Whirlpool dryer will not start

The three things that are not a repair

Push the door closed until you hear it latch and try again — a door that looks shut and is not latched is what ERR reports. Look for a padlock symbol or a lit Control Lock on the panel; Whirlpool's Loc means the control lock is on and the dryer will not accept a cycle until it is cleared, usually by holding the marked button for three seconds. And if the display shows PF, the last cycle was interrupted by a power failure, which in this part of the world happens most afternoons in a wet season. Press Start again and it should carry on.

What it usually means, by the kind of machine

Whirlpool sells one appliance in several forms — a top-loader with an agitator and one without, a front-loader, a stacked pair, a laundry tower and an all-in-one; a vented dryer, a ventless one and a heat pump — and the same behavior points at different things on each of them. A top-load washer has no drain pump filter to open and a front-loader does, which is the whole first hour of the same complaint on two machines.

• Electric — Nothing at all on the panel points at the outlet or the breaker rather than the dryer. A dead panel and a live outlet is a different job from a lit panel that will not start.
• Gas — The control and the motor run on ordinary household power, so a gas dryer that will not start is an electrical question first and a gas question second.
• Stacked laundry center — One control governs both halves on many of these, so a washer problem can leave the dryer half apparently dead. Say which half is affected when you book.

The maker's own order, and ours

Whirlpool's dryer table is unusually plain about what a refusal to start means. ERR is the door. Loc is the lock. PF is the power. Those three account for most of the calls that come in as a dead dryer, and none of them is a repair. We ask about all three on the phone before booking anything, because sending somebody to press a button that the owner could press is not a service, and because the call that is genuinely a latch or a motor deserves the slot.

Summer storms and the PF code

Between June and October the supply here flickers most weeks somewhere in the three counties, and appliances notice long before people do. A dryer interrupted mid-cycle stores a power failure report and waits. Most machines restart with one press. What is worth watching for is the machine that has been through several of those and then starts behaving differently — controls that survive the outage and stop weeks later are a pattern we see, and it is worth mentioning if the timing fits.