[caribbeanmirage]

A couple of months ago I told my daughter there was something wrong with the dryer, It was taking sometimes 3 hours to dry a load and the what little lint was in the dryer was not in the lint catcher but around the door and was wet. I told her I thought there was more lint caught in the very long "tubing" or whatever you want to call it, that went to the outside. Theirs has to go clear across the basement, not set up an outside wall. Told her it was racking up her electric bill. They did nothing about it and just kept doing laundry and now the dryer went out altogether. I checked the circuit breaker and it has not flipped it off. Said I have "electrical" problems, she seems to think I did, by doing laundry, theirs and mine. Can someone clarify this for me?

[twinkiedooter]

Having the outside venting go that far to reach the outside obviously got clogged up. The machine quit due to getting burned out. Just because you clean out the lint trap in the machine does not mean that you have essentially cleared the entire vent. You should be grateful that there was not a fire due to the built up lint in the venting as that happens quite often.

You need to have the dryer looked at and repaired. I'll wager that the long vent to the outside is totally clogged. In some areas that long of a vent is not building code due to the fire hazard.

When the repair person is there for the repair to the machine have them look to see if they could not come up with a different location for the vent to go outside that would not be longer than say 3' or 5' at most. This would enable you to clean out the outside venting properly every so many months.

Also having the wet lint is another indication that the dryer needs totally cleaned of any lint build up. I'm still shaking my head in wonderment that your machine did not catch on fire...

You could also get what's called an indoor dryer vent that only has a few feet of venting and goes into a little box. That is easy to clean out of lint.

[donf]

Hold on here for just a minute.

There are lots of reasons for a dryer not electrically working correctly.

For example, you may have lost one leg of the 240V input, which would cause the dryer to work, but not dry properly. The breaker may have a single leg blown out (happened in my garage the other day). The breaker did not trip.

Mechanically, the heater coil could have opened on one end. Or, the heater coil could have stretched (sagged) and shorted out.

As to the long vent tubing, there is a Dryer Duct Booster product called "Tjernlund Duct Booster" that is designed to be inserted into the duct and it will boost the air flow to clean out the duct and in theory dry the clothes faster.

I have not had any experience with this product. I just read about in a magazine last night.

[caribbeanmirage]

I told them that last summer, but what do I know. I went outside and it was even clogged at the outside and I cleaned that out as best I could. And of course we are getting blamed for the electric bill being so high. Obviously if the dryer has to run

[caribbeanmirage]

Twice as long to dry, its going to cause the electric bill to go out, but instead of ever having anyone check it, they just kept using it, as it long as it dryed. Is is possible that it did not burn out the dryer, but just the circuit?

[caribbeanmirage]

I told them I thought it was running just a 110, I had that happen to me, My dryer ran, just would not dry. Thought I fried the heating element, come to find out all I had to replace is one of the 110 on the circuit and it ran fine after that.

[caribbeanmirage]

Thing of it is my daughter will not listen to me because she thinks I know nothing about this subject. And listens to her husband. He just tells her the dryer is shot and has not even had anyone look at it and since I was the last to use it, its me

[donf]

Good morning, Carib,

How old is the dryer? Has anyone tested the receptacle to verify that it is supplying 240VAC.

This is easily accomplished by using a multimeter. Also, if the duct work is clogged and accessible, why not just change it out and put a new tube in.

Is this dryer in your home or an apartment? If it is in your home, have the dryer fixed. If it is your daughter's home, tell her to replace the dryer or get it fixed, it's not your problem.

[Missouri Bound]

Well a couple of things. Obviously the vent is plugged. The only way to tell if the dryer is working is to turn it on for 2-3 minutes... then open the door and see if there is any heat. Fortunately from what you say it's an electric dryer and they tend to be a bit safer than gheir gas counterparts. Nonetheless, it's likely that you burned out the electric element. Not a huge expense if you fix it yourself, but still a pain. Whatever you do, you need to shorten the length of the venting. What kind of tubing is it, by the way? It's not vinyl, is it?