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Once the weather turns cold and the heat kicks on, your home starts to get dry and static electricity arrives once again. This minor nuisance that causes siblings to shock each other for fun can actually be dangerous if it ignites lint that has built up in or around your dryer.
Why you should clean out your dryer ductwork:
According to The Consumer Product Safety Commission, ( CPSC ), annually there are 15,500 Dryer Fires, Up To 30 Deaths and over 310 injuries, due to dryer exhaust duct fires. You should clean your dryer hose and around it once a year, and inspect the vent and hose for any blockages at least every 6 months.
You could pay a professional to clean your dryer ductwork, but the price could be anywhere from $65.00 to $150.00! Ummm — no thanks — I’ll keep my money and do this myself. It only takes about 15 – 20 minutes to do and it is easy! As long as your ductwork is fairly accessible, you can handle this!
If your dryer exhaust hose tube is longer than 10′ this may be a bit more difficult. And if it is longer than 10′, did you know that your dryer may be working extra hard to dry your clothes? Worse yet is if you have a long tube that goes up into the attic (or the eaves) and then out the roof. The warm moist air from the dryer enters the cold attic, and condensation forms in the exhaust tube. Do you know where this little story is going? Well, at first your dryer can’t dry as quickly because the tube is blocked by water. Eventually it will fill with enough water to cause the exhaust tube to split and guess where all that water goes? Through your ceiling, that is where! Trust me on this one, it happened to us in our old house.
So, why don’t you sit back down and let me give you a little tutorial on cleaning out your dryer exhaust ductwork.
Instructions:
Start by unplugging your dryer and turn off the gas if you have a gas dryer.
Remove your lint trap and remove any lint from the screen.
Using a brush (designed for cleaning out the coils under your fridge) bend the brush and run it inside the lint trap. Then follow up by using a shop vac or vacuum to suck up any lint and dirt loosened by the brush.
Pull the dryer away from the wall and disconnect the exhaust duct tube from the wall and the dryer. There are normally two kinds of hose clamps holding the tube to the dryer and wall port. The first is a ring with two prongs. Simply squeeze the prongs toward one another to loosen the clamp.
The second type of hose clamp requires a screwdriver to loosen the bolt attached to the clamp.
Slide the exhaust tube off the dryer and the port (hole in the wall.)
Use your vacuum to clean out both the dryer and wall ports.
Then use the vacuum to clean out the dryer exhaust tube.
If you have an older style vinyl tube, it is important that you replace it with a foil style one. The vinyl ones are fire hazards. Also, if you can’t get your tube clean, go ahead and replace it. They are inexpensive, normally it costs just under $10 for a new foil flexible duct tube.
If your tube is long or difficult to clean out, you may want to purchase a hose brush like this one:
Amazon.com: Brushtech B68C 10-Feet Long Dryer Vent Duct Cleaning Brush: Home & Garden.
While you have the dryer pulled out, vacuum off the back of the dryer, the washer, and the wall behind both. Eliminate as much lint as possible. A clean laundry room is safer than a lint covered one.
Re-attach the dryer tube to the wall and the dryer.
Gently push the dryer back towards the wall being careful not to crush the tube.
Locate your exterior dryer vent.
If you can reach the exterior vent, go ahead and clean it out also. Make sure the vent closes properly when the dryer isn’t running.Otherwise you may get birds, rodents or bugs in your vent. I don’t think I need to tell you that they won’t be helping your dryer’s efficiency!
And that is it?! That was easy wasn’t it. Be sure to keep your home and family safe by cleaning your dryer exhaust ductwork yearly.
Update: I wanted to let y’all know that the flex foil pipe shown in this tutorial is FLAMMABLE! Luckily I found this out before we had a fire.
Read about installing semi-rigid non-combustible duct in this easy tutorial!
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This is a great tip. I have been using a professional to clean the dryer ductwork as it is vented through a crawlspace…initially it was not or had been disconnected and was venting into the crawlspace and could have been a fire hazard (dryer was getting very hot). Amazing blue wall, btw!
thanks Brittany for reminding me, I’ll have that on my weekend to do list!
Thank you for this tip! In addition to cleaning our dryer vent, I need to seal around the exterior vent. The gap between the vent and the hole in the wall/siding is too big to caulk. What is the best way to do this? Thanks! Love all the tips and projects on your blog!
spray foam insulation is my suggestion.
