A dryer has one job and two ways to fail at it: the heat stops, or the air stops. On this map the air stops far more often, so the run-through on every dryer begins at the vent and ends at the element — never the other way round.
$95 run-through · dryer repair labor from $207 · part on its own line · how the money works
The technician pulls the lint housing, looks at what has packed behind it, and puts a pressure gauge on the exhaust to get a number for what the duct is costing. Then the vent is walked to wherever it lets out — a roof cap on a two-story in Stiles Point, a hood under a raised beach house, a wall louver in a West Ashley carport — and the flap and the run are checked from both ends. Only when the air is proven does the heating side get metered: element or burner, the cycling thermostat, the high-limit, the thermal fuse. What failed goes on the card with the reading that convicted it.
James Island dryers vent every way a builder ever tried. The sixties and seventies ranches off Camp Road and Fort Johnson push through a short wall run into a hood that has had fifty years to rust shut. The two-story houses in Stiles Point and the Country Club streets run up through the attic to a roof cap, and forty feet of pipe with a sag in the middle collects lint where nobody sees it. The raised houses on Folly and Sol Legare send the duct down through the enclosure to a hood a foot above the sand. Each of those gets a different reading, and the card names the duct, not the dryer, when the duct is what failed.
What the crew can reach — the run from the dryer side and from the hood side, the elbow behind the machine, the flap — gets cleared, re-fastened and measured again on the same visit. What it cannot reach, a buried attic section or a chase shared down a townhome row, gets written up honestly for a duct company, with the pressure numbers a duct company will want. A dryer that failed because of its duct does not get a new element it did not need.
The heat side is plain work once the air is right. Drum hardware — rollers, idler, glides, belt — goes in as a set, because replacing the one that squeals guarantees a second visit for the next one. Gas dryers along the Folly Road corridor and in the newer Johns Island streets get igniter, coils and flame sensor checked in sequence; heat-pump and condensing dryers in the downtown condos get a run-through built around their filters, coil and condensate pump instead.
The likely, inexpensive cause is measured before the unlikely, expensive one is named.
| What you notice | What gets read first |
|---|---|
| Damp after a full cycle | Exhaust gauge, hood flap, lint housing |
| Hot, then cool, then hot | Duct pressure, cycling thermostat, element under load |
| Thump or shriek with the drum | Rollers, idler, glides, belt — as a set |
| Thermal fuse again | Duct pressure first, then high-limit |
| Scorched smell on high | Lint in the blower housing, duct, heater box |
| Gas model glows, no flame | Igniter current, gas coils, flame sensor |
Not until the vent has a number on it. A healthy element behind a choked duct dries exactly like a dead one, and the pressure reading tells the difference in two minutes. Half the slow-dryer cards on this island list duct work and no parts.
The stretches a brush reaches from either end, yes — cleared, re-fastened and measured again before the technician leaves. A buried section that needs a duct crew gets written up with the numbers rather than guessed at.
If the house is on propane and the dryer left the store set for natural gas, that is the conversion talking. Orifice, pressure and flame get changed over and checked; if the tank is low, that is a line on the card too.
Wall hoods, attic runs, beach enclosures, review-board routes — the duct changes by area and the card names it.
Wall hoods in the ranches, attic runs on the two-story streets.
Porch-addition vents and hoods full of oak debris.
Review-board routes, century wiring, tenant machines.
Attic runs on the builder streets; propane conversions on River Road.
Tell the office what it is doing; the run-through does the rest.
$95 run-through, any machine, any street on the map · labor from-rates published · parts on their own line