Integrated washer/dryer units are becoming more widespread and by sheer coincidence we found ourselves living with one. The good news is this computer controlled cloths washing genius works as advertised, it both washed and dries clothes.

Or it's supposed to. It washes very well, but one year we had opportunity to use 3 different ones and each washed well but would not dry, but instead flashed the infamous "E3A" error and gave up.

Sometime in the fall, at the end of the period when clothes are better dried outdoors anyway, we began hacking the machine. There's a video on how to do it by what appears to be a factory or dealer rep doing maintenance explaining it very slow and carefully. It's a half hour video that explains it's either because a piece is dirty, if not check these two voltages. Our voltages are fine, we cleaner it per the instructions, no dice.

Then we decided to get mean. The part you have to clean is a white plastic chamber that wraps around the outside of the drum. One end goes into the middle of the drum while the other and connects at the top to the metal chamber that houses the heating element, thermostat and safety switches, the pop-reset switched on the operating thermostat and the safety thermostat.

Once you've taken the top panel off and undone a half dozen or so screws to remove the fan assembly you can clean out the condensor that really is the only part that needs attention.

The first time didn't work. But, you really can't see much down there once past the widest part of the drum halfway down. You sort of can with a flashlight so with that and a coat hanger I fished out who kows how many years worth of black greasy fibrous goo, enough to make a mediums sized rat. Just because it was evil I dumped some vim in there to degrease it then poured about 10 gallons of hot water into the condenser on top thus flooding the floor. The "lint trap" that takes excess water and lint from the condenser is so low you can't really get much under it other than a towel. There's a little tray it's supposed to drain into, that is actually the flip down cover fore this, very clever design but it fills it 5x over and all I really want is to be able to put at least a frying pan under it to catch that quart of water.

And this ends up being its downfall. Once the condenser had been properly cleaned it dried! for the first time in who knows how many years.

And it dried again! Twice! It dried twice! Then it got E3A again. You heartless swine.

The safety switches had popped this time, and omg was that metal bit at the top hot. By hot I mean you touch and you have a blister instantaneously hot, that's how hot. Air isn't moving. Maybe it's still jammed up somewhere where I can't see. It will not dry.

Some days later, knowing the dryer doesn't work I tied it anyway and it dried. I tried it again and it would not, and gave the E3A error.

Tonight I figured out why. It can't be clogged because either it works or it doesn't, that's not how clogs work.

I cleaned the lint trap, that's the only difference between before it worked once and after. So, tonight when it threw the E3A error I... popped the safety reset switches, I'd forgotten to do that last time, then tan it again and it got another E3A error, this time too hot for real.

Something in that condensor separates water form the hot air coming from the dryer drum. It may be a P trap of sorts because when you dump water into it the first pint doesn't go anywhere but second causes it all to come out.

So what if this get too full and it can't blow enough ar through a full vessel of water. This lack of airflow would indeed cause the heating element to get far far too hot.

And this seems to work. Throw an E3A error now and if you dump the lint trap and reset the buttons it will dry.

But do I really have to clean this stupid "coin trap" as they call it every time and should I really be getting 500-750ml of water out of here each time?