Final Score: Bill 1, Dryer 0

Well the mystery of the clothes dryer that won't heat has been solved. After checking out various thermostats, sensors and controls that were working ok, I got a clue from, of all places, an appliance parts store. I had a question about one of the temperature control units that I was checking. I found out that the part was not even available any more, but that it was also not very likely to go bad. The guy at the parts store asked if I had checked the circuit breakers to see if maybe they were corroded. Well, I knew that the breakers were ok, but after I got off the phone, another possibility occurred to me. I wondered if maybe the wall outlet that the dryer plugs into might be corroded. A couple minutes later, I found that it was. The terminal for one of the "hot" wires had completely turned to non-conducting "crud".

I still wasn't sure that this was the total answer to my problem, but I did know that it needed to be fixed. A quick trip to Home Depot and about 30 minutes of work got a nice new receptacle in place and, lo and behold, we have heat in the dryer. The simple truth was that with one of the two "hot" wires not connected, the dryer was only getting 110V instead of 220V. The mechanical parts of the dryer, like the turning of the drum, would work on 110V, but 220V was needed for the heating element.

A real electrician would have probably checked the power source first, but hey, I learned many things about taking a dryer apart and where the different electrical parts are located. It was cold and rainy outside anyway.

Final Cost

Labor(Unskilled) $0.00
Parts $5.97(plus tax)
Total $6.34

Sue had already started looking at washer and dryer sets in the newspaper ads. Our units have a bit of age to them, so maybe sometime in the future, they will need to be replaced. But not now.