11 Reasons Why Your clothes Are Taking To Long To Dry
Most laundry doers aren’t aware that their dryer is taking too long to dry their clothes because their dryers have always taken a long time. Consequently, the drying times feel normal.
However, unnecessarily long drying times are typical for almost all dryers, even expensive high-efficiency ones.
But if you’ve noticed that your dryer is taking longer and longer to dry your clothes, you’re likely wondering why it is taking so long.
So, let’s dive into why that happens.
Why Are My Clothes Not Drying?
To understand why your clothes are not drying, first, you should understand how your dryer dries clothes.
Most people think that dryers work by heating the clothes, which then dries them out.
This conclusion is accurate, but it needs to explain the process. The water in your clothes doesn’t just magically disappear when your clothes become hot.
How Your Dryer Dries
The following is a step-by-step process of how your dryer dries your clothes:
- Your dryer increases the moisture the air in the dryer can contain by heating it. Hot air holds a lot more water than cold air.
- The dryer tumbles your wet clothes to mix them with the dry air.
- The water in your clothes evaporates into the dry air, making it humid.
- The dryer blows the humid air out of the vent.
- The dryer blows more hot, dry air into the dryer.
- This process continues until your clothes are dry.
Additional chart data can be found at the Engineering Toolbox.
So, if your clothes hold one gallon of water, one gallon of water must first evaporate into the air.
After that, one-gallon equivalent of humid air must blown down the vent.
Anything that slows down this evaporation and blowing process will make your clothes take longer to dry.
10-Second Answer To Why Your Clothes Are Not Drying
So, now that you understand how your dryer works, here’s the short answer to why your clothes are not drying:
Your dryer cannot efficiently evaporate the water in your clothes and blow that evaporated water (humid air) out of the dryer vent.
As a result, your clothes take too long to dry or are simply not drying at all.
There are many reasons why this can happen.
Fortunately, most of the time, it’s an easy fix!
11 Reasons Your Clothes Take To Long To Dry
1. Poor vent design restricts airflow.
Nearly every home in the USA suffers from this problem, but most homeowners are unaware.
If you have a compressed vent, your vent doesn’t have a smooth metal surface, is too small in diameter, has too many turns, or all of the above; it will significantly restrict the airflow out of your dryer.
As a result, your clothes will take longer to dry than they would if your vent was well-designed.
Solution:
Diagnose and fix problems with your vent. Even if you only improve a few issues, your dryer will operate more efficiently.
2. Lint build-up in the dryer vent connection pipe suffocates airflow.
Lint can build up on the walls of your dryer vent at several locations. But, the most common spot for lint to build up is the connection pipe between the dryer and the wall, especially if you’re not doing regular dryer vent cleaning.
Once lint starts to gather on the walls of the connection pipe, it will build up until it eventually blocks the vent.
As the lint slowly suffocates the airflow through the pipe, your clothes will take longer and longer to dry.
This process can happen in a matter of months. Or it can take many years.
Solution:
Clean your dryer vent connection pipe.
3. The exterior vent cover is blocked with lint.
It might seem strange, but if the lint blocks the vent cover on your exterior wall or roof, your clothes will take too long to dry.
Fortunately, a blocked cover at the end of the vent duct is less critical regarding issues like fire hazards.
But it doesn’t matter where the dryer vent is blocked when it comes to how long it takes to dry your clothes.
Whether it’s filled with lint right behind the dryer or where the air exits your house, a blocked vent will cause your clothes to take a lot longer to dry.
Solution:
Clean the exterior dryer vent cover.
4. Lint build-up in the blower motor fan is reducing airflow.
After the air in your dryer passes through the lint trap, it enters the blower motor. Which, in turn, blows the air down the vent.
Sometimes, the fan in your blower motor will start to clog up with lint. When this happens, the blower motor will blow less air, causing your clothes to take longer to dry.
Solution:
Clean your blower motor fan assembly.
5. The lint trap needs to be cleaned.
It would be best if you cleaned the lint trap on your dryer after every load of laundry.
When you clean the lint trap after every load, it prevents lint build-up in the dryer vent.
When lint gathers on the walls of the vent pipe, your dryer cannot blow the humid air out through the vent. Which in turn makes your clothes take longer to dry.
