What you need to know about Tumble Dryers and Fires
Tumble Dryers Fires are commonly seen in the news of recent years.
This can leave you as a user of a Tumble Dryer feeling very concerned about owing and using a Tumble Dryer.
The good news is there are many things you can do to reduce and in most cases eliminate the possibility of Tumble Dryer fires.
The first thing to know; it is very important that you read and apply the directions from the manufactures user manual.
This would include emptying the lint collector after every use. 
Failure to do this causes a restriction in the air flow, which then forces air with lint past the front and rear drum seals, leading to a build up of lint. If this lint comes into contact with an ignition source it will ignite which can lead to some of the devastating fires that we have seen in the media.
We can not stress enough the importance of emptying the lint collector after every use.
Any other restriction in the air flow will also lead to lint build up and potential fire, so if the Tumble Dryer is vented with a flexible hose, we must ensure this doesn’t get crushed when the Tumble Dryer is pushed back into place.
If the hole on the back of the dryer doesn’t match the hole in the house wall, we recommend placing a couple of 100mm blocks of wood on the floor at the back of the dryer to prevent it from being pushed back onto the vent hose and crushing it.
Before installing a Tumble Dryer we would also want to look into the wall vent hole to check this is clear of lint and remove any build up. This is something that should be checked every 6 months as part of a regular maintenance check. Visit our find an engineer page to arrange a visit by one of our members.
If the Tumble Dryer is a condensing dryer then it wont have a vent hose , but instead a condensing chamber. This too can be come blocked and should be removed and cleaned once a month.
Overloading a dryer will stop air flow and lead to the same issues so always use the load size specified.
It is also worth mentioning that Tumble Dryers should not be situated in a shed as condensation can form on the electronics which can lead to failure but also fire.
Also any dirt on the floor, be it leaf debris, animal hairs of just dust, will be sucked into the dryer and past the heating element. This could be all that is needed to ignite a lint build up.
There will always be detailed instructions in the user manual, our advise at The Institute for White Goods Engineers is, read and apply the instructions.
