As wonderful husbands often do, I went downstairs to switch the laundry the other day without being asked and discovered a load of wet clothes in the dryer. My wife likes to say the baby stole her brain so I chuckled heartily and started the dryer, assuming that she forgot to start it when she loaded it.

I returned a few hours later to try again at switching the laundry only to discover the clothes in the dryer were still wet. Uh oh. I turned that puppy on and found it ran, it’s lint trap was empty, but it didn’t get hot.

Rats.

I called my appliance repair guy, Google, and did some reading. With the full knowledge of 10 minutes of browsing, I decide to check out this “heating element” thingamibob. First, pop open the back, right?

No. First make sure the vent is clear. Check!

Next pop the back open.

No! Unplug it first!

I was pretty sure the plug was fine but I tested it with my multimeter just in case. ~220v check!

Now pop it open already!

OK… hey, what’s that? A burned up wire?

Now’s a good time to say, “now there’s your problem.” Why’d it burn up? Who knows. Condensation, chassis short, something or other, I don’t know. Normally these wires have little clips on them that let you easily attach them to other components (don’t you love how I say “normally” like I knew that before I started this project?). Unfortunately I don’t have any of those and the one that was attached here is not really up for the job. YOU’RE FIRED WIRE CLIP GUY!

Never fear, I’ll just grab my soldering iron. Actually, before I go through the trouble of soldering this back together (I suck at soldering), let’s see if that’s the problem first by reattaching it with a special wire reattacher tool:

With that attached by what is one of the most useful tools ever, me a safe distance away, no children present, and fire extinguisher at the ready (just kidding, it was way far away), I verified the dryer operated as expected. Hooray!

Next I soldered the wire on, put the cover back on, and enjoyed some self congratulatory snickering. And what’s my true reward? I get to fold laundry (and avoid spending any money on this, or a new dryer).

3 comments

Sarah said on 2011-07-18

Love it :) But, um, how is the dryer a “hipster”? Is this where you said, “oh, it used to be cool”? ;)

Also, you don’t fold laundry. Don’t lie. But I love you anyway :)

Michael Haren said on 2011-07-18

@Sarah it dried clothes before it was cool

picturingtheordinary said on 2011-07-19

:) glad it worked out!

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