Since these are both exhaust flues and ducts, no clearances are required. Clearances are only required when an air intake vent, door or window opening is located near a flue exhaust, vent hood or dryer duct terminal. You do need to consult your building code office, however, because there has been a change in some mechanical codes this year that require the installation of 'make-up air' ducting when using an exhaust hood rated over 400cfm. If you do not already have a make-up air intake duct, your code may now require one, and if it doesn't, you should still consider adding make-up air anyway.

gordonr, If there's nothing else I've learned during the course of my renovations, I've learned that everything ends up being more complicated than you expect. Once you open up the ceiling or the wall, there always seems to be something in the way of what you want to do. A floor joist where the tub drain needed to be, pipes where I wanted recessed lights to go, and now the recessed light over the tub is where it would make sense to run the duct. I can hardly wait to get to the kitchen renovation! I spoke with a rep in Miele's technical service group yesterday. Initially he was telling me he thought what I wanted to do entailed too long a stretch of duct - that it would reduce the performance of the dryer. I told him I expected that it would not be optimal performance, but what I was trying to determine was whether it would reduce it to the extent that a condenser dryer would have the same performance. He didn't seem to understand what I was getting at, so I gave an example: If the vented model has 15% better performance than the condenser model and the venting I'm doing reduces performance by 15%, then the condenser model would be generally equivalent, but if the vented dryer's performance is 50% greater, the same 15% reduction in performance would still mean