Good suggestion Erin
Angela, use Great Stuff expanding foam to seal it. While you have the can out, look under all your sinks and seal the holes around the water pipes coming in your home. That is where a lot of the creepy crawlies get in
Brittany
Great post. I need to do this!
I have know homes that have had fires because of dryer lint. Good tips.
I (unfortunately) had one of those homes that had the dryer vent hit the wall, do a 90 degree turn, head up to the attic, do a 45 degree angle, then up and out of the roof. It was over 18 feet long!!! How is that NOT against fire code? My awesome dryer went from being able to dry a load of jeans in less than 50 minutes to it taking almost 3 hours for the same load. I had to routinely clean out the vent every 3 months. IT SUCKED! It is now on my list of deal breakers when buying a house.
Erin, can you get a handyman out to look at re-routing it? That is what we did. We actually had it vented down through the floor out out the soffit over the front door. Not ideal, but it really improved the performance. We did have to vacuum the front door every few months though.
We need to reroute ours too. It also goes through the attic and out the roof, probably well over 18 feet long! We also have a front-load washer and dryer and they are stacked, so I have to pull both units out to get behind them. Not fun, and they are very heavy.
Christy, I remember watching a handyman who re-routed our dryer hose when I was 8 mos. pregnant. He couldn’t get the hose back on and it was “KILLING” me to watch. I wanted to jump back there and just do it, but sadly I wouldn’t fit back there anyway I turned. LOL!
Twice a year, i use the leaf blower into the long ducting to blow everything out. Has done ok for years
That is what we do also. It gets really loud in the house but it really works well.
The code for dryer vents states 25 feet is the maximum length of venting allowed. This is the length the maximum length a dryer can force air. You subtract 5 feet for each 90 degree turn and 2.5 feet for each 45 degree turn. Using this method you can calculate the maximum length of vent for your dryer vent run.
Peter, good information to know, thanks for your comment.
Thank you! I think I will tackle this over the weekend. Hooray for shopvacs, right? This will motivate me to get crackin’ on my laundry room re-do.
Good for you! Thanks for your comment.
I think I’m good about cleaning my dryer vent and hose. But thanks for the reminder. I’m sure it won’t hurt to do it again.
Never hurts to be cautious. Thanks for your comment.
Hi Brittany-
Funny I just did this. My dryer was really getting hot and then I remembered that I had to clean all the lint out of the ducts. What a huge difference it made.
Ooooo, Diane it scares me to think about that. Did you mean your dryer wasn’t getting hot enough. Or the motor was getting hot?
Thank you so much for another detailed explanation/how-to. Your tips are so valuable and motivating for jobs that we typically put off. I appreciate your blog so much. Thanks!
Thanks so much for this post. I’ve known that this is important, but I’ve had no clue how to do it. This kind & the how to use a tool posts are my favorite. (I’m a single mom who has four brothers and a dad and an ex-husband — who while we were married insisted on doing all the “manly” stuff — and the mom who insisted I only learn stuff like sewing and home-ec … Pretty hopeless.) It’s been so nice to learn how to do a lot of these things for myself. Better still to have the confidence of knowing that I can do them, that they are easier than I expect them to be, and that I can teach my daughters some of these basic skills that they may or may not need to know, but may enjoy knowing how to do anyway.
Thanks again!!
This is so funny…I just cleaned mine for the very first time night before last. It was a much bigger mess than I though it would be. Good thing I had already declared war on cleaning out and reorganizing my utility room..he!he! One of the buildings in our complex burnt down this year because of this issue. One person died. So please take heed!
I appreciate all your helpful posts. Thus one could actually save lives.
An electrician told me once that he would NEVER leave his house with the dryer running, something I used to do all the time, but he felt it was dangerous, even with clean vents ducts.
Keep up the good work.
Barbara, I agree with your Electrician. I don’t run mine while I’m away either! Okay, I lie, I’ve done it maybe a handful of times if I REALLY need to get the next load in. BUT, I NEVER leave my dog alone in the house with the dryer running because I’d never forgive myself if a fire started and he couldn’t get out ;-(
Another thing to do to get a better suction on the vent is once you have the hose in the vent in the wall, put duct tape around the pipe and opening to seal the host in there. This will give it much more suction. Once finished just take the tape off…
Excellent idea! Thanks for your tip.
