Maytag dryer takes two or three cycles

Time it, then look outside

Run one normal load on a timed setting rather than an automatic one and note how long it genuinely takes. Then go outside and watch the hood while it runs. The flap should be pushed firmly open with warm air you can feel from a foot away. If it is barely moving, you have your answer and it is the duct. Pull the lint screen and look into the slot underneath it with a light — that slot is not the screen, it almost never gets cleaned, and on a machine that is eight years old it is often packed.

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 — Heat is plentiful and slow drying is nearly always the duct. An electric machine will keep making heat happily while the moisture sits in the drum with nowhere to go.
• Gas — Same story, with the extra note that a gas machine cycling its burner on and off constantly through a load is describing a restriction rather than a burner problem.
• Stacked laundry center — The tightest ducting in the house and the hardest to reach. If a stacked unit has slowed down, the duct is the first and usually the last thing to look at.

The cost of putting it off

A dryer running two cycles instead of one is drawing roughly twice the energy for the same laundry, every load, every week. That is the argument for treating slow drying as a repair rather than a habit — the duct cleaning generally pays for itself inside a year, and it also removes the fire risk that comes with a duct full of lint. Neither of those is a sales line; they are the two reasons this particular complaint should not wait.

Sensor against airflow

There is one clean test that separates the two. Run the same load on a timed cycle. If it dries properly in a timed hour but stops damp on automatic, the machine can dry and cannot tell when it has — that is the sensor. If it is still damp after a timed hour, the machine cannot dry, and that is air.