Dogs Don't Eat Pizza

Every year, I clean out my dryer duct. I’m going to tell you the story about why this is such a big thing for me. Then I’ll show you how to clean a dryer duct. It’s actually pretty easy!

 So, here’s what happened…

Picture a normal Saturday night. I go outside to grill our dinner, and I notice that one of the foundation vents is no longer connected to the foundation. Hmmm. I move it aside and see a dryer duct attached to nothing. The dryer duct to nowhere! I’m perplexed.

It was too dark and cold to go down into the crawl space to investigate, so I wait until Sunday morning to check it out.

Just so you can picture the scene, I need to explain the dryer duct set up in our wacky house.

Our laundry room was an addition to our old house at some point (I don’t know how long ago; it was here when we got here). It was just carved out of half of the garage. The dryer vents down, through the crawl space, out the back of the house. To accomplish this, the duct is quite long and has a few turns in it, including under our drain pipe and several water pipes.

You might be seeing the problem already, right? Anyhoo…

Back to our Sunday morning…When I got into the crawl space, I saw that the duct I had seen was no longer connected to the dryer; it was just left there, hanging out. The duct that was connected to the dryer was part rigid duct, part soft aluminum flexduct. The flexduct was used to get around the pipes described above.

Knowing how old that flexduct was and knowing that they can present fire hazards (if you want a great explanation of this and how to fix it, check out Pretty Handy Girl’s post HERE), I go in for a closer inspection. I notice that there are holes in the flexduct, and there is condensation on the duct and on the floor of our crawl space. Hmmm.

I then decided to pull off the flexduct, because (a) it clearly had holes in it, which is not good; and (b) it’s probably not safe, which is not good. When I pull it off, I find a half-inch layer of lint all around it.

I then freak out. Can anyone here say “major fire hazard”??

This is what I pulled out of just what I could reach in the duct:

Holy dust bunnies.

I head to the hardware store and get some semi-rigid dryer duct and a new dryer vent and I’m on my way. Right? Right?

Well, wrong. Sigh.

The more rigid ducting wouldn’t go around the pipes in the basement. Grrr.

Did I mention that Dear Husband had washed a load of clothes at this point? Yep, in the washer. Sopping wet.

So I did what any serial DIYer does when faced with a roadblock. I called my contractor, who has worked on all the major renovations in our home. He told me what I suspected – that the dryer duct shouldn’t be that long anyway (it takes longer to dry the clothes and it’s a fire hazard with all those turns in the duct) and we need another solution. The solution is to vent the dryer out the garage wall instead, right next to the laundry room.

Being a DIYer means that you are brave enough to take on projects, but smart enough to realize when you’re out of your comfort zone.

I am now, officially, out of my comfort zone. The professionals ended up tackling this project.

How to Clean Your Dryer Duct

This is actually a pretty easy project if your duct isn’t twisty and turny.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• vacuum with a hose attachment – I have this one.
• foil tape for ducts (not plastic duct tape)
• screwdriver if your duct is held on by a round clamp fastened by a screw
• gloves
• dryer lint brush if you have one (don’t buy one for this)

Instructions:

1. Unplug your dryer.
2. Remove the duct from the back of the dryer first. My duct was secured to the dryer both with foil tape and a clamp (a round pipe clamp with a screw to tighten it). Run the vacuum with the hose attachment – put the hose into the duct leading into the dryer first and clean out that lint. While you’re there, vacuum the surface of the back of the dryer, too. There’s some dust and lint there, too, I’d bet.
3. Then use the vacuum with the hose attachment to clean the lint out of the duct itself. To do this, it’s helpful to detach the duct from where it’s attached to the wall. Again, my duct was attached with foil tape and a round pipe clamp, so it was easy to remove. Make sure you clean from both ends of the duct to get all the lint out.
4. Next, use the hose attachment to vacuum out as much of the duct that runs under the house as possible. Mine didn’t go far, but it did get a good bit of lint out.
5. Reattach everything. Use the foil tape and clamps to secure the duct to the duct in the wall and to the one at the back of the dryer.
6. If you can, take a shopvac or other vacuum and vacuum out the duct from the outside, at the exit-point of the duct.
7. Re-plug in the dryer.

What did I learn from all of this?

1. CLEAN YOUR DRYER DUCTS. Like now. Like yesterday. Do it. I was shocked at the amount of lint that had built up, and we had had our ducts cleaned a few years ago. It’s a major fire hazard. I am grateful that we found this before we had a fire. (Insert freaking out sound here.) I know clean them out once a year, at least.

2. If you have the soft aluminum duct that has ridges in it, replace it with rigid or semi-rigid ducting. You can do this project yourself if you don’t have a wonky duct set-up like we did here (see the link above to Pretty Handy Girl for a great tutorial on why and how to do this).

3. Never underestimate the potential scope of a DIY project. What I thought was just reattaching a duct became re-venting our dryer duct, a much bigger project.

4. Working in an unfinished crawl space under your house is good for your abs. It’s like planking. I did this for an hour or so and now I feel like I had quite the ab workout! (That said, there were many cobwebs, so I don’t recommend this as a way to workout.)

5. CLEAN YOUR DRYER DUCTS. Are you getting the importance of this? Just checking.

6. If you are going to DIY around your house, recognize when it’s time to call in the pros. I don’t consider this a defeat, but rather a victory in knowing and understanding my limits. Sometimes DIY doesn’t go the way you want or expect it to, and that’s ok. Just recognize it, take a deep breath, and call someone who can help you. It’s ok – we’ve all been there.

My lovely neighbor is letting us use her dryer this afternoon, so the wash load will finally get dried and all will be well (or at least dry).

Now, go clean your dryer duct! I mean it!