Condensation in Dryer

Have you ever come into your laundry room or laundromat and noticed the dryer doors were wet?

The dryer works fine but each time that it rains or snows you notice the water dripping off the inside of the glass.

If you see this hapening with regularity you might want to check your backdraft damper inside the dryer. The following pictures are using a Maytag MLG45 stack dryer, however the general idea is the same across all dryers. 

To solve the problem open up the back of the dryer.

Locate the exhaust duct inside the cabinet and the exhaust fan. Somewhere there should be an access panel in the exhaust duct or sometimes the backdraft damper will be on top of the exhaust fan housing.

Remove any panel that covers up the access hole.

Behind the panel should be a damper of some sort that stops air from gong back down into the dryer.

Notice the silver "ramp" in the picture above That is the damper in its closed position. Moist air from the top dryer can't get into the bottom dryer and moisture from the bottom dryer can't go back into the top.

This is the same damper when we first took off the access cover.

Notice the lint.

The lint was not allowing the damper to close enough and when the dryer was off all of the damp air from a rain storm would go back into the lower pocket. If the top pocket was running some of the hot air would go into the cold lower dryer and that caused the condensation.

On a related note, if you notice the paint inside the lint drawer area or on the lint drawer itself starting to peal off, odds are you have a problem of moisture getting back into your dryer.

Make sure you clean all of the nooks and crannies on the damper so that it swings freely and easily.

Your damper should look like this when you're done.

Depending on the way your venting is set up you can also add an external damper in the duct work coming out from the dryer. Sometimes it is easier to deal with that location than to go into the dryer itself all the time. 

Thanks to owner S from Milwaukee County for letting me use his dryer for these pictures!

Ev

A Heck of A Nice Guy