Even after being around and involved in appliance repair for over thirty years, I still have the occasional Never Seen Anything Like IT
moments. I had one today as a matter of fact. I received a call about a
dryer that wasn't functioning correctly. The client said that the dryer
had never worked properly and that it was getting even worse. It was
one of the expensive LG front load dryers that was supposed to be top of
the line and energy efficient.
The address they gave was in a very posh section of town, I arrived to a gorgeous two story colonial and the lady of the house ushered me to the laundry room and right away I could see at least part of the problem. The laundry room had been placed in the center of the house in a little closet and for the vented air from the dryer to make it to the exterior it had to go through at least twenty feet of duct.
The next tell tale sign was that the dryer was jammed up tight against the wall. Upon looking it over I realized whoever installed it had done so because they had to in order for the electrical breaker box door to open. My first order of business in a situation like this is to go check where the dryer vents outside to see how much air is flowing out. It doesn't matter how much a dryer costs or how hot it gets, the main ingredient is having a sufficient volume of air flowing through the machine and moving the moisture that the heat removes from the clothes outside.
The first thing I noticed about the exterior dryer vent was that it was closed. In fact it had never been open, it was one of those that has flaps that the air pushes open and then they close when you are finished drying to keep bugs and critters from exploring your dryer vent. On closer inspection I discovered that when the house had been originally painted about four years hence, they had painted the cover and then the paint had hardened in place and glued the dryer vent shut, the same as paint will often cause a window to stick and not open.
However when I cleaned the paint off and got the flaps opening and closing properly again, there was still no air flowing out. I checked where the dryer was vented into the wall and discover that when the dryer was originally shoved against the wall, the vent hose had been smashed closed, completely shutting off the flow of air to the outside. It was so bad that there was a big U shape in the duct which was filled with this awful sludge of water and lint at the bottom, the worst clog I have ever seen.
The solution was to run a flexible vent hose and to not push the dryer right up next to the wall. Once I did that, I started getting good airflow on the outside at which point I knew the problem was solved. As I was wrapping up and chatting with the client, she told me that they had routinely been running a load of clothes four times through the dryer to get it dry. So they were using four times as much power to dry the clothes as they needed to. Ouch!
The part they didn't realize was that all that heat which should have been being vented outside was actually being retained in the house and then the air conditioner was having to remove all that heat from the house, I can't imagine how much more that was tacking onto the power bill as well.
The moral of the story is this: If your dryer is not working correctly, don't tolerate it, REPAIR IT! Your energy bill will go down, the amount of time you'll spend doing laundry will go down, your stress level will go down.
The address they gave was in a very posh section of town, I arrived to a gorgeous two story colonial and the lady of the house ushered me to the laundry room and right away I could see at least part of the problem. The laundry room had been placed in the center of the house in a little closet and for the vented air from the dryer to make it to the exterior it had to go through at least twenty feet of duct.
The next tell tale sign was that the dryer was jammed up tight against the wall. Upon looking it over I realized whoever installed it had done so because they had to in order for the electrical breaker box door to open. My first order of business in a situation like this is to go check where the dryer vents outside to see how much air is flowing out. It doesn't matter how much a dryer costs or how hot it gets, the main ingredient is having a sufficient volume of air flowing through the machine and moving the moisture that the heat removes from the clothes outside.
The first thing I noticed about the exterior dryer vent was that it was closed. In fact it had never been open, it was one of those that has flaps that the air pushes open and then they close when you are finished drying to keep bugs and critters from exploring your dryer vent. On closer inspection I discovered that when the house had been originally painted about four years hence, they had painted the cover and then the paint had hardened in place and glued the dryer vent shut, the same as paint will often cause a window to stick and not open.
However when I cleaned the paint off and got the flaps opening and closing properly again, there was still no air flowing out. I checked where the dryer was vented into the wall and discover that when the dryer was originally shoved against the wall, the vent hose had been smashed closed, completely shutting off the flow of air to the outside. It was so bad that there was a big U shape in the duct which was filled with this awful sludge of water and lint at the bottom, the worst clog I have ever seen.
The solution was to run a flexible vent hose and to not push the dryer right up next to the wall. Once I did that, I started getting good airflow on the outside at which point I knew the problem was solved. As I was wrapping up and chatting with the client, she told me that they had routinely been running a load of clothes four times through the dryer to get it dry. So they were using four times as much power to dry the clothes as they needed to. Ouch!
The part they didn't realize was that all that heat which should have been being vented outside was actually being retained in the house and then the air conditioner was having to remove all that heat from the house, I can't imagine how much more that was tacking onto the power bill as well.
The moral of the story is this: If your dryer is not working correctly, don't tolerate it, REPAIR IT! Your energy bill will go down, the amount of time you'll spend doing laundry will go down, your stress level will go down.
If you live in the Mt Pleasant area of Charleston SC and have a similar problem or an issue with any appliance you can schedule service and have ApplianceRepair-Charleston come fix it. Mount Pleasant appliance repair is one of our specialties. - Brett Singleton
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Brett_D_Singleton
No comments:
Post a Comment