DIY Dryer Fix

Our clothes dryer, at 17 years old, had plenty of quirks. But the latest was one we just couldn’t live with.

It had, like, quit drying.

“Maybe it’s time to buy a new dryer,” said my husband John. 

He had a point. For years, the control panel of this appliance had a life of its own: lights blinking, annoying beeps going off for hours at a time without rhyme or reason. 

Then, not long ago, the settings I regularly use, “Normal” and “Permanent Press” would start the dryer…but go for only about 10 seconds. Then the dryer would just turn off. 

I jollied this latest quirk along by using the timed settings, 30 or 45 minutes. But then this week, after I had a load of two flannel sheets going for around three hours, and still as damp as damp could be, I had to admit defeat. 

This dryer was pretty much toast.

But after John suggested a new dryer, I sort of cringed. We’d had to replace our dishwasher a few months back, and we just couldn’t really afford the expense of another new appliance. 

You might ask, how come you headsteaders aren’t using a clothesline?

Well, a few reasons. We have a lot of birds around the yard, and they love to roost on poles, like you might afix a clothesline to. And when they roost, they…drop stuff. If you get my drift. Nothing you want on your clean laundry!

The second reason, is well, fall is on the way, and our rainy climate isn’t very conducive to hanging laundry outside. And the third…well, I don’t know how I would find the time! 

Anyhoo…back to the dryer:

“Let’s see if it’s worth repairing,” I said, and got out the business card of a local repair guy who had fixed our freezer a couple of years ago. Then I had a brainwave. “But first, how about we check the vent.”

A while back, my daughter’s relatively new dryer wasn’t drying well—and the culprit turned out to be a vent full of lint. Maybe that was our dryer’s problem.

So two days ago, John found the necessary screwdriver, and got the outside vent cover off. We looked inside, and it looked okay. I stuck my arm a ways into the vent and felt around. Sure, there was some lint here and there, but again, nothing blocking the air flow. 

“Looks like that was a wash,” said John. I prepared myself for the best option: a sure-to-be-costly service call. Then I had another epiphany. 

“Let’s try looking at the lint trap,” I proposed. 

Our lint trap structure is again, one of the dryer’s quirks. The trap works great, but there’s this odd cavity area beneath the lint trap, where every bit of lint that doesn’t get caught in the trap falls down.

John got another screwdriver, a Phillips this time, and undid the lint trap structure so we could get a look down there. “Hold on,” I said. Not wanting to tempt the electricity gods, I figured it was a good idea to switch off the dryer breakers. So now we were set.

The angle of this cavity meant you couldn’t really get a direct view of it, so John fetched a stick from the shop (he has any number of handy little gewgaws for repairing stuff) and handed the narrow, two-foot long stick to me.

Sitting on the rug, I eased the stick into the cavity and felt something…soft. Pillowy, even. 

Pushing a little harder, I could feel more pillowy material. Like, a lot of it. Using the stick, I began to pull up whatever it was, and brought up a handful. Then poked the stick around some more. “You won’t believe this,” I said to John. I was discovering… Holy Moly…

Yours truly, hauling out lint

This whole part of the dryer had a huge pile of lint stuck in it!

I was able to squeeze my hand down into the cavity, and began yarding out lint. Clumps of it, one after another! For about 20 minutes, I pulled out lint, while John stood by for moral support. And to take pics…plus occasionally cheering me on.

That’s some pile of lint!

How many times had I heard lint buildup can cause a fire? Pulling out this massive pile of lint, I cringed again, as in seriously, thinking of what a fire hazard we’d had right in our laundry room. 

I’m sure all that lint had wreaked havoc with the control panel—no wonder it kept beeping. Trying to tell us something!

I’m just glad we didn’t find out about all the lint the hard way.

After I got every last shred of it down there I could reach, I said, “This should do it.” 

“Now to test it out,” said John. 

The dryer interior had gotten pretty dusty from the dirt around the lint trap structure, so I gave it a little cleaning. 

Here’s the cavity below the lint trap structure

Then, after turning the breaker back on, I loaded in some towels that had been sitting in the washer since the day before, waiting to be dried.

And turned on the dryer…

Not wanting to jinx the process, I just let the dryer run for its 45 minutes without checking on progress. It behaved very well, no untoward beeps or blinking the whole time. Finally, I opened the dryer door to find…

Dry towels! They were completely dry! 

Since then, I’ve put two more loads in the dryer, and yippee, they both came out perfectly. 

Tip: if your dryer isn’t behaving, you can’t go wrong checking out the lint backup. But first, be sure to turn your dryer breaker to OFF!

PS…Interested in bees, blueberries and bears? I hope you’ll check out my September newsletter, Late Summer Pollinators & Homestead Varmints …Read it for free and no need to subscribe!