Intro

burnt-lint-dryer

It’s always a good idea to clean out lint a debris from inside your dryer at least once every two years.  Lint clogs are the number one cause of dryer fires and part malfunctions, not to mention long dry times. No matter how fancy of a tool that you have such as the Lint Lizard®, Linteater®, or the Lint Sucker 2000 (Don’t steal that name, I’ll market it sometime in the future.) , you can’t remove all the lint from inside your dryer unless you open up the cabinet and actually vacuum it out. Here is a pictures from a dryer that I repaired that had a small lint fire.  Luckily, the homeowner caught it before the dryer started their house on fire.  As you can see the lint was covering the whole inside of the dryer.  Lint is highly flammable, all it needs is a heat source to catch fire.  Guess what?  Your dryer has an amazing heat source.  🙂  In order to get this lint out, you will have to open up the cabinet and vacuum. At the bottom of the page are a list of dryers and how to open them up.  And here are a few tips to help you with your cleaning:

  1. Wear gloves
  2. Jot down or take pictures of where wires are plugged in and how the dryer belt is zigzaged on the idler pulley and drum.
  3. Be careful when vacuuming around the dryer igniter, if you break it, you will have to replace it.
  4. You may have to use a dust rag or your hands to sweep up the lint bunnies in hard to reach spots in your dryer (Caution dryers have sharp edges wear gloves!).

Video Instructions – How to Clean Out a Dryer

https://youtube.com/watch?v=09lHGlBee0w%3Ffeature%3Doembed%26amp%3Bwmode%3Dopaque

Video Transcript

This is Jon Lewis with DryerNotHeating.net  In this video, I’m going to show you how to completely clean out the inside of your dryer.

In order to keep your dryer working efficiently and safely, it is important to keep both your dryer vent and the inside of your dryer clean of lint and debris.

Here’s a dryer that never had the lint cleaned out of it.  The homeowner complained that the dryer wasn’t heating properly and that the dryer smelled like it was burning.  Come to find out the dryer had so much lint inside of it that it caught fire.  Luckily, the fire stayed contained inside the dryer itself.  This is why it is super important to keep not only your venting clean, but also the inside of the dryer.

In this video we will focus on cleaning out the inside of your dryer.  You can find links below for more information on how to disassemble your dryer and how clean out your dryer vent.

The only way to completely clean out your dryer is to first unplug it and then disassemble it.  We will need to remove the front door and your dryer’s drum to do this deep clean.

Here we have a GE gas dryer that my 7 year old son is cleaning out.  A shop vac with a skinny attachment like this works great for getting into most of the nooks and crannies of your dryer.  Areas that can’t be reached with your vacuum can be wiped down with your hand.  You may want to use gloves so that you don’t cut your hands on any of the sharp edges or screws.

Completely vacuum out the inside of your dryer.  Be careful as you vacuum on gas dryers. You want to be particularly cautious with the igniter since they are very brittle and if you break your igniter, you will have to replace it.  For electric dryers be careful around the heating element, you don’t want to accidentally break one of the coils.

The area of your dryer that is prone to the most lint build up is the area between your lint trap and the blower housing.  Be sure to vacuum out this are as much as possible.

For Whirlpool dryers with the lint trap on the top of the dryer, you will need to remove the lint trap and then the chute and vacuum it out.

Once your dryer is clean you can now reassemble it.  Thanks for watching! And visit dryernotheating.net for more dryer repair tutorials.  Thank you and have a good day!

How to Dissemble Your Dryer

Your dryer may not be listed below, but the videos should be similar to your dryer, if not, you may be able to download the service manual for you dryer here.  If you can’t find a service manual remotely close to your dryer, the best advice that I can give you is to start taking out screws making note of which screws you removed from where.  You will eventually get it apart.  Be very careful with plastic parts and electronic control boards.  🙂

 How to Open Whirlpool Dryer with Lint Screen on Top

How to Open Whirlpool Dryer with Lint Screen Inside Door

How to Open Whirlpool Duet Dryer

Frigidaire Dryer

Maytag Dryer

GE Dryer

LG Dryer