What happens if your dryer spins but not heating up to dry your clothes? If you find yourself struggling with spinning but not heating up dryer, this article will point out some of the reasons why your dryer is spinning but not heating up when powered on.
Well, while we expect your mind to go wild with your dryer not heating up but the reasons behind the spinning but not heating could be easily diagnosed without contacting any services provider in your local environment.
However, if your dryer is working and spinning as expected but it’s not heating up then you may need to worry about some technical issues ranging from the dryer’s thermal fuse to the heating element and the thermostat and temperature timer.
Since this will give you an idea of what could be the reason why your spinning dryer isn’t producing heat, it will also indirectly help you in your dryer mechanical maintenance.
With that being said, below are some of the reasons why your dryer is spinning but not heating up.
Why your Dryer Stopped Heating Up
The problem is still easy to catch up with if your dryer drum is spinning when connected to the power source and it shows that the dryer’s motor is in a good shape. However, the issue you are facing is that the dryer is spinning but it is not generating enough heat leaving you with wet clothes.
Therefore, we only need to restrict our fixes to the part of the dryer producing, managing, and distributing heat.
Faulty Thermal Fuse
If your thermal fuse is burnt your dryer will only be spinning without producing heat. Therefore, the first place to channel your energy when your dryer is spinning without heat is the thermal fuse. The thermal fuse act as a safety device in your dryer whenever there is a power surge or the device is experiencing overheating. This will protect your dryer from fire outbreaks.
However, whenever your thermal fuse or thermal cutoff tripped off to control a fire outbreak during overheating your dryer will still work normally as if nothing happens.
In the old dryer models, the dryer will still work perfectly, but if you are using a new dryer model, the dryer will be shut down completely until the fuse is replaced with another.
How to Change Dryer Thermal Fuse
Thermal fuse or thermal cutoff plays a major role in your dryer to prevent and control fire outbreaks if the dryer is getting too hot. In some new models, a fault thermal fuse can shut down the device completely. Therefore, we will walk you through the steps to take to change your dryer thermal fuse in this section.
- Turn off your dryer and remove it from the socket to avoid electric shock. If your dryer is a gas dryer, turn it off completely.
- Move the dryer away from the location and remove the dryer panel at the back using your screwdriver.
- Unscrew the thermal fuse once the panel that covers the back of the dryer is removed and fixed in a new thermal fuse.
- Couple the dryer and ensure that you screw it perfectly.
Once you are done coupling the dryer, turn on the dryer and check whether the dryer is heating up. If the dryer isn’t heating up after changing the thermal fuse then you need to check out for more reasons why your dryer is spinning but not heating.
Thermostat and Temperature Switch are Faulty
Your dryer’s thermostat and temperature switch are both responsible for equal distribution of temperature inside of your dryer. So, if either the dryer’s thermostat or temperature switch is faulty, your dryer will only be spinning without producing heat.
Therefore, in your attempt to fix your dryer not heating up, you need to check your thermostat and temperature switch’s state after confirming that the thermal fuse isn’t blown up and if it’s, it has been changed.
If either of the dryer thermostat and temperature switch isn’t working it can blow your thermal fuse as a result of too much heat generated. A dryer with a high limit thermostat can stop heating from flowing into the heating element if the dryer’s temperature is getting too hot. The essence of this is to keep your dryer from catching fire.
How to Check if Thermostat and Temperature Switch are Faulty
You can guess from the outside whether your thermostat and temperature switch is faulty. They both need to be tested. Therefore, we will project before you the steps to take to find out whether your dryer’s thermostat and temperature switch are contributing to the dryer not heating up.
Note: You need to get a multimeter. And if you have one, go get it and follow the steps below.
- Test both the thermostat and temperature switch with your multimeter.
- If the thermostat is faulty, the readings will be zero. For the temperature switch, you will see either zero or infinite.
However, if they are both working fine the readings should confirm that the multimeter readings change from zero to numbers or reading infinite.
It is easy to replace your dryer’s temperature switch unlike your thermostat because you have more than one thermostats wires. Therefore, if the problem is with your temperature switch you can easily fix it by replacing it but if it’s the thermostat, you may need to exercise expertise or call an expert to help you with the fix.
Faulty Heating Coil
What if your dryer heating coil is faulty? We have checked the thermal fuse and it’s working fine. We have also checked the thermostat and temperature switch, then, another reason why you may experience dyer isn’t heating up could be the heating coil if it’s faulty.
So, to confirm whether the heating coil is bad and needs a replacement, you need to follow the steps below.
- Turn off the dryer and remove it from its location to an open location.
- Unscrew the back cover and remove the panel covering the back of the dryer.
- The heating coils or heating elements are the couple of wires you see coiled together at the back below the thermal fuse.
- Remove the lead to access the heating coil terminal.
- Test the terminal with your multimeter.
- If the part of the heating coils is faulty you will see zero reading. Then, you need to change the heating coils.
Bad Timer
We don’t normally pay attention to this that if our dryer’s timer is bad it can actually affect the heating rate of the dryer. Bad time won’t initiate the dryer’s heating after spinning if it’s auto. Therefore, this needs to be checked and confirm that it’s working and it isn’t contributing to the dryer spinning but not heating.
- Remove your dryer’s knob
- Open the panel.
- Disconnect the lead from the dryer’s motor.
- Read the wires. If the multimeter reads infinity, then the dryer’s motor timer that initiates the heating element is at fault and needs to be changed.
With this, you should be able to diagnose and fix your dryer not heating up but spinning without a faulty thermal fuse.