The bad news came this morning as we were cleaning the house in preparation for Christmas: the dryer wouldn’t start. Andrea and I both assumed that the belt must have worn out, and I made another assumption that cost me an extra two hours on this project: I thought, “Surely maintenance must take place from the back of the appliance,” so I pulled it out from the wall, unplugged it, climbed behind it, and removed the back panel, in the process knocking loose the flexible metal conduit of the lint vent. <\/p>\n
Puzzled that I didn’t see a way of checking the belt or the motor from the back, I asked the Internet for help, and found that most normal maintenance takes places from the FRONT of the dryer! So I unscrewed the top, flipped it back, disconnected the door cut-off switch, removed and set aside the front panel, and then removed the drum. <\/p>\n
The belt was intact. The Internet told me to run it briefly with the drum and belt removed in order to determine whether the motor was bad, so I scratched my head a little bit because the thing won’t run without the front panel on and the door cut-off switch connected. I put the front panel back on, connected the door cut-off switch, plugged in the power, and turned it on — the motor was fine. The belt looked fine. The gaskets looked fine. I had cleaned up a little bit of lint but I have no idea why the drum wouldn’t spin earlier. I think it must have been bound up for some reason. I put the dryer back together and the drum was now spinning. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the vent conduit back on the outlets, so I spent the next two hours cursing over that and cutting my fingers on the sharp metal edges. Eventually, I got it to work, and shortened the conduit by nearly three feet. After the holidays, I think I might fit it for rigid conduit, because the flexible stuff seems to collect lint on the interior ridges. <\/p>\n
I feel a minor sense of accomplishment from all this, but wish it had happened on some other day. Mainly I feel a sense of relief we have a means to dry Jamie’s cloth diapers that will only take half an hour or so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The bad news came this morning as we were cleaning the house in preparation for Christmas: the dryer wouldn’t start. Andrea and I both assumed that the belt must have worn out, and I made another assumption that cost me … Continue reading