Dryer Vent Safety

[Bryan Rocker]

Good evening all,

I just wanted to show you what can happen if you do not clean your dryer vent out every now and then. Scenario, I just moved into a 15 year old house. My 9 year old dryer started taking 2 full cycles to dry. After some checks to make sure the dryer was ok, I decided to pull the vent down and look at it. The vent goes straight down through the floor does a 90 degree and runs about 20' to exit out the sill plate. When I pulled it down I was blown away at how badly it looked. These 2 pics do not tell just how bad it was. After some creative thinking and partial disassembly I was able to clean the duct out. There was enough lint in the ducts it filled my 16 gallon shop vac. This was extremely close to a fire....You just don't know how well the previous home owners took care of things......

Bryan
103372

103371

[Jim Becker]

Excellent advise, Bryan.

When the vent was installed for our new laundry, a clean out was actually put in at the request of the township since the duct is mostly inside walls. Despite the appearance of the clean out port in a low place in the MBR, I'm comfortable with the fact that we can easily get access to the duct without moving a very, very heavy piece of equipment to do it!

[Don Bullock]

Several years ago the house next door to where my parents were living burned to the ground because the dryer vent was plugged up. My wife and I never leave the dryer running if we go to bed or leave the house. We also have a smoke detector right outside the laundry room. Which reminds me that we need one in the laundry room of our new house. Thanks for the reminder.

[Ben Rafael]

I used my shop vac as a blower and blew a huge wad of wet lint out of our dryer duct. It's easy to do and cleans it out great.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

the newer higher end dryers like the Bosh and Mielie will drive 50' of ducting. Ya gotta calculate every bend as 15 feet. Most others need an inline booster fan. Most older dryers definitely need one.