Troubleshooting 101

I didn’t wire our house, and frankly the combinations on some of the circuits are strange – leave you wondering what the electrician was thinking. Why, for example, is the toaster in the kitchen is on the same circuit as the lights over the bathroom mirror at the far end of the house. That being said, they have never been a problem.

Yesterday, Honey was drying a load of clothes when we discovered that the dryer was running, but the dial had not moved for over an hour. A quick check showed that it wasn’t heating.

Earlier in the day, I had turned off the breaker to disconnect our pool pump – a long, sad story I don’t want to get into right now – I was proud that I remembered that after turning the breaker back on I had to re-start our Kuerig coffee maker.

Our dryer is something over 15 years old, so my first assumption was that the heater element had burned out. I grabbed some tools and began to trouble-shoot the problem. I found that:

• It can get amazingly nasty under a dryer that hasn’t been moved in years.
• Disconnected, the heater element registered 11.6 Ω, right on the money – no problem.
• Connected, reading to ground, I had 120 VAC throughout the heater circuit – no problem here either, so what the Hell is going on?

About that time, after about 45 minutes of work, Honey said “Do you have the right voltage?”

“Well, yes.” I said, slightly exasperated. “Can’t you hear the thing running?”

“Could you check it again?”

I stuck my meter leads into the wall socket.

• Left Hot to ground = 120 VAC – perfect.
• Left Hot to Right Hot = 0 …..

The pool pump and the dryer share a dual breaker that looks something like this

When I turned the breaker back on it didn’t quite flip up all the way.  The side that powered the coffee maker and the dryer motor made connection, but the side that allowed 240 VAC to power the heating element did not.

Basic trouble-shooting 101 – Always check the power source!