—
A clogged dryer vent can be more than an inconvenience that makes your dryer work harder—it can be a fire hazard. The lint in the dryer vent can actually catch fire and do a lot of damage to your home. Even if it doesn’t, the more clogged the vent becomes, the more energy your dryer has to use to dry your clothing. You may have to start running a load of laundry through two or three drying cycles to get it fully dry. This uses up more electricity and costs more money. So what can you do about this? Fortunately, cleaning out your dryer vent yourself isn’t that difficult to do. Let’s go through the steps to do this chore so you can keep your dryer vent clean.
Find the Vent’s Duct
Before you can clean out the dryer vent, you have to know where it is. The exhaust port is easy enough to find—it’s the hole behind your dryer. This opening is about four inches across and connects to ductwork. Unfortunately, because there is a 90 degree turn a short way into the duct, it can be difficult to clean your dryer from this end. The other end of your vent can be in one of several places. For some homes, the dryer vents out the wall behind your laundry room. For others, the duct can run up through the attic and vent out of the roof or on the wall near the roofline. Some dryer ducts do the opposite, running into the basement and then out through a vent near the foundation of the home. Regardless, you should have an external vent somewhere on your home that allows the hot air to exit.
Disconnect Your Dryer
Once you find the external vent, you need to disconnect your dryer and move it out of the way so you can clean the ductwork from that end. Electric dryers are easy to disconnect. Simply unplug them and remove the clamp that holds the hose to the vent. Gas dryers are a little more complicated because you may not want to disconnect the gas line. If you don’t know how to shut off the gas, don’t attempt to disconnect the hose. Gas leaks are very dangerous and can be deadly. The hose is likely long enough for you to pull the dryer out from the wall. If it’s not, you may want to contact a professional to assist you in safely moving the dryer.
Use a Cleaning Kit to Clean Out the Vent
To actually clean out the vent, you will need a special cleaning kit. This kit can be purchased at many home repair stores, and they are typically very affordable. The kit includes a lint brush attached to a pole. It also comes with several additional flexible poles that you can connect together. You then push the lint brush into the vent and run it as far up as it goes. As you move it upward, you can spin the poles to rotate the lint brush and pull any debris off the sides of the vent. Some kits even attach to a power drill to make spinning the brush even easier. You can start on either the interior or exterior vent opening, but to fully clean out your ductwork, you may want to run the brush through both.
Clean Up and Reconnect
Once you’ve finished running the lint brush through your ducts, you’re done with the actual cleaning. You likely have some lint all over your laundry room floor, so you will want to clean all of that up before you move your dryer back into position and reconnect everything. You may want to do a test run with your dryer just to make certain that everything is reconnected properly and is venting as it should be.
—
This content is brought to you by Sean Henry.
Photo: Shutterstock