Solution:
Clean your lint trap after every load of laundry.
6. Your dryer doesn’t get hot enough.
The hotter the air is, the more water it holds. So, the hotter the air in your dryer, the faster it will dry your clothes.
As you can see in the diagram above, 140° Fahrenheit air holds 253% more water than air at 104°!
Most dryers operate between 125-135°F.
So, if your dryer has been running for a while, and the air temp is below 120°, your dryer isn’t getting hot enough.
Solution:
Remove the dryer vent, start the dryer, let it run for ten minutes, and then test the temperature of the air coming out of the event. It should be higher than 125°F.
7. Overloading your dryer can be why your clothes are not drying
Most people buy their washers and dryers in pairs. However, sometimes they’re purchased separately.
If your clothes are not drying, you may need to reduce the size of your washer loads. Because if the washer design handles larger laundry loads than the dryer, it will overwhelm the dryer.
Consequently, you will feel like your clothes are not drying.
Solution:
Reduce the size of your laundry loads.
8. Eco mode increases dry times.
Having your dryer set on eco mode will make your dry times longer.
Generating heat consumes a lot of energy. So, eco mode reduces the heat to consume less power. Which in turn lowers your utility bills and the environmental impact.
However, there is a trade-off with using eco mode. Less heat means longer drying times.
Solution:
Don’t use eco mode if you’re in a rush. But eco mode is better for your dryer, finances, and the environment. So use eco mode as much as possible.
9. Your washer is leaving too much water in your clothes.
If your washer is not functioning correctly, it will leave excessive water in your clothes.
Your dryer, in turn, will take much longer to dry your clothes.
If your clothes come out of your washer too wet, it’s for one of the following reasons:
- You are overloading your washer.
- Your washer does not spin fast enough.
- Your washer does not spin long enough.
- You have a plugged washer drain filter.
Most of the time, if your clothes are too wet, the filter on your drain is plugged.
Fortunately, cleaning the filter takes a couple of minutes. You can follow the steps to clean the washer filter shown in this article.
Solution:
Ensure you aren’t overloading the washer and clean the drain filter.
Call an appliance repair service if you size your washer loads correctly, the filter is clean, and your clothes are too wet. That means something is wrong with your dryer spin cycle.
10. Your laundry room needs to be bigger or less airtight.
You might be thinking, “How on earth does the size of my laundry room affect the time it takes my clothes to dry?”
But it’s true. Here’s why.
Your dryer sucks air from your laundry room into the dryer barrel. After that, it blows the air down the vent at 250 cubic feet per minute if it is well-designed.
For every cubic foot of air exiting the laundry room, you need one cubic foot of air coming into the laundry room.
If the laundry room is too airtight, you will have a different amount of air coming into the room than you do going out.
The airflow imbalance creates a negative pressure vacuum in the laundry room. The negative pressure reduces the air the dryer can blow down the vent, causing your clothes to take longer to dry!
Solution:
Leave your laundry room door open when the dryer is on.
11. You run an exhaust fan in the laundry room while drying clothes.
An exhaust fan in your laundry room creates the same type of conditions of a laundry that’s too airtight. However its much less severe.
For example, suppose your exhaust fan blows 60 cubic feet per minute, and your dryer blows 250 cubic feet per minute. In that case, your exhaust fan will reduce the capacity of your dryer if there is not enough air flowing into the room.
250 CFM – 60 CFM = 190 CFM
In theory, your dryer will blow 190 cubic feet per minute because it competes for air with your exhaust fan.
The reduced airflow will increase your drying time by 24% – in theory.
However, your laundry room is not a laboratory with a controlled environment. Furthermore, your dryer will reduce the cubic feet per minute of the exhaust fan, not just your exhaust fan reducing the CFM of the dryer.
So, running an exhaust fan while your dryer is on will cause your clothes to take 5-10% longer to dry if your laundry room is too airtight.
Solution:
Turn off the exhaust fan while your dryer is running. Or, leave the laundry room door open. If the door is open, plenty of air will be available for the dryer and the exhaust fan.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, many causes could be why your clothes take too long to dry. Fortunately, nearly all of them are easy to identify and fix. Additionally, fixing these problems not only makes your clothes dry faster, but they’ll save you money on your utility bills and extend the life of your dryer.
