My Girlfriends aunt complained about her dishwasher not Wirkung properly the other day, GF asked Ehen was the last time you cleaned the filter? Aunt was linke the WHAT? She has owned dishwashers for 30+ years and never heard oft that.

I'm also wondering "my what" upon hearing about furnace filters. As far as I can tell, my furnace has none. The "filter" is the size of the hole I chuck logs through. If log too big, it no go in.

Lint trap is easy. Exhaust ducts are the real danger. Not only can lint build up in those, but critters like birds and mice can make nests in them which further blocks the airflow. Even if you have the outside vent gated off, they can get stuck open enabling access for critters into the duct. Clean out your ducts at least once a year.

Technology Connections told me about the filter in the bottom of the dishwasher, how cleaning that out can do wonders for the performance. And he said if you hadn't ever cleaned that he felt sorry for me when I would open it up and find out what's inside. I was afraid to, so I sold the dishwasher and got a new one. Checked the filter, clean as a whistle, disaster avoided.

“Why does it take 3 hours to dry my clothes when it used to take 40 minutes?” Or “why aren’t my clothes drying at all?”

Thise seems like it’s one or two loads away from house fire territory.

My last house I lived in for like 5 years and never found the furnace filter... I'm convinced it just didn't have one and the system was raw-dogging the dusty air. I checked the air return vent where I am used to them being, and I checked the furnace in the garage closet. I am glad I moved out before that became a problem...

I rented a house once that the previous tenant had been living in for about a year with 3 little kids. She had mentioned to me that the dryer worked ok when she moved in but it wasn't working anymore. It still ran but it didn't really dry anything.

Not a big deal I thought. Went over to the dryer and took a look at it. First thing I did was pull the filter. It was clogged solid. She didn't even know it had a lint trap, never mind that you're supposed to clean it after every single load. Not only was the trap plugged, so was a bunch of the hose and ductwork. I spent several hours taking everything apart and cleaning it out, finally got it all back together, turned the dryer on, and it worked like a champ. Not a single problem for the 7 yrs I lived there.

She was a lady already in her thirties with 5 kids (3 lived with her)... you'd think she would have known how to use a dryer at that point. I'm just happy she never burnt the house down..

Now do the sacrificial anode in your water heater.

I saw one of these posts about ten years after buying a washer/dryer. So I checked mine. Absolutely nothing in it. What the hell are these people washing? Vacuum cleaner bags?

If this is what her lint trap looks like, I can't imagine what the dryer vent looks like.

Btw, get your dryer vents cleaned out! Annually is ideal, but absolutely no more than every 3 years. A blocked dryer vent is a huge fire hazard.

I am that person who gets after my friends if they don't clean out the lint from their dryer every load of laundry.

I may be a pain in the ass, but my friends aren't gonna burn alive if I can help it!

My sister in law refuses to clean the dryer filter, and also wants to be the one in charge of the laundry for her and her husband. Whenever I do a load of my clothes, I clean the filter and it's at least 10 layers of fire hazard

Houses have furnaces now?

Newer machines will stop drying if the sense the filter is too full. Helpful for if you forget when doing a bunch of laundry, but if the sensor goes faulty, it'll be throwing errors regardless of how clean the duct or filter is.