Clothes dryer: repair or replace?

[hrhofmann]

But there are ways to make a dryer where the clothes never fully dry, and other ways to make a dryer so that the clothes dry much faster with less electricity use. Som there are differences.

[bob haller]

well my brand new dryer is only a couple months old and not heating or dryi ng properly. So i will disconnect the vent line and dry a load of clothes a s a experiment. if it drys well the vent line will get replaced. if it does nt dry well I will call for warranty service.......

the tech is coming to fix again our 6 month old dishwasher. first the contr ol panel failed, that got repaired and then it quit heating water and heate r doesnt dry dishes....

new appliances have been designed to fail easily:(

oh yeah both of my just over a year old garmin gps failed, both units hard drives started screeching and spontaneously rebooting...

so I bought a new garmin it didnt work, it doesnt know where it is , calcul ates and goes to a black screen, although the audio continues.

we were going on a long trip so I bought another one from wallmart. a diffe rent better more expensive model. it has all identical troubles.....

so I called garmin and reported the issue, the !@$^ tech hung up on me, so I called back and asked for a supervisor, they werent available I left my n ame and number and no one called me back....

we have 2 vehicles each with a navigator..

garmin isnt going to like me I will do the social media trash thing and am cntacting consumer reports.

truly sad i have had garmins forever my first cost 650 bucks and paid for i tself in a few months...

[nestork]

Bob Haller:

It probably is the vent.

I don't know about your dryer, but when I bought three Maytag coin operated commercial dryers, the company I bought them from sent out a contractor/monkey to install the vents.

And, as you would expect, he did it the fastest easiest way he could, which wasn't the best way to do it. You see, he gets paid a flat rate for connecting the dryer vent, so there's no incentive to do it the best way he can. He ended up using the white vinyl tubing that I subsequently learned was banned for dryer installations because it was a fire hazard. The installer pretended to be dumb about that because the white vinyl hose made for faster easier installations. And, of course, the company I bought the dryers from didn't care since they'd already made their profit. How well the dryers worked was of no concern to them.

When you replace the venting, keep in mind that the best air flow is obtained by using the shortest, straightest, smoothest wall solid aluminum or galvanized steel vent piping possible. And, going from 4 inch diameter up to 6 or even 8 inch diameter vent pipe, if doable, will help too. As long as you can get a louvered cap to fit on the end that'll let the air out but won't let the rain in, then bigger is better. Any heating contractor can show you what's available in 6 and 8 inch louvered vents. And, DO NOT use short sheet metal screws to hold the sections of vent pipe together. You can only do that on the flue venting from gas fired boilers, furnaces and water heaters. With clothes dryers ONLY use duct tape at the joints to hold the vent piping together. Lint can accumulate on the screws and cause a fire hazard.

Finally, if you want to do a Cadillac job installing that vent piping, if your vent pipe has to run vertically, DON'T connect the dryer to the bottom of that vertical vent pipe. It's smarter to use a 45 degree saddle (see image below)

to connect the dryer to the SIDE of that vertical vent pipe a foot or two above the bottom of the vertical vent pipe. Then, put a removable clean out cap at the bottom of the vertical vent pipe. That way, lint that is to heavy to be carried by the air stream will fall out and collect at the bottom of the vertical vent pipe where it can be cleaned out by removing the clean out cap. That means all the heaviest lint collects at the bottom of the vent pipe so you don't need to clear the lint out of the rest of the vent piping nearly as often.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Agree

And, going from 4

Once the air transitions from a 4" to a 6", won't the velocity drop? Won't than have the potential for lint accumulation?

[clare]

Buy a TomTom. If it fails at least you can beat on it!!

[nestork]

Yes, certainly, the velocity would drop, but more importantly the resistance to flow would also drop, thereby resulting in greater air flow through 6 or 8 inch venting than he'd get through 4 inch venting.

The exhaust from the dryer will be 4 inches in diameter, and there's no way to get around that. But, if he can use a couple of 45 degree elbows and connect to a vertical 6 or 8 inch vent with a 4 by 6 or 4 by 8 inch

45 degree saddle, all of the lint that's too heavy to be carried by the air flow would collect at the bottom of that vertical 6 or 8 inch vent pipe. You put a clean out at the bottom of that 6 or 8 inch vent pipe and that makes it fast and easy to remove the lint accumulated there. The rest of the 6 or 8 inch venting would rarely ever need to be cleaned.

