Whirlpool Dryers: Design Flaw?

Aug 11, 2004 Last reply: 4 years ago 30 Replies

When we had our propane furnace & water heater venting upgraded the installer just left the pipes sticking straight out from the wall < no 45 down elbow > with no grill of any kind. When I questioned him he said "not needed" .. The next spring my neighbour said he saw birds coming & going from one of the pipes - swallows nest about 6 feet in ! < bank swallows I assumed ? >

I let them fledge and cleaned it out & put a plastic grill over. John T.

I think a flapper is good to keep out back flow of air but ours were slightly warped and birds got in. The grill cage cover prevents this.

I just pulled the back off the dryer and cleaned a fairly small amount of lint from inside the blower housing and gave the blower fins a brush-off. The duct looked good from what I could see so that's a job for another day.. But in a close examination of the area of the blower housing that the lint filter fits into - I think I might have identified the trouble - the lint filter needs to be about 3/16 inch longer .. With the blower housing removed and the filter completely inserted into it - the opening is _just barely_ covered. With the blower housing installed there is the thickness of the sheet metal dryer top to add .. plus a bit more for screw heads .. Maybe an email & phone call to Maytag and a phone call to the appliance dealer tomorrow - before I try to devise a DIY lint filter extension .. John T.

Just a little strip of self adhesive rubber weatherstrup on the edge of the lint filter. I think the engineers count on lint blocking the gap in the first few minutes of operation - - -

I'd be a little worried about the durability of that fix - the curved filter slides in & out along a fairly snug curved channel in the sheet metal . I might first look into something to shim it at the top - so that the filter can slide in a wee bit further before the handle bottoms out on the top of the dryer. John T.

Gotta get together at schmittsville one of these days

I don't think they would leave a gap in a filter. Probably a missing gasket or rubber strip of some sort. 3/16 is a huge gap. Maybe there is a rubber strip that got blown into the vent.

Yep. We still haven't been IN to a restaurant since covid started - at the start we got take-out to try to support a few favourite places, then even that went-by-the-wayside .. sadly. John T.

No sign of anything damaged or missing. There's no way to measure the actual gap - but it's easy to deduce that some gap exists at the end of the filter after seeing how it just-barely covers the hole when the housing is removed from the machine . Can't see any other paths for the lint to bypass the filter. Doing a few loads of laundry with a longer filter or a DIY temporary filter extension would test my theory. John T.

Rather than extend the filter, I removed the handle to allow the filter to be fully inserted - as a test - 3 or 4 loads should tell me if this is the problem or not ..

- then I'll look for a permanent fix.

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John T.

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