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One Beer Projects: Fixing Simple Problems With Your Dryer

By Chuck Cage

Grab a bottle (or can) of your favorite brew and learn how troubleshoot and fix most of the simple problems with your clothes dryer.  We’ll walk you through how to figure out what’s wrong, which is ninety percent of the battle in making it right.  Relax — it’s a lot easier than you think it is.  (Podcast Download)


This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 11:37 am and is filed under One Beer Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “One Beer Projects: Fixing Simple Problems With Your Dryer”

  1. Rick Says:
    August 17th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    One other thing you didn’t mention was that if the efficiency of your dryer seems to suffer. If it’s taking longer and longer for the dryer to dry to the level of dryness you desire AND you use dryer sheets - then it’s very likely that the lint screen is clogged. Try this, take the lint screen out of the dryer the next time you go to do a load, and put some water on the screen (after you remove the lint) If the water drains very slowly through the screen, or not at all, then it’s likely that the crud in the dryer sheets has slowly built up on the screen and plugged the individual holes of the screen.

    Take some hot water, soap and a toothbrush (or other similar scrub brush) and clean the screen. Then repeat that cleaning once a month or so to keep it operating efficiently.

  2. Rick Says:
    August 17th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    Oh yeah, and that’s a common reason why the heating element burns out prematurely.. you can extend the life of the elements and/or dryer by keeping that lint screen clean.

  3. William Says:
    August 17th, 2007 at 1:19 pm

    My dad’s a plumber and one day a lady ask him if he had any ideas why her dryer wasn’t working too well. He asked her if she cleans the lint trap every time she replied “Clean What?”. She had never cleaned the lint trap, my dad had to use a knife to pry the years of compacted lint out of the trap.

  4. RevRagnarok Says:
    September 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 pm

    For the heater element on the dryer, I actually found mine on eBay, not somewhere you’d normally look for parts like that… ;)

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