I’ve had my share of appliance woes as of late. It all started with my dryer. It would turn and run but it wouldn’t heat. UGH. I absolutely hate paying for repairmen to come. When Kramer was living, he took care of these things for me all the time, and rarely, if ever, did we hire repairmen.
Well, I was bound and determined I was going to give it a try. So…I tried. I watched Youtube repair videos.
I bought a replacement part off of Amazon for $8.
I tried to replace it only to discover that I had the wrong part. I returned it and got the right part. I replaced it. No luck. AHH. I was so frustrated.
I asked Craig about it and he said he didn’t know much about dryers. I watched Youtube after Youtube video and tried for 3 weeks but, I couldn’t figure it out.
The dryer ran…it didn’t heat. One video I watched showed taking out the drum. That’s where I drew the line.
So I started the debate…Do I just buy a new one? This dryer was in the house when we bought it. The dryer is old. UGH.
Well then if I bought a dryer do I want a matching washer. Yes, I want a matching washer but can I afford a matching washer. UGH.
So, what is a girl do? …I broke down and called the repairman to come.
The repairman came. He looked the whole thing over and like me, he was stumped.
Then he looked at the setting buttons… It looked like this.
The darn thing had been bumped when I put stuff on top of the dryer. It was on the delicate/air fluff setting. Oh, my word. I was so frustrated. I paid $75 for a repair visit only to find my dryer was on the wrong setting.
I’m so glad I didn’t buy a new one!! Now it’s on regular and if it starts to not heat, you can bet the first place I will check will be the temperature setting.
How embarrassing…and why didn’t a single Youtube video that watched say, “check the temperature setting FIRST”… Oh my, I might have to start doing my own Youtube dryer repair videos.
The dryer wasn’t my only appliance to act up. My dishwasher did too! My dishwasher is almost a year old and I’ve had so much frustration with it. You can read about my previous dishwasher saga HERE.
This time water wasn’t leaking. This time, the dishes weren’t getting cleaned. Of course, it happened over Thanksgiving when there were extra dishes. I chalked it up to someone else loading the dishwasher and overloading it or putting something in the way so the nozzles wouldn’t spin.
The next day, I tried loading it…still the dishes weren’t as clean as they should be. AH!! I was not in the mood for more appliance repair.
I ended up on the phone. My dishwasher is still under warranty for a couple more weeks. It was time to call the company and get someone out to look at it. I had such a terrible experience with that last time. I hoped this time would be better.
I sat on the phone for 45 minutes on hold. It still cracks me up that the first song that the company’s phone hold plays is “Don’t you Forget About Me.”
I definitely felt forgotten about.
The gal finally came on the line and set up someone to come. That part of the call took about 5 minutes. So 50 minutes later I had someone coming.
Well, that night Kelli was here for supper. I decided I would try the dishwasher one more time. As I was loading the dishwasher, something caught my eye…this…
The nozzles were plugged! WHAT? No wonder the dishwasher wasn’t working.
That explained why I had a dirty pyrex measuring cut in one spot of the dishwasher and it didn’t get clean so I moved it, ran the wash again, and then it did get clean. The nozzle was clogged which should have reached the position of the cup-but-when I moved the cup and ran it through the wash again it got clean.
So…I took a tweezer and a pin and cleaned out the nozzles. The dishwasher totally works now. Oh, my word.
So the next day I talked to the repairman that was supposed to come and look at my dishwasher and told them to cancel the appointment.
So, here are some tips from “Handygirl Jo”…
1-check the heat settings on your dryer before you call the repairman
2-check the nozzles in your dishwasher before you call the repairman
Simple “fixes” most anyone could do. AHHH!!
Like the title of this post says…appliance woes.
Same thing happened with my dishwasher. I nowuse a rubber spatula or even my dish sponge to clean leftover bits from dishes before I put them on the dishwasher. No need to use costly water and rinse them first, just wipe. Never had the problem since
Jo, there are products that you can buy that will clean your dish washer. You just put this in the machine and run one cycle. This helps my machine a lot. Sorry about your woes. You and your blog are fabulous!
AM
Hi Jo
I had the same thing with the fridge freezer. It was making so much ice that I could hardly get the drawers open. I called the repairman only to be told that I would have to defrost it manually. I thought when I bought it that it was a frost free model did I feel a fool. Added to which as we are in lockdown off and on the thing was full of food. I wrapped everything up in blankets and spent the day with bowls of hot water trying to melt all the ice. The kitchen was swimming by the time we’d finished. An expensive lesson learned.
Well $75 is less than a new dryer. I’ve repaired both our washer and dryer using YouTube videos with great success. $10-20 in parts is much less than a repair bill. The real time YouTube videos saved me was when we thought the fan relay on our Jeep went out. I ordered the part, only to find out that ours was the last year for that particular style and a handful (ours included) had the newer relay in a different location and it tested good. We ended up taking it to the dealership, where I explained that the relay was under the hood and not the bumper and we felt it was the fan itself. It took a few days longer than estimated and when I called and checked, I was told the wrong part had been ordered and the relay wasn’t under the bumper (duh). Thank goodness the shop foreman had taken notes and had written down what I told him when we dropped the vehicle off as I was able to get the labor time reduced for taking the bumper off. We saved about $200.
