Maytag dryer will not start

Three things, in this order

Open and close the door firmly and listen for the latch — a door that looks shut and is not is the single commonest cause, and the striker gets knocked out of line by a laundry basket more often than anybody admits. Next, look for a lock indicator on the panel; Maytag shows a control lock and it disables the whole console. Third, unplug the machine for a minute or cycle the breaker fully off and on. Between them those three account for most of the dryers that will not start and none of them costs anything.

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 — A dark panel on an electric machine is usually the breaker, and it is the same double-pole breaker that produces the no-heat complaint. Half tripped gives no heat; fully tripped gives nothing at all.
• Gas — A gas dryer runs its drum and controls on an ordinary outlet, so a dead panel here is a standard household circuit question and easy to test with anything else that plugs in.
• Stacked laundry center — Worth confirming the washer half still works. If both halves are dead the answer is upstream of the appliance entirely.

Summer outages and PF

Afternoon storms take the power out briefly across most of this region several times a season, and a dryer that was running when it happened will hold PF and wait. The load is fine, the machine is fine, and nothing needs replacing — but people reasonably read a code on a display as damage. If the machine came back with PF showing after weather, restart it and use it.

What we clear before we quote

Door, lock, power. All three cost nothing and between them they explain most of these calls. Only when they are genuinely eliminated does the start switch and the control become worth talking about, and by then the conversation is a specific one rather than a guess.

Gas and electric part company here

An electric dryer runs everything from a 240-volt circuit, so a dead panel points at that breaker. A gas dryer runs its drum, its controls and its igniter from an ordinary household outlet, which means the same symptom sends us to a completely different place. It is worth knowing which one you have before you call, and if you are not sure, look behind the machine for a gas line — that settles it in a second.