Q. A neighbor asked me a short time ago what she should do with her clothes dryer. It takes much longer to dry clothes than it used to. She didn’t know whether to call a repair man or to just replace it.
A. The dryer requires some every-use maintenance and some annual maintenance. If these are not done you risk a drop in performance or in the worst case a fire. There is a filter, usually just inside the door that must be cleaned every time you use the drier. The lint that is trapped needs to be removed and discarded. If you use fabric softener pads you should check once a week to make sure these are not clogging the filter. Check this by running water over the filter. If the water does not flow through the filter freely wash it with a mild soap.
The dryer works by passing heated air over the clothes to dry them. It then passes this air into a four-inch metal duct at the rear of the dryer that either goes through the side wall of your house or up and through the roof. These ducts collect lint from the clothes on their inside walls that constricts them just like cholesterol clogs arteries in humans. These ducts should be cleaned every 2-3 years or more often if there are shedding pets in the house. There is a tool available at hardware and big box stores called a dryer vent cleaning brush kit for cleaning the ducts. If you don’t want to do this yourself there are a couple of companies that advertise in the Lifestyles magazine, and in the back of the newspaper where you are reading this that do duct cleaning.
When I asked my neighbor if she was having the ducts cleaned, she was not aware that that needed to be done or that there even were exhaust ducts on her clothes dryer.
Problem solved. After having her dryer ducts cleaned her clothes were dry in considerably less time and there was no need to buy a new clothes dryer.
