Tips To Help Fix a Dryer That Won't Heat

Hello Readers! I apologize for not updating sooner, but my family and I were on vacation down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, it was wonderful. So now we are all ready to get back to work, and I have a new little article just for you. I hope it is helpful!

If your dryer will not heat then hopefully this article will help you. I will give you a few tips on how to fix it. Over the years I have learned these solutions as once I was asking myself "why won't my dryer heat?" Then I started working with people that work on appliances and I learned a whole lot of tips and solutions for fixing appliances. It is a benefit to know all of these tips and how to’s because to have a repair man come out to fix your machine can be quite costly.

There could be a number of reasons why your dryer won't heat. But first, you have to find out if your dryer is electric or gas. With electric dryers, they run on a separate circuit breaker, so make sure that is on. Turn it off and then turn it back on and then go try your dryer to see if it will heat. Say your dryer still does not heat; then you will need a continuity tester. Usually all dryers have a thermal fuse in the exhaust path. According to what dryer you have depends if the fuse will be found towards the front or back. If you have a back panel on your dryer then most likely that is where it will be. They are just about 1" in size and you will see where the spots are for continuity testing.

There will also likely be another thermal fuse that can cause your dryer to not heat and it is located outside the heater housing assembly. These also need to be tested with the continuity tester. So after you checked all of these options and you are still wondering "why my dryer won't heat?" then the next most common problem can be the heating element. All electric dryer elements are made of metal coils on some form of a frame with two contact points which is where the wires plug into. If one of the coils is broken then it will not heat your dryer and you will need a new heat element.

For those of you that have a gas dryer- and are wondering "why won't my dryer heat"? - well, gas dryers run on a burner system. There are a few parts that can fail and cause your dryer to not heat. But some you can replace by testing them and others you have to just decide to do it or not. With gas dryers not just a continuity tester is needed to test; you will need a good ohm meter. When your dryer starts hot but finishes cold then you could have some bad coils. They energize to keep the gas valves open. But the valves are one of the things that you are not able to test so you have to replace them. If your dryer never heats, then try the igniter first. Disconnect the clear plastic connector which has attached the igniter to the burner circuit. Disconnect and put your probes on the igniter side. After that the meter has to be under 100 ohms of resistance because anything higher means you need to replace the igniter. But if the igniter is good then the last thing to check is the flame sensor. If you don't have continuity then it needs to be replaced; it's that simple. One more thing: make sure you clean out your vent because if that is full of lint then that can cause your dryer to slow down on heating and also cause a fire.

Ok, well I hope the information I have provided has helped you. There is nothing else that I can let you know at this point. If your dryer does not work after trying all of these options then it's time to call a repairman.

I hope this helped you! Thank you for reading, and have a fantastic weekend!
-Balcum