Another ‘Home Improvement’ Moment: Replacing Our Dryer’s Thermal Fuse

Thanks to the incredible amount of How-To videos that have been posted on YouTube, we were able to fix our clothes dryer -- again -- for under $20 bucks.

Last year, our dryer mysteriously stopped heating up. Everything else worked fine, so after watching a few YouTube videos to see what might be causing the problem, my wife and I were able to replace the gas valve solenoid coils in our dryer by ourselves. Cost of that repair? Two trips (one to the appliance store for the part and one to the hardware store for a ratchet set we ended up not using) and about $25 dollars total.

This time, when our dryer exhibited similar symptoms, my wife found a video showing that we might need a new thermal fuse. Again, after watching the video, we were able to check and see that, yes, our fuse was bad. After another quick trip to the appliance store to purchase a new fuse -- for about $17 -- I replaced it this morning and the dryer is working fine again.

I'm guessing that both these repairs, while not that complex, would probably have cost us well over $100 each time had we called a repair guy. But without the Internet, I'd have had NO idea what might have been wrong. So, here's to you, YouTube. Thanks to you, we're both a regular Tim 'The Tool Man' Taylor these days!  (And here's the video that showed us how to get at and replace that pesky thermal fuse...)