My middle daughter tries to fix everything in her place before calling a repairman. Most of the time she’s pretty lucky but not all the time. Hubby Mike swears they make things just so a repairman HAS to come out to fix something! :-D
Love and prayers
Once in a rental, I set a large heavy box on top of our stove and bent a knob. Couldn’t figure out the problem, had to have a repairman, who came and straightened the knob, thus fixing the stove. I never set big stuff on top of the stove again.
Our NEW Bosch dishwasher has, of all things, a Filter that has to be cleaned BY HAND. I have lived in at least 20 houses with dishwashers and have NEVER had to clean a dishwasher filter. Like you, though, I have had food particles or hard water grit stop up the holes on the arms of the dishwasher. So glad I always rinse off food particles. When my new dishwasher stops cleaning so nicely, I pull out that Filter and clean off the sludge on it. Not hard.
I did have the Bosch repairman out early on when the soap dispenser seemed to not open properly on every cycle. Turns out the small slotted area right in front of the bowls is NOT to hold small lids, etc. It is where the soap dispenser flips open and drops the soap. He was very kind and did not charge me- “owner instruction,” said many people did the same. Checked the instructions and no mention made of that particular slot.
You just taught yourself the first rule of troubleshooting: check the simple and obvious things first! And yes, the you tube videos are wonderful!
A month after my husband died, my dryer stopped drying our clothes. I called oldest son and he told me to check dryer vent. I pulled it out and it was full. Another time birds made a nest outside into the vent and eventually I had to put nails in the opening so they couldn’t come in. Appliances are something we depend on and when they don’t work, our lives get very disruptive. You are doing great Jo, keep it up.
Ah, yes, the “obvious” solutions. I called the electrician to replace a rheostat switch for the ceiling fan above my longarm. He tested it and said nothing was wrong with the switch. So he climbed above the longarm, tested the fan, then pulled the chain switch to turn it on. Then gave me the “You are a dummy” look. What neither of us knew was the flooring guys here the week before had turned it off at the fan instead of using the wall switch. I can’t reach the fan on a vaulted ceiling over the longarm even on a ladder!
Good job, Jo! $75 chalked up to lesson learned….and you figured out the dishwasher!! YAY!!
it reminds me about a stupid trip to the sewing machine shop I did. I was at an all day sew-in and my machine stopped. Went over the sewing machine store. All its was the bobbin winder had gotten moved so the machine was not sewing. :-) :-)
If you really do need to replace the thermal fuse in your dryer, DH said to make sure you replace the thermostat, too. Another thing HandyGirl Jo needs to add to her list is to check that the vent hoses are clear. before calling a dryer repairman. Blocked lines can cause the thermal fuse to overheat. About the dishwasher… I’m going to have to take a look at our dishwasher nozzles. Thanks for that piece of advice!
The soap dispenser on our Bosch dishwasher stopped opening during the wash cycle. The repairman said it was a timer and then found out the part cost $350 to replace. Solution? We set a timer to go off ten minutes after starting the appliance to remind us to manually open the dispenser. That’ll work until it’s time to replace the 14 year-old unit – it didn’t make sense to pay half of the cost of a new one on just one part
!
Appliance woes are s good title. Never feel stupid if you have no idea how a thing operates. Especially if the owners guide says nothing about your problem. I had a refrigerator stop working called the repairman. He came out checked ever button and knob, then took off the filter cover on the bottom of the fridge. Took one look and asked me if I had ever vacumned it I just stared at him and said no I didn’t know that I should. He got his little handy dandy vacuumn. Worked for 15 minutes front and back and showed me the pile of dust bunnies etc. And said to do it twice a year. Oh I learned the hard fairly expensive way to keep things working properly. You did great Jo.
We love our clothes drying racks! Don’t have to worry about getting the clothes out of the dryer at the end of the cycle to prevent wrinkles, lowers our utility bills, and clothes last longer. We just give clothes a good shake before we hang them up. We do use our dryer for a few minutes on some of our shirts to get the wrinkles out and then hang them on the rack or on hangers.
We live in Nevada, which has low humidity. We also have a small family and a good size laundry room so the drying racks work well for us, but might not work for big families or in high humidity.
I do wish we had an outdoor clothes line like when I was growing up! Nothing better than the scent of fresh air dried towels! My mom did 3 loads of laundry every day for our family of six, and we got a new towel everytime we showered/bathed.
I put a bowl of vinegar in my empty dishwasher and run a cycle about once a week. Really helps keep it clea.
curious about the dishwasher clog. is it due to hard water deposit? asking for my own peace of mind. and should i be dealing with this preventionwise.
