtaylor
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Electric right? Gas is a whole different deal! I have had a couple apart over the years to replace belts, and I seem to recall that the drum just revolves on some cheap looking tires and the thing requires gravity to work correctly.

Perhaps someone here knows your particular model, but I would not be optimistic that running it sideways will work. That said, the worst that will probably happen is you could possibly throw the belt. In any case, it will tell you in a hurry if it does not like running sideways.

Vaughn

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Reply to
Vaughn

I don't know his model, but almost all dryers support the drum on two rollers in the rear and a pad up front. If the machine was used on its side, it would probably wear out the sides of the seals and the drum would come off its mountings.

GTO(John)

Reply to
GTO69RA4

But the controls could be moved to the side, or really anywhere you want usually, only a handlful of wires on a classic machine, though the new ones may be computerized.

Charles

GTO69RA4 wrote:

Reply to
xlch58

Gas units operate partially on natural convection, and partially on blower induced draft - the burner output goes back and up into a "firebox" plenum before the hot gases go into the dryer drum through the rear holes, the blower vents the drum at negative pressure from the door area and out the exhaust port. Besides the drum roller problems, running the machine sideways would put the fire in places it wasn't designed to go, with disastrous results.

Even an electric dryer would overheat or fail quickly if run sideways - they have Klixon thermostats in the drum to sense the temperature and cycle the elements, and have overheat detectors that are meant to catch an overtemp and cut the heat before the machine catches fire. If it's sitting sideways, the heat wouldn't "rise sideways" to trip the thermostats and safeties until it was far too late.

IDEA: Much simpler to leave the dryer mechanism running upright as it was designed, and come up with a neat way to move the entire control panel section from the top of the machine (where you'd need a ladder to get to them) to down under the machine.

"Don't raise the drawbridge, lower the river." :-)

It's all electrical, there are no thermostat capillary tubes to kink or other sensitive stuff on any dryers I know. With a little forethought, you could rig one big Molex connector between the sections, and make an extension cable for the control section wiring - and if you need to make it a conventional machine again, it wouldn't be too hard to reverse the process. (Though there might be a few screw holes to explain...)

Build an angle-iron stand for the dryer that slides over the washer, and you can hang the control pod off the back, right at eye level - but provide some sort of hook to hold the washer lid open for loading and unloading. The real stack machines have a magnet to hold the lid open.

Oh, and put an under-counter fluorescent at the front of the dryer stand, so you can see the dryer and washer controls, and down into the washer basket. It's gonna get dark back there.

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Reply to
Bruce L. Bergman

Depending on the model I suspect the sideways thing is not a good idea, but I have been party to a control panel remount and this worked well. Think about the lint screen. If your dryer has an in door lint screen you are in fat city, but if you had a top mounted lint screen this may be a problem.

Reply to
Roger Shoaf

On Tue, 25 May 2004 22:11:43 -0300, "jtaylor" brought forth from the murky depths:

Other than the extremely high probability that it would immediately self-destruct and/or catch your house on fire, no. But that doesn't mean you couldn't remount the controls externally on your own panel.

-- Life's a Frisbee: When you die, your soul goes up on the roof. ----

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

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