Wednesday, September 12, 2012

years of lint

Our dryer has been acting up. It randomly shuts off mid-cycle. It is annoying, especially when you put school uniforms in at 10pm and got to bed expecting them to be dry in the morning. I woke up at 5am wondering if I needed to go check. I spent a half hour trying to go back to sleep assuring myself that it wouldn't happen. I finally gave in, walked across the house to check and, sure enough, found damp uniforms in the dryer.

Annoyance caused me to start googling issues with our 13 year old dryer. We got it when we purchased our first house in 1999. It has never had a problem before now. Most of google pointed to the motor overheating and shutting down. Motor overheating causes were generally attributed to lint buildup.

I clean the lint screen after every load, but we never opened up the dryer and cleaned the whole thing out. While I made lunches, I watched youtube videos on how to clean the dryer. Of couse I can't find the link to the video I found that featured our exact dryer and showed me what to do. Once the morning had settled down, I asked DH where his nut drivers or socket set was. I think that scared him because he elected to help me.

I think DH thought this was a fruitless endeavor. We clean the lint trap, we should be fine. Nope. Once we opened the front panel, there was a layer of lint inside the dryer. Next we removed the lint trap. Wow!

Photobucket

Photobucket

I don't know if you can tell from the photos, but there was at least an inch or more of lint built up in the trap. It was so thick, I had to use a spoon to scoop it out of the crevices.

After cleaning out the lint, it stopped on my first trial run. So much for cleaning out the lint. I started researching motors, thermostats and replacement. I'm comparing the cost of calling a repairman v the cost of parts & shipping for DH to repair it (and not being completely sure exactly what is wrong) v the price of replacement. I'm leaning toward replacement but I'm not sure. I guess I'll just keep pushing it until it completely dies and make that decision later.

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