For being machines that so many of us take for granted nearly every day, modern kitchen and household appliances are surprisingly complicated sometimes. Your clothes dryer, for instance, involves sensitive switches, delicate electronics, intricate wiring and even computer programming, all working together in perfect harmony to make sure you have a place to put rumpled pants for 10 minutes in order to make them look as good as new. When you have a problem with a dryer, however, often brought to the fore by someone complaining "my dryer isn’t drying my clothes!”, it can be quite inconvenient. Luckily, of all the things that can go wrong with a dryer, this particular problem is often one of the simplest.

 

A Quick Check, (Hopefully) a Quick Fix

 

If you’re having trouble with a malfunctioning dryer not properly drying clothes, the first thing you should do is turn it on for a few minutes and keep it under observation. If everything else seems to be working (the indicator lights are on, you can switch between cycle types and temperatures, it is heating up inside, etc.), then your problem is probably as simple as cleaning out a blocked dryer exhaust vent, which can become clogged with lint and other normal dryer debris. The exterior vent itself can also be blocked, as many birds find the warm, moist air blowing out of it to make that a perfect nesting site. Once you’ve checked the vent and cleared the exhaust line of any obstructions, try to run another cycle through. You may well find that your problem is all taken care of.

 

The Right Call for a More Complex Problem

 

If that didn’t do it, however, and a broken dryer is still what you’re dealing with, you’ll likely want to put in a call to an appliance repair specialist sooner rather than later. The trained eye and extensive experience of a home repair company technician can assess a problem with a wide range of major appliances and come up with a plan of attack to get your home back to tip-top working order before too long. With a malfunctioning clothes dryer, their expertise is particularly important. Due to the complex and extensive electrical components in the average dryer, working on it yourself can involve significant safety risks due to the potential for electric shock. The complicated nature of various connections can make it very easy for a lay person to actually cause more damage than if they had just left it alone altogether.

When someone in your house calls up from the laundry room with an anguished cry of "my dryer isn’t drying my clothes,” you may be in for a short-and-sweet do-it-yourself repair job. But you should also be prepared to make the wise choice of knowing when a problem is complicated and important enough to warrant a little bit of research and a call to a reputable, local home appliance repair company.