Public Service Announcement --Clean your dryer vent!

Lived here for 18 years.  On my second dryer (and washer).  Never cleaned the duct.

Lost the heating coil on the dryer for the second time in about two years.  That's a clue.  That and the fact that a big load of towels seemed to take forever to dry.  Got a replacement element and a duct cleaning kit ASAP from Beezo. 

With a cordless drill, the kit, and a shop vac I pulled about 10 pounds of soaking wet dryer lint out of my duct, which runs about 18 feet in the crawlspace to an exterior wall cap.   I don't think the vent was completely obscured, but it was surely less than 50% open.

Heck, I'll probably save enough on the electric bill in one month to pay for the 30-dollar kit.  Time well spent.

Whats Beezo? I have one for the lint trap that goes on the vacuum cleaner.

When I installed my dryer, I put it against an outside wall and I have about 6" of duct.  I sleep so much better at night.  Cleaning it is as simple as lifting the flap outside and reaching my hand in.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

When I installed my dryer, I put it against an outside wall and I have about 6" of duct.  I sleep so much better at night.  Cleaning it is as simple as lifting the flap outside and reaching my hand in.

+1, my then to be wife thought I was crazy to put the W/D upstairs in a small room.  But it was both useless and right on the wall.  

I still keep an eye on the system, though.

trigun7469 said:

Whats Beezo?

Oh, sorry.  Just a derogatory term I use for the richest man in the world.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

When I installed my dryer, I put it against an outside wall and I have about 6" of duct.  I sleep so much better at night.  Cleaning it is as simple as lifting the flap outside and reaching my hand in.

That is how it is at my house. So much easier to clean.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

The dick that flies penis shaped rockets into space. 

My dryer has a lint filter that's easily accessed from the top.  I pull it out and clean it before each load, and I don't get any buildup in the vent hose.  Don't all dryers have something similar?

I'm a fireman and I see dirty dryer vents as more than a nuisance and energy waste. Dirty dryer vents cause north of 15k house fires per year.

Clean those things and don't burn your home down.

stuart in mn said:

My dryer has a lint filter that's easily accessed from the top.  I pull it out and clean it before each load, and I don't get any buildup in the vent hose.  Don't all dryers have something similar?

those are not perfect- we have the same thing, and we clean them all the time.  But that does not stop all of the lint.  Over a long time, there is still a lot of build up post the filter.

Clean out the inside of the dryer too. Mine has a filter that we clean out each time, but I guess lint still built up in the internal ducting and broke loose recently clogging the fan. Luckily we noticed the vibration, but when we shut it off you could see the heating element glowing alarmingly.  It's easy to do, the top pops off and there are a few screws to get the front off.

I am a dryer vent savant. Don't ask; I just am. AMA if you like.

This is one of the things that scare me about living in rental houses. You know damn well the previous tenants didn't bother to clean the ducting out. Who knows when, if ever it was last cleaned out.

In the house I'm renting now, the dryer duct exits the laundry room directly behind the dryer, turns 90° vertical in the wall and goes up to the roof. The wall on the right side of the dryer is an exterior wall. The builders could of put the vent there, as it would literally be about a 12" run to the exterior but no, let's put a 20' run of vertical duct instead.

I shudder to think of all the buildup in the duct.

My sister showed me how she cleans the duct out. If it's a short run that exits the side of the house, she removes the cap, if possible, then uses her husband's battery powered leaf blower to blow all the lint outside. It works great and takes about 15 seconds.

stuart in mn said:

My dryer has a lint filter that's easily accessed from the top.  I pull it out and clean it before each load, and I don't get any buildup in the vent hose.  Don't all dryers have something similar?

So does mine, but I still have to clean the mesh on the vent every month because of build up. 

Dryer ducts are apparently one of the leading causes of home fires.  I also shorted out a dryer before I figured this out.  No flames, only resistance thankfully.

stuart in mn said:

My dryer has a lint filter that's easily accessed from the top.  I pull it out and clean it before each load, and I don't get any buildup in the vent hose.  Don't all dryers have something similar?

Yes, mine has that.  But it is just a screen and it doesn't catch all the lint, just most of it.  The little bit that passes will accumulate as the years go by.  Also, when I pull my filter out, some lint will sometimes fall back down into the machine, and the felt seal doesn't fit as well as it used to.  Both times I've been inside the dryer for repairs, I've vacuumed out a fair bit of lint from inside.

Thanks for the reminder. I pay a company to come out and do it since our dryer isn't on outside wall. So it goes up, into the attic and over to an exit under the eve on the front of the house. 

Those little attachments you get to put on a drill wouldn't even get 25% of the way through the ducting. 

I opened this thread more than half afraid someone had suffered a house fire.  Relief felt!

It's pretty amazing how much lint accumulates inside the dryer body.  Every couple of years (when I have to repair the stupid Samsung dryer YET AGAIN), I get the shop vac and air compressor hose out and really clean all the nooks and crannys out.

And replace as much of the vent with smooth wall steel piping instead of the flexy aluminized plastic crap (in the event of a fire, that plastic melts quick and allows flames to escape).

Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) said:

I'm a fireman and I see dirty dryer vents as more than a nuisance and energy waste. Dirty dryer vents cause north of 15k house fires per year.

Clean those things and don't burn your home down.

QFT.

Also, if you're familiar with the small and surprisingly cheaply-constructed 240-volt open wire heating element that goes into most electric dryers such as my Maytag, you're a bit more concerned about your friendly dryer turning into a fire-breathing monster that wants to burn down your house. 

Both of the element failures I've had showed the sheet metal frame discolored and cracked in multiple places from repeatedly being heated cherry red and then cooling.  I assume the failure of the frame results in stresses being placed directly on the heating coil and causes it to fracture.