I know this is an older post but so cool to find. I’ll be checking mine tomorrow I don’t think the outside vent has a screen on it because the lint if not in check will be on the lawn YIKES! I’ll be updating that.
We just had our ducts changed from the foil bendy type to more rigid and smooth type metal because the professional who did it told us that the foil bendy type catches more lint and causes more fires. You can easily see this because it has more grooves. for lint to catch in. While it is code it is not ideal. We changed ours out for $110. This included labor.
Allison, good to know. I actually bought the smooth duct work, I just haven’t had the chance to replace ours. Maybe I need to make time for this, right?!
The leading cause of lint build up is the rings in the flexible vent tubes. The uneven surface is a place for lint to collect. You should really uprgade to the smooth steel ductwork.
Our dryer backs up against a wall and it is in a closet (in our kitchen) our dryer vent runs up into the cieling and then runs outside over our front door. Because of how it’s wedged against the wall it’s difficult (if not impossible) to get to. Do you have any advice on how to circumvent this issue? I can pull out the lint trap and vacuum/clean out in it, but as far as the tubing goes I don’t know how to clean it without being able to disconnect it from the dryer. We’ve lived in our house ten years and its never been cleaned so I can only imagine the horrors that exist in it, and I worry every time we run our dryer.
Also, do you have any tips on how to clean air ducts? Like for a central AC/Heat unit? Or do I have to get those professionally done?
Thanks!
Kristina,
In order to access your dryer hose you would have to pull your dryer out of the closet. But, based on what you are telling me, you may want to hire a professional who has long brushes to clean it. Usually companies that clean central heat and air ducts can do your dryer vents too.
Another good and tried and true method is the air compressor. I live in an old farmhouse where my washer and dryer sit in my bathroom. The vent work is through the floor between the machines and there is metal solid tubing that runs under the bathroom floor to the side of the house. I pull the washer and dryer out and vacuum behind them and vacuum off the wall sometimes up to 3 times a month. But, at the beginning of every season we have what I call an air compressor party. Air compressors are grand for getting into cracks and crevices and blowing all that extra lint out. HOWEVER, something major that wasnt mentioned here is the lint trap screen. Wax collects on that screen from fabric softner and dryer sheets. Take your lint trap out, clean it off and run it under water. If the water goes through you are safe. If it doesn’t you have wax build up and that can be a fire hazard. Clean your lint trap screen with warm soapy water and a brush. Check your screen by running it under water again.
YOu should add to your post to NEVER use the silver flex pipe you have but the more ridged aluminum flex pipe…what you have there is usually flammable in most cases.
Shawn, I actually just posted today about that flex pipe! I wish I had known earlier: http://www.prettyhandygirl.com/2013/02/installing-semi-rigid-dryer-hose-to-prevent-fire-hazard.html
great way to describe with the help of pictures. It will definitely help the visitors.
This a perfect DIY post. Great to do at the change of each season or more often if you wash a dozen loads of laundry each week.
I appreciate that you’re aware of dryer fires and that do it yourself is an admirable quality to have. However, there are 3 issues that need to be addressed here : 1) what if the homeowner has a gas dryer and 2) the type of dryer vent that you have in the picture is a fire hazard ( it’s clearly stated on the warning label at the back of the dryer … DO NOT USE PLASTIC , DO NOT USE FOIL …. FAILURE TO FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS CAN RESULT IN FIRE OR DEATH.
and #3) Dryer fires most often occur INSIDE THE DRYER where lint accumulates on the heater and then spreads to the rest of the venting.
Getting back to what if the homeowner has a gas dryer … well, I think that’s quite obvious really, you’re playing with danger here – carbon monoxide is definitely a huge concern.
Pay the money and get a professional dryer fire prevention company to do the work – and make sure that if you have a gas dryer that a qualified licensed gas technician is working on your unit. Saving your home , your life and your family’s life is really much more important that a bit of money for safety and piece of mind.
Thanks for promoting the awareness – but remember- most people would not be able and should not attempt to service their dryer vents especially if it’s a roof vent – could be very dangerous – just not worth it.
Joe, excellent points, thanks for taking the time to share with my audience!
I always clean the lint on the mesh after every dryer load. My husband says that is very important and usually sufficient.
Though, I might have to call the apartment’s maintenance folks to clean dryer ducts; don’t want to take the risk of causing fires!