Dryer Sheets

Webmaster: "If you use dryer sheets, you better read this. We can vouch that it's true."

I had been having a wonderful morning until the heating unit went out on my dryer. I thought, "Why does everything seem to fall apart when you're feeling good?"

You know what I'm talking about? So I called the appliance repair shop. The next day I met their technician at my door and brought him down to the dryer. He opened the door and pulled out the lint filter. Of course it was clean, so I was puzzled why it went to the lint filter first. I said to him, "Doesn't everyone clean the lint from the filter after every load of clothes?"

He said that's not why he was doing this, and wanted to show me something very important that I probably didn't know about.. He took the filter over to the sink and started to run hot water over it's surface, holding it horizontal. As you probably know, the dryer's lint filter is made of a mesh material that almost all of us have seen and cleaned with our hands.

He started to pour hot water on the meshed screen, but the hot water wouldn't go through the mesh and puddled on top of it. I thought, well maybe the mesh was so tightly interwoven that water would normal form on top of it, knowing water had a natural surface tension that could hold it together.

The technician said that using dryer sheets can cause a film to form over the filter's mesh and that's what probably what burned out my dryer's heating unit. "You can't see the film," he said, as the hot water just sat there on the top of the mesh. "You need to be aware that when this film builds up on the dryer's filter it can cause overheating and possibly contribute to a dryer fir, instead of simply burning out the dryer's heating element."

He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time, while also lowering your electric or gas bill, is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water using an old toothbrush. I told me to do this at least once every six months or sooner.

I think, however, I'll reduce that time to three months to see if the build up is faster when using my specific dryer sheet product.

He said that cleaning the filter also extends the life of the dryer at least twice as long. I hadn't a clue that using dryer sheets would block the air from passing through the dryer's filter screen, so I thought, pardon the pun, I'd pass this little safety tip onto you.

If you use dryer sheets, try the hot water test for yourself. While it could save you money, it might just save your life.

Compliments to Bill from upper state New York.