A dryer that needs two or three cycles to finish one load is the complaint we hear most, and the machine is frequently innocent. Drying works by moving heated air through the clothes and carrying the moisture outside. Break the airflow and the dryer runs hot, damp air in circles — heating fine, drying nothing.
Which is why we measure airflow before we quote anything. Replacing a heating element on a dryer with a blocked vent produces an expensive repair and an unchanged problem, and the customer reasonably concludes the technician didn't know what they were doing.
Lint is the usual offender, and it doesn't stop at the lint screen. It packs into the transition hose behind the machine, builds up along the rigid duct inside the wall, and collects at the exterior vent hood where a flap that no longer opens fully finishes the job. Long duct runs with multiple elbows — common in two-storey homes where the laundry is upstairs — trap far more lint than a short straight run out an exterior wall.
This is a safety issue, not just an efficiency one. Restricted dryer vents cause thousands of house fires a year. Trapped lint is highly combustible, and a dryer that can't exhaust heat properly will drive its own internal temperature up until a safety component fails — or something worse happens. If the outside of your dryer is hot to the touch, the laundry room gets humid during a cycle, or clothes come out hot but still damp, treat it as urgent.
There's a quick test worth doing. Disconnect the vent hose from the back of the dryer and run it on high for a few minutes. If it suddenly dries a load properly while venting into the room, the vent line is your problem, not the machine. Only do this briefly and only as a test — never run a gas dryer unvented, since it exhausts combustion products, and never leave any dryer venting into the house.
When the dryer genuinely is the problem, no heat at all points somewhere different from slow drying. On an electric dryer it's usually a burned-out heating element, a blown thermal fuse, or a failed high-limit thermostat — and thermal fuses almost always blow because of a blocked vent, so replacing one without clearing the vent guarantees a repeat visit. On a gas dryer, no heat is typically the igniter, the flame sensor, or a gas valve coil.
Squealing or grinding is a separate matter entirely — worn drum rollers, a failing idler pulley, or a blower wheel obstructed by something that escaped a pocket. It's worth fixing promptly, because a seized roller can eventually damage the drum itself.
Want the vent checked properly and the heat measured rather than guessed at? Call RM Appliances Repair at (469) 350-1392 for a free estimate anywhere from Katy to The Woodlands.