Dryer takes too long to dry

Check one: is it throwing a code?

Start here, because this is the most reliable signal there is and almost nobody tells you about it.

If your dryer is throwing a code, 95% of the time it is the vent.

A modern control board is watching two things: cycle duration and exhaust temperature. Restrict the airflow enough and those two numbers stop agreeing with each other, at which point the machine posts a fault or cuts the cycle short. Every manufacturer names it something different. Underneath the label it is always the same condition, which is that the exhaust is not escaping.

What most people do with that code is call an appliance repair tech, pay a service fee, and get told the machine is fine and the vent is blocked. It happens constantly. If your dryer has started throwing codes, check the vent before you pay anyone to look at the appliance.

Older machines do not have this. They just quietly run hot and take two cycles until something fails, which is why the neglect in Tempe's older housing goes unnoticed for so long.

Check two: the airflow test

Put the dryer on air fluff, the no-heat setting, and start it. Walk outside to the vent and put your hand near it.

Strong, steady air pushing out. Your duct is clear. A cleaning will not help and the problem is inside the machine. Call an appliance repair tech, not us.

Weak air, or nothing at all. The duct is restricted. That is the whole thing we do, and it is $99.

For a roof termination you cannot get to, do it from inside instead. Pull the dryer forward, uncouple the duct at the machine, and run one load with nothing attached. If that load dries normally, your duct is the culprit. Open a window while you do it, because the lint and damp are going into the room.

Both checks are free and take two minutes between them. Do them before you call anyone, us included.

If it is the duct, what is in there?

Packed lint, most of the time

Most jobs come down to this. The deterioration is gradual enough that people adjust around it without registering the change. Occasional second cycles become routine second cycles become mandatory ones, and there is never a moment where something visibly failed.

How long that takes depends on where in Tempe you are. A two-story in Warner Ranch with a thirty-five foot roof run can get there in three years. A single-story in Broadmor might take fifteen. And in the older neighborhoods the honest answer is often "since the house was built."

In a rental it is faster than any of those, because several tenants share the machine. More on that.

A crushed or collapsed transition hose

In Tempe this is usually an age problem rather than a space problem. The original foil hose has been flexing and heating for decades, goes brittle, cracks along the ridges and collapses under its own weight. It chokes airflow at the source, before the lint in the duct even matters.

A retrofitted run that was never right

Specific to the older parts of this city. A laundry room added to a house that never had one gets a vent run improvised around obstacles, and what should be eight feet ends up twenty-five with four elbows. That run was struggling from the day it was installed. More on that here.

A nest in the cap

Sudden, not gradual. If your dryer was fine last month and is useless now, and it is February through May, look here first. Full page.

A duct that has separated

Common in older Tempe homes where joints were taped rather than fastened and the tape has had sixty years to give up. The dryer is now venting hot wet lint into the structure. You often smell it before you find it, and there may be a stain on drywall near the laundry.

The exterior flap stuck shut

Tempe has some of the oldest vent hardware in the Valley, baking in unshaded sun for decades. They warp, they seize, they stop opening. Run the dryer and watch the flap from outside. If it does not lift, that is your whole problem.

What it is doing to the appliance

That thermal fuse is meant to be a rare safety intervention. With a restricted duct it becomes a regular occurrence, with the heating element working outside its design range throughout. Every load puts the machine under strain it was not built for.

The result is that dryers die young, and the owner concludes they bought a bad one. Very often they bought a fine dryer and never cleaned the vent. A replacement runs eight hundred to fifteen hundred dollars. The cleaning is $99.

Source: National Fire Protection Association, Home Fires Involving Clothes Dryers and Washing Machines.

We will tell you when it is not us

Worth saying plainly, since it is why both checks sit at the top of this page rather than buried at the bottom.

If you call and it turns out your duct is clear, we are not going to clean it anyway and charge you $99. We will tell you it is the appliance and point you at somebody who fixes appliances. That costs us a job and it is still the right call.

What we do about it

1. Inspect the run. We find where it goes and how it terminates, check the exterior cap or roof hood, and look at the transition hose behind the machine. A surprising number of problems sit in the first three feet.
2. Work it from the outside with the dryer running. We leave the machine running the whole time we are at the termination, so the air it is pushing carries the lint we agitate straight out of the run instead of letting it settle back down the pipe. It makes a mess outside. We clean that up.
3. Work it from the inside. Machine unplugged, hose disconnected, dryer pulled back. We feed the brush through the vent from inside, bring the lint down toward us, and vacuum it up out of the wall rather than leaving it to resettle.
4. Both ends on a long run, one end on a short one. A long run with several elbows gets worked from both sides, because a brush fed from one end alone never properly reaches the far half. A short straight run does not need it and we will not pretend otherwise.
5. Put it back and show you. Dryer reconnected where it belongs, run to confirm, and the pile of what came out sitting where you can look at it.

How often you should be doing this

Every 10 months for a normal household. That is the schedule, not a suggestion.

• Every 10 months for a typical home
• Every 4 to 6 months for a big family, or a rental with several tenants sharing one machine
• Monthly for commercial machines

If you are waiting until the dryer gets slow to call somebody, you are not due for a cleaning. You are already about a year past due. A slow dryer is not the trigger, it is the symptom of a run that has been restricting airflow and cooking the machine for months before anybody noticed.

Common questions