Sometimes, it’s entirely obvious that you need to have one of your major appliances repaired. There’s nothing particularly subtle about a jammed dishwasher or a broken stove; they simply stop working, and that’s that. However, if your dryer is in need of thermal fuse repair, you could go a few days or even longer without realizing it. A simple phone call to a local home repair company could be all it would take, but if you don’t know it’s broken, you can’t call to fix it.

 

The Heat Police

 

One of the biggest risks posed by a clothes dryer is a serious one: fire. If you’ve got a malfunctioning dryer, it could potentially overheat to the point of igniting a clump of lint and start a chain reaction leading to disaster. Luckily, all modern dryers have safety systems built into them. One of those systems is the thermal fuse. Similar to a standard fuse or circuit breaker, a thermal fuse is designed to break the electrical connection powering the appliance’s heating system if conditions are unsafe. Unlike a standard fuse or breaker, and as you might have guessed from its name, the thermal fuse does not get tripped and broken by an overabundance of electrical current, but rather is designed so that it will fail if it gets too hot. In other words, if your dryer isn’t shutting off properly after a cycle is complete, and the heat inside the unit just keeps building and building, the thermal fuse will fail, automatically turning off the heating elements and preventing anything from overheating to the point of ignition. That’s a good thing.

 

A Stealthy Breakage

 

The downside to have a thermal fuse fail is that in most cases, the only thing it clocks power to is the heating element, so your dryer will be able to work as normal. You just might notice your dryer not heating up as it normally would. As you can imagine, it might take you a while to notice something like that, since most of us throw a load into the dryer and then proceed to forget about it until it’s done, and who hasn’t left clothes in there for longer than they meant to from time to time? All you might notice at first is that your clothes aren’t quite as dry as they used to be after a cycle. As a result, it could be days before you realize that it’s not your imagination and that something is broken to the point that your dryer is not getting hot at all.

 

A Quick (If Possibly Delayed) Fix

The good news is that once you’ve discovered that something is wrong and that your dryer is not getting your clothes dry, you’re just a phone call away from having everything back to normal. After a short conversation with an experienced appliance repair specialist, the problem will be obvious, and after a quick service call for a thermal fuse repair, your sheets, towels and socks will be coming out of your dryer as toasty and warm as ever.