Putting on warm clothes fresh from the dryer is one of life’s undisputed little pleasures. We all love our clothes dryers, so it’s essential to make sure we’re taking proper care of them.

Our guide below covers the most important things you need to know about this vital appliance. Learning more about how your dryer works will help you use it efficiently, maintain it to prevent common problems, and budget for dryer repairs when necessary.

How Does a Clothes Dryer Work?

Clothes dryers use a combination of three principles to remove moisture from wet clothing:

How Are Modern Clothes Dryers Different from Legacy Models?

Clothes dryers have been around for a long time, but they haven’t always used the same technology as modern versions. Early clothes dryers were just drums with air holes that people turned over an open flame with a hand crank. We think that process would be pretty rough on your delicates — singed silk, anyone?

American inventor George T. Sampson patented the first clothes dryer in 1892, but his version merely switched out the open flame for a stove and included a rack. Clothes dryers as we know them today didn’t start to appear until the late 1930s. Modern touches — such as permanent press cycles and electronic timing controls — emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.

Since then, the most significant innovations to clothes dryers have involved improvements to capacity and energy efficiency. Modern dryers with ENERGY STAR certification can use up to 20% less energy than legacy models without compromising performance or features.

How Should You Maintain Your Dryer?

Maintaining a clothes dryer isn’t difficult — it just requires you to be diligent about following a few routine steps:

5 Common Dryer Problems

We’ve fixed many clothes dryers in Ottawa and Gatineau, but we see some problems more often than others. Here are 5 of the most frequent issues we deal with:

Almost all common dryer problems (except for frayed cords) are caused by three factors: poor ventilation, overloading, and lint buildup over time. Use the maintenance tips above to prevent these problems and call for professional help if they have already occurred.

Dryer Maintenance Protects Your Investment

Clothes dryers are wonders of modern technology, but they require care and maintenance if you want them to work correctly. Make your dryer last by using what you’ve learned here to keep it in optimal condition, and enjoy dryer-fresh laundry for many years to come.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *