Dryer with no heating element?

[yaM yaM]

Our electric dryer's heating element broke recently. During the time that I've been researching repair vs. replacing our 14 year-old dryer that works just fine besides the missing heating element, I've discovered that it still dries very well as long as I run it for an average of about 1.5 hours on the cold air cycle.

So I am wondering if anyone knows if this could be a bad thing with regard to electricity. My instincts tell me it's not since there's no heat involved, but I've never done anything like this and don't want to find any surprises after a month on our electric bill . . and it turns out that it's taking me some time to figure out a long-term solution, anyway.

[Jackies Ladybug]

it will possibly be even with the amount of energy you were previously using, but most likely less expensive.
i had an electric dryer for 2 months when whirlpool shipped and installed the wrong model and had to wait for them to come back to fix it and my electric bill almost doubled.
i highly doubt it would be using MORE than what it was before.

[yaM yaM]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I thought it likely wouldn't use more electricity to run it for twice as long without the heating element, but I'm hearing different things from different sources. Looks like a pretty complex mathematical problem, actually, of comparing ams/wattage used by the motor vs. the heating element but the sticker has been removed from the door of my dryer so I can't look those up very easily.

[Delicateflower]

In the winter drying time is very quick because the air is so very dry, that's why it's doing OK. My hung laundry takes about a day. If you hang your laundry it will use even less electricity.

[BeckiB]

An hour and a half sounds like a long time to dry to me...but I have no idea what the cost difference would be for just air that long but no heat.

Check out repairclinic.com for info on fixing it yourself. I used to work there and they can ship parts pretty quick and usually have diagrams of how to do it yourself.

[Denvergirlie]

We replaced our heating element about 2 years ago, might have cost up to $30 in parts? Was an easy fix.

Can you do that?