Nil posted for all of us...

And I know how to SNIP


On 05 Apr 2014, Ed Pawlowski wrote in
alt.home.repair:

On 4/5/2014 6:42 PM, Nil wrote:
My 25-year-old Hotpoint dryer is getting flaky. I have to run it
two or three times to dry a load of wet clothes. I cleaned out
the vent pipe and got quite a lot of lint out, but it still
doesn't dry very well. I'm guessing either the heating element is
partially dead or the thermostat is bad or both. I haven't opened
up the machine to test the parts yet. A new heating element seems
to cost about $100.

I'm wondering if modern dryers are better, more efficient, and
more reliable these days than they were in the late '80s/early
'90s. Do you think it's worth sinking $100 into such an old
appliance, or would it be better to cut my losses and put the
money toward a new one?

If you can DIY it is probably worth the fix. If you have to call
a service guy, it will be $200+ and after all those years, I'd
replace. It is time for the belt to go, or the motor, or controls.
New models are marginally better. They are just a hot spinning
tube with a little fan.

I think I can DIY it. I've fixed it before - I replaced the belt about
10 years ago, and it wasn't too hard. And the parts may be less than I
thought. I see on Ebay that a used heater goes for about $45 and the
individual heating coils are only about $15 each. The thermostats are
less than $10. So it's matter of me opening up the machine, testing the
parts with my multimeter, closing up the machine, ordering the parts,
opening up the machine again when they arrive and doing the fix. My
time and labor is cheap if it's for myself.

Fixing it will definitely be cheaper than a new unit. But since lots of
other big appliances are more energy efficient, maybe a new dryer would
work better and be cheaper to run.

I don't think a new dryer would be any more energy savings than yours.

--
Tekkie