I think it was a little of both..water build up and not proper plate scrapping.
I have had the same problem with the holes getting clogged. Fortunately I still have my husband who can fix things like this. However, this time I learned something new. The filter in the bottom of the dishwasher needs to be cleaned out – which I knew. And I did. What I didn’t realize is that it screws in so that it doesn’t move when it is properly placed. I had been cleaning it out and just putting it back in place and not getting it securely screwed in. That seems to have been one of the problems I have had. Hope that this might help you a little too.
Our dishwasher was leaking. You tube videos showed us how to take it apart, and replace a rubber washer. I couldn’t locate the part locally, but found it on Amazon for about $10. since i have hard water, i do use a treatment periodically.
If your refrigerator/freezer is iced up, blowing a fan or a hair dryer on it shortens the thawing.
Jo, thank you so much for this post! I was having the same problem with my dishwasher. After reading your post I took a look in my dishwasher and saw that the spray holes were clogged. I cleaned them out and will be more careful to scrape dishes in the future. Thanks Jo.
My brother was an appliance repairman. Went on a call of a freezer not working. Checked it over to find somehow it had gotten unplugged from the wall. Still had to charge for the service call. Bummer.
I’m so bad about putting gunky dishes in the dishwasher. About half the time, I look at something, think I should rinse it . . then decide that’s what the dishwasher is for and let it go. So far, it’s kept cleaning but after reading this, I am going to do better about cleaning the dishes before I put them in.
I know this story all too well. Panicked when I dropped a sponge into clothes washer (bring extra clean snd washing out dispensers). Sponge Lost! Thought it would get caught in agitator and break machine so called repair person. And yes, I paid for a service call. When service came he asked if I pulled machine out and looked under it. Duh. There was sponge. Turns out washer drum just rides in washer frame with no mechanisms. Boy did I feel foolish.
Sometimes the simplest things are the ones we don’t think of. We live and learn.
We had a GE range that we bought on sale & it sat for about three months while we were remodeling the kitchen. So of course when an oven element & the clock went out we were just over the warranty period. The place we bought it from wouldn’t stand behind it because we were a few weeks over even though we hadn’t been using it. I called the company & they made them fix it. Great. However, every nine months almost to the day an oven element would go out. Bummer! That happened about three times and then we had an electrician friend order us generic elements and we never had another problem with the oven. Haven’t had a GE appliance since.
I didn’t read all the comments but popcorn is really good for plugging those spray holes. Make sure there is no whole popcorn kernels or part of a kernel in the bowls when put into the dishwasher. My husband is always the guilty one and he has to take the dishwasher apart.
I feel your pain! I have a couple of tips for you about these two appliances because I am the handywoman around these parts and I learned from my brother and youtube.
The dryer..yes it was on the wrong setting. But if it really stops heating, it will more than likely be the heating element, not a fuse. My brother replaced two different 25.00 heating elements on my old dryer. This was over 20 years and the dryer was old when it was given to me. So the 3rd time it went out, I bought a new dryer and had my brother help me pick it up from Lowes and bring it home and get rid of the old one.
The dishwasher…always scrape the food off and rinse the dishes prior to putting them in the dishwasher and then nothing will fill those holes. I don’t care if the dishwasher manufacturer tells you that you don’t have to, well, you have to. You also probably have a lot of crud down below in your dishwasher that you don’t realize is there. Next time your dishwasher is empty, take the time to remove the parts on the bottom of the inside of the dishwasher and clean the yuck out of there. This needs to be done every so often. Also, to clean your dishwasher to disinfect it, put a bowl on the bottom rack of your dishwasher filled with a cup of vinegar and run a cycle. You will be surprised how sparkly the inside of your dishwasher will be afterwards. This will not remove the yuck from food particles though so please get those out manually. Also, liquid dishwashing detergent for the dishwasher is better than pods or powder. The pods and powder gum up the outgoing water lines. Ask me how I know! LOL! There are many youtube videos that tell you how to clean your dishwasher and take apart those parts down below inside. Now, when the over quits heating on the inside, you have a heating element if it is electric that is screwed on by a couple of screws. You order a new one and replace that yourself very easily. I know nothing about gas ovens. Youtube can be a girls best friends at times. LOL!
Thankfully YouTube can help at home repairs for many of us. I’m sorry you had to spend money for a repairman to tell you the setting was wrong. I got a new washer/dryer set last year and the start button would work some of the time, but not work most of the time. Sears send a repairman and he told me my finger was too cold, blow on it and the button would work. After two more calls, and other parts, they finally replaced the sensor button and it’s worked fine. Seriously, blow on my finger for it to warm up and work!
I’m glad you got it fixed and were able to solve your own problem with the dishwasher.
I can’t thank you enough for this post! Our dishwasher was doing exactly the same as yours and sure enough we looked and several of the spray hole were clogged. We cleaned them out and it’s working amazingly well again!! If I hadn’t read your post, we would have been out the experience cost of a service visit so thank you, thank you.