My electric clothes dryer recently stopped providing any heat. Today a service-technician arrived and diagnosed two problems: that the heating-coil was broken (3 months after warranty) and that the electrical supply was only 110V instead of 240V and said I should replace the breaker. He didn't speak English very well and I didn't press him for details, but he did say that both issues would need to be corrected in order for the dryer to work again. He replaced the heating element in the dryer but did not say what was wrong with it, this leaves me with just the breaker:
My dryer is connected using a NEMA 14-30 connection and my breaker-box has a two-pole 30-amp circuit breaker, currently the reset switch is in the On position and indeed, my dryer produces no heat – only moving cold air around.
My understanding of electrical systems is limited, but I understand the dryer's 240V (is it 230, 240 or 250?) has two 120V AC supplies that are 180deg phase-separated, giving a total potential of 240V.
The technician did not go into detail about the electrical problems, I don't know if he meant that both phase supplies were both giving only 65V (unlikely, but possible?), or if one phase was not delivering any power at all, and if so, which connector wasn't delivering power.
Surely the circuit-breaker would indicate if there was a fault and perhaps enter some kind of failure-state or at least trip.
I'm about to head out to my hardware store to buy a replacement breaker and see if replacing it fixes it, but this doesn't seem right.
I'd hate to call out an electrician for this – I got a $350 quotation just to replace the breaker, hence why I'm doing it by myself.
Best Answer
The voltage measurement needs to be from 1 hot leg to the other hot leg the voltage should be ~240 (the flat connections). To identify the bad leg measure hot to ground or neutral each hot should have 120v. Since your coil failed I would suspect the wiring at the receptacle or breaker. With the power off pull the receptacle and look at the connections. My guess there was a not so good connection when the coil failed it may have ended up burning the wire off. I see this regularly in receptacles not very often in the breaker box. It could be the breaker but that is rare.