I was standing in our bathroom, bundled up in pants and a hoodie and had just finished drying my hair when our heat kicked on. Through the ductwork, I could hear this odd scraping and banging noise. My first thought was that something was wrong with our furnace – because what else would be making that noise through the ductwork?
Making my way downstairs, I poked my head into the toasty living room. The Boy had the pocket doors pulled closed and a space heater on, making our living room the warmest room in our house. Leaning in, I asked him what the noise was. He thought it was someone scraping their car of the ice that had accumulated over the weekend, until I told him that I was pretty sure it was coming from the basement.
Curious, we both set off downstairs, where the dryer was running – and scraping and clanging. We immediately turned it off, pulled all of the still-damp clothing out of it, and attempted to work out the issue. While I was grateful it wasn’t our furnace, I was a little taken aback that it was my dryer: all of my socks were in the basket full of still-damp clothing, and we had no clue what was wrong.
The Boy popped the top off of the dryer, exposing the drum. Looking inside the dryer housing offered no clues, and neither did looking inside of the dryer itself. Rotating the drum manually led us to determine that something was scraping the side of the drum, but we couldn’t figure out what – or where it was being scraped. After a half hour of investigating, we decided to let it be for the night, to Google, and to see what we could to do fix it on Monday. I knew I’d have to rewash the clothing that was in our dryer, but I didn’t want to risk further damage trying to repair the dryer without first determining how.
Monday came and The Boy and I spent a good bit of time on Google, searching for solutions. After dinner, The Boy set off downstairs with his laptop and our toolbox to see what he could do to repair it. After an hour passed, he came upstairs, where I was napping, and asked if I wanted to come down to assist – he’d found the problem and needed to put our dryer back together so we could finish our laundry.
I quickly gathered up what I needed to go downstairs to help out, and as I was heading into the basement, I saw just how much the dryer had been disassembled, and just how simple of a machine the dryer actually is. The dryer was completely opened up, with the drum gingerly placed on the mat by the washer. The Boy was double-checking the reassembly before putting everything back together again.
When I asked what the problem was, I was told that a screw had managed to go through the washer, and got stuck between the drum and the side-wall of the dryer, which was what was causing the scraping as the dryer tumbled. Fortunately, we caught the issue before it caused any damage, so all we had to do was remove the screw and put everything back together.
Reassembly was a little more complicated than I thought, but eventually we had the dryer all back together. Finally, we were able to plug it in, and then, it was time for the final test: turning it on. We were both thrilled when it turned on and there was no scraping and no wobbling. It sounded exactly how a dryer is supposed to sound.
I’m eager to finish up the last of my laundry for the week – I need some clean kitchen towels and socks! I’m grateful that the repair was something relatively simple, and not something more involved. Mostly, I’m learning just how much we can do on our own – with the help of Google.
