The dryer hums but the drum will not turn

You press start, the light comes on, something inside makes a low steady hum, and the drum just sits there. Ten minutes later you open the door and the load is exactly as wet as when you put it in.

That is a different animal to a dryer that runs warm and takes two cycles to finish, which is airflow and which we went through in dryer not heating. A drum that will not move is mechanical. It sounds worse than it is. Most of the time the part that has let go costs less than the assessment.

Spin it by hand before anything else

Switch it off at the wall first. Then open the door and turn the drum with your hand, a full revolution or two.

If it spins freely and almost silently, the way a bike wheel does when you lift it off the ground, the belt has gone. A dryer belt is a thin flat rubber band that wraps right around the outside of the drum and down to a small pulley on the motor shaft. They stretch, then they glaze, then they fray at one edge, then they snap, usually halfway through a load of towels. The motor keeps running happily on its own, which is the hum you can hear, and there is nothing left joining it to the drum.

If the drum will barely move, or it grinds, or it feels like it is dragging on something, the belt is probably fine and you have a different problem.

If it moves but with a heavy, gritty resistance and a rumble, the rear bearing or the felt seal has worn through. That one is a real repair, not a five minute job, and on an older machine it is worth asking whether it is worth doing at all.

Things that get in there

The gap between the spinning drum and the fixed front panel is small, but it is not sealed tight, and small hard things find it. Bra underwires are the classic. So are hair clips, coins out of a pocket, the plastic tag off a bread bag, and once, memorably, a teaspoon.

They slide through, sit against the outside of the drum, and jam it against the cabinet. You get the hum and no movement, exactly the same symptom as a snapped belt, except the drum will not turn by hand either.

Sometimes you can see the culprit through the door with a torch, wedged at the front lip, and get it out with a pair of long-nose pliers. If you can, good. If you cannot see it, the front panel has to come off, and that is where you stop, because the panel is holding the drum up.

When it has just had enough

Dryers have a thermal overload in the motor. If the machine has been run back to back on a hot day, or the lint filter and duct are choked so it has been cooking itself, the overload trips and the motor will not restart until it cools. You will get a hum, or a click and nothing.

Leave it off for half an hour and try again. If it starts, do not congratulate yourself and carry on. It tripped for a reason, and the reason is nearly always restricted airflow. Clean the filter, wash it under the tap, and check the duct is not crushed behind the machine.

The other electrical cause of a hum with no spin is the motor start capacitor. A capacitor gives the motor the shove it needs to get going, and when it weakens the motor sits there buzzing under load and doing nothing. It is a common enough failure and a cheap part.

It is also the one component in a dryer I would tell anyone to leave alone. A capacitor holds a charge after the machine is unplugged, sometimes for a long while, and it will bite. Do not open the cabinet to have a look.

The coastal bit

We do a lot of wall-mounted dryers around here, up in the northern suburbs especially, where the laundry is a cupboard or a corner of the garage and the floor space is not there to spare.

Two things go wrong with mounted units near the water. The brackets rust, and a bracket that has lost a bit of itself lets the machine sit slightly out of square, which is enough for the drum to rub on the cabinet. And a garage laundry between Thirroul and Helensburgh in July is a damp, salty room, which does the bearings no favours at all.

If your dryer is on a wall, put a hand on each bottom corner every year or so and give it a wiggle. If there is any movement in the mount, sort that before it wears something more expensive.

Worth fixing or not

A belt, an idler pulley or a capacitor on a machine that is otherwise sound is an easy yes. Those parts are inexpensive, they go on quickly, and the machine gets years out of it.

A drum bearing on a fifteen year old vented dryer is a harder conversation, and I will usually say so on the spot. Running costs have moved a long way since those were built, and the energy rating comparisons for heat pump models against old vented ones are not close. If a big repair is on the table, the running cost belongs in the sum.

One thing worth checking before you spend anything: if the machine is only a few years old, a failure like this is not automatically yours to wear. Consumer guarantees run past the manufacturer's warranty, and a dryer that dies at three is not what a reasonable person expects. Keep the receipt handy before you ring anyone.

Where the line sits

Yours to do: switch it off at the wall, spin the drum, clean the filter and the duct, fish out anything you can actually see and reach through the door opening, give a tripped motor half an hour to cool, and stop overloading it.

Ours: anything behind the front panel or the back cover. That includes the belt, the idler pulley, the drum bearing, the capacitor and the motor. And if the dryer is hardwired rather than plugged in, or the circuit trips when you turn it on, that is fixed wiring and it belongs to a licensed electrician, not to us and not to a handy mate.

If it is the washing machine rather than the dryer leaving you with wet clothes, the symptoms overlap and we sort that out in washing machine not draining or spinning.

We repair vented, condenser and heat pump dryers on every major brand from Helensburgh through Wollongong and down past Kiama to Nowra, and we will look at the washing machine on the same visit if it is playing up too. The technician diagnoses the fault and quotes before starting. The assessment fee is $125 across the Illawarra and $145 further out on the South Coast. Book a repair or call 02 4229 3777, and tell us whether the drum turns by hand, because it saves us both time.