DIY Dryer Fix Update—True Confessions

Last September, I wrote about our clothes dryer that wasn’t drying—plus doing stuff like running for 10 seconds, then quitting—and how my husband and I fixed it. Or maybe I should say, “fixed” it. 

One late summer afternoon, we opened up the lint trap assembly, and to my horror, discovered about a cubic foot of lint had accumulated in the innards of the appliance!

A recap: pulling out lint 

We spent a couple of hours yarding out the lint. Really, there was enough to adequately stuff a throw pillow for your couch. 

Then after placing the trap back in its normal position, I loaded in some towels and turned on the dryer…and Voila! It dried the load just beautifully!

Here’s my September “we fixed the dryer!” post.

But true confessions are in order: our “fix” lasted all of 3 loads of clothes. 

Now, the appliance was 17 years old. It had done a good job (most) of those years and surely it was time to replace it. 

But this was the year where all kinds of stuff fell apart. The dishwasher died. A 15-month old set of tires on one of our cars had gone completely bald while we weren’t looking. (Daughter #2 was using the car—and she wasn’t looking either.) 

The crowning glory: What seemed to be a minor clog in the kitchen drain only took 2 plumbers and $1,000 to unclog.

So when the dryer began to seriously misbehave, maybe you can understand why we resisted calling in a professional. But finally the day came when I caved. “We’d better have someone look at it,” I told John. “At least we can find out if it’s worth repairing.”

John had concluded the same thing: we didn’t have much choice. After my phone call, the next week, a young technician appeared at our back door. But when I opened the door and said hello, he didn’t come inside. 

He simply gazed around at the Foothills surrounding our place. “It’s bootiful here,” he said in a lovely Ukrainian accent. “Just bootiful.” 

John and I agreed, of course. By and by our nice technician stopped gazing around and came into our mud/laundry room. Naturally we had to tell him our tales of woe about how this and that didn’t work. Most annoying of all were the weird beeps the dryer emitted all hours of the day and night.

Well, it didn’t take long before our Dr. Bootiful diagnosed the problem: the heating element was toast, and the control panel was fried. There was no fixing this patient. 

Meanwhile, my laundry pile was getting immense, and threatened to take over the laundry room. Nothing to do but buy another dryer.

John, the online shopper of the family, started looking around. After all our extra expenses over the last few months, our price range was basically the cheapest models out there. 

We picked out the most basic dryer we could find. After you add sales tax, delivery fee, installation fee, and the take-your-old-dryer-away fee, they added on about $300 to the price of the dryer. Our out-the-door cost felt far from basic!

As for performance…Let me tell you, when it comes to appliances, “You get what you pay for” is the absolute truth. 

Dryers don’t get much plainer than this!

The dryer is extremely loud. Curiously, the trap doesn’t seem to collect a lot of lint. So easy prediction: we may be yarding lint out of this puppy a few months down the line. Most annoying of all, there’s a buzzer that goes off when the dryer finishes the cycle.

But it’s not any regular buzzer. It’s a jarring beep that lasts about 6 or 7 seconds. In fact, it seems to go on so long I get a deathly fear that the buzzer is actually malfunctioning and will never stop. 

Worst of all: the buzzer is as loud as a smoke alarm. Say, 60 decibels or so, easy. It gives you a terrible jolt, even when you’re at the other end of the house. 

And here’s the kicker: there’s no way to select “No buzzer”!

Still. This appliance does dry our clothes. So better than no dryer at all. Just beware if you are shopping for an inexpensive dryer: make sure there’s an end-cycle buzzer on/off button! 

On a more pleasant note—I’ve been away from this blog since I’ve been working double-time on a new Little Farm book! Details coming soon.

If you’d like to see what’s going on at our little homestead, including how the garden fared after January’s Big Chill, you can mosey on over to my February newsletter, “Astoria, Arctic Blast Aftermath and Our Feathered Friends.” It’s free and open to all…and no need to subscribe!