Maytag dryer runs but does not heat

If you are looking up maytag dryer not heating but runs, this is the page: dryer runs but does not heat, what it usually turns out to be, and the check worth doing before anybody is called out in Miami.

Before you assume it is the element

Put a hand flat against the vent hood outside while the dryer runs. Weak air out there, or a flap that barely lifts, means the machine is cutting its own heat to protect itself and the repair is a duct rather than a part. Then look at the breaker: switch it fully off, wait, and switch it back on rather than just pushing it. A half-tripped double breaker often looks perfectly seated. If it is a gas machine, listen through the first two minutes of a cycle with the room quiet — the ignition sequence is audible and it tells you which half of the gas train to look at.

What it usually means, by the kind of machine

One complaint, several machines. This maker still sells a top-load washer with an agitator alongside one without, a front-loader, and a stacked pair, and it sells the same oven as a range and as a wall unit in gas and in electric. The behavior you can describe is identical on all of them; the first hour of the repair is not. A front-load washer has a drain filter the owner can open and a top-loader has nothing to reach from the front, and that single difference decides how the same afternoon goes.

• Electric — These run on a double-pole breaker, and half of it can trip while the other half stays in. The drum spins on one leg and the element needs both, so the machine looks alive and produces nothing. Resetting the breaker fully off and back on is the first thing to try.
• Gas — Stand beside it during the first two minutes. You should hear the igniter come on, glow, and the valve open with a soft thump. A cycle where the igniter glows and nothing follows is a valve question; one where the igniter never glows is upstream of it.
• Stacked laundry center — Same machine, and the same two answers — but the vent behind a stacked unit is nearly always the tightest run in the house, which raises the odds that heat is not the problem at all.

Why the vent comes first every time

A dryer measures its own exhaust temperature and cuts the heat when it climbs too high. A restricted duct raises that temperature without anything being wrong with the heat source at all, so the machine ends up tumbling cold with a perfectly good element. Replacing the element on that machine produces a dryer that works for a fortnight. It is why the duct gets checked before the part gets quoted, and why we ask about the run to the outside on the phone.

Ducting in this climate

Long horizontal runs, a hood at the far side of a wall, and humidity that keeps lint damp enough to stick — laundry ducts here load up faster than the manuals assume. A dryer that has slowly been taking longer for a year is describing its duct, not its heater, and the difference in running cost over that year is not small.