Burned Out Heating Elements In Electric Dryers
Whenever an element fails in an electric dryer where is almost a secondary reason. I have always trained techs to not just replace the bad element but to find the reason the element failed and correct it, under good conditions a heating element should almost never fail in the 30 year life of an electric dryer.
Common reasons that elements fail are.
Poor airflow over the element which leads to overheating the element, from clogged and restricted vent systems.
Poor airflow inside the dryer itself from lint build-up inside ducting in the dryer.
Clogged blower wheel, [ stripped of the motor shaft on MT and stack Frigidaire dryers ] bad drum seals and even little things like the plastic cover missing for the drum light.
All of these items are made worse if the house voltage is a little on the hi side which there is little you can do anything about.
For many years GE offered 250 volt elements as replacements which slightly cut the heat output of the elements, we almost always used the 250 volt elements because when a dryer burns out its elements it is always more likely to happen again.
I have even noticed that dryers installed in homes very near the circuit breaker panel have more element failures compared to dryers installed a good distance from the entrance panel, this is because when you are talking about a 6000 watt load on 10ga wire there is a measurable amount of voltage drop and this extends the elements life.
On some dryers we use a smaller [ lower wattage ] element as a replacement if the customer has a very long vent run that nothing can easily be done about, often you can get the smaller element from the manufactures compact or stack version of a similar dryer. In the case of the MT that started this thread we would use the element from MTs TL stack which is about 1000 watts less powerful. When this is done with a long vent it usually does not increase the drying time at all, because with the bigger element the hi-limit would just be cycling away.
Lint is NOT all that flammable, we have all seen dryers loaded with lint that did not come close to catching fire. remember a dry load of clothing is at least as flammable as lint and this load is being tumbled with large amounts of air blowing through it closer to the heat source than lint in the exhaust pipe.
That said heavy lint buildups should avoided in side duct-work around the heat source and around the motor as it differently can cause several dryer problems.
Dryer lint does NOT make good fire starter unless as Allen suggested it is mixed with wax, LOL Gasoline would work even better.
Yesterday when I cleaned the lint filter on Smitty's Duet electric dryer [ and it was packed full as he usually goes at least three loads without cleaning it ] I took the big hand full of lint and put it in the wood-stove on a pile of red hot glowing embers and it took a while to burn and not all that hot or fast., crumpled paper works 10 times better if you want to start a fire.