[clare]

Definitely. Bigger is not always better. If you go to big pipe you NEED to do the side entry thing, with the "drop-out" cleanout.

[bob haller]

I took a sample of that white plastic vent hose and tried to light it. even with a propane torch it burned poorly......

[bob haller]

I mentioned to a tech here repairing our diswasher nder warranty that our new dryer wasnt working well.

tech said new dryers are much less able to handle long vent runs

[nestork]

I don't know that the reason those white vinyl ducts were banned for dryers is because of how well the vinyl burns. I expect it's got as much or more to do with the fact that those ducts impose so much resistance to air flow that they cause large amounts of lint to accumulate in them, and that accumulation of lint is a fire hazard.

[nestork]

Did he explain that response? I don't see why that would be the case. Dryers now use 120 VAC electric motors just like they did 50 years ago, and so far as I know, neither the size nor the speed of the blower impellers has changed.

[Jimbo]

It's all about the Energy Guide label and the highly coveted Energy Star rating.

More airflow requires more heat...and more heat requires more energy...and more energy costs more money...which gives the dryer a bad Energy Guide rating.

Engineering consumer products is like being married...no matter what a guy does - it's wrong!

[Stormin Mormon]

tried to light it. even with a propane torch it burned poorly......

Good to know. I'd think the lint would cause a heck of a mess, if it caught fire. Of course, lot based on what kind of fabric you'd been drying. Cotton, poly, nylon, etc. I don't wish a dryer vent fire on anyone.

Usually in a seldom used part of the house, and fire would likely get a head start before it was noticed.

[Stormin Mormon]

diswasher nder warranty that our new dryer wasnt working well.

to handle long vent runs

Wow, that blows. Or does it suck? Yeah, I think that sucks. But then, I'm full of hot air. Thanks, I just had to vent.

[clare]

But it is not approved for use on a drier - or a stove vent hood - and it is useless for bathroom venting as well. Lets face it. It is CRAP.

[Ralph Mowery]

It only has to melt and then the fire inside it gets to the outside. If the dryer is actually running when the lint catches fire, the blower in the dryer will feed it hot air and blow the fire out of the sides of the vent pipe.

[Nil]

Here's a follow-up to my post from a few weeks ago...

I ended up, if not fixing the problem, at least postponing it for a while...

I had already bought a kit for cleaning the dryer vent. It's a brush on a long, flexible stalk that you attach to your power drill. It got a good amount of lint our of the vent (which is about 8 feet long and embedded in the ceiling) but the dryer only worked slightly better. I then opened up the front of the dryer in order to try to check out the heating elements and thermostats and to clean out whatever other lint I saw. What I found was the fan that draws the moist air out of the drum and sends it on its way to the vent. It was absolutely caked with hard compacted lint, to the point that there was little or no gap between the fins. I spent about a half-hour with a toothbrush, scraper, and vacuum cleaner and got it all out of there. And waddayaknow? It works waaaaay better now. I've only had opportunity to run a couple of loads since then, but I can now dry a load of heavy clothes (jeans, towels, etc.) in one pass rather than three. I'm not sure whether there aren't other issues, but the machine is very usable now. I think I can safely put off spending several hundred dollars on a new one that's not likely to last as long as the one I have now.

So, thank you all for your suggestions. I've got them archived for the next time the machine threatens to go t*ts up.

On 05 Apr 2014, Nil wrote in alt.home.repair:

[Ed Pawlowski]

Half hour work to save $500 is a good deal. Thanks for the update and happy ending.

[DerbyDad03]

...snip...

If I'm not mistaken, one of the first suggestions (and many thereafter) was to make sure the _inside_ of the unit was clear of lint. I'm very surprised that you went 25 years without cleaning the internal ductwork, fan, etc. and never had a problem before now.

I'd estimate that I clean my dryer about every two years. I take the back off and vacuum everything, including the blower wheel, the ductwork where the lint filter goes, the vent pipe, the vent in the wall, everyplace.

Sometimes I find other things that could use a little TLC, like the foam seal around the blower housing, etc. Even an inexpensive dryer can be kept going for years with just a little preventative maintenance.

25 years of lint built up on the blower wheel? That must have been pretty bad.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I'd bet that 99.5% of the people that own dryers never clean them inside. My present one is probably due for a cleaning and I'm not sure what to even take apart yet. I'm a stickler for cleaning the lint filter, the intake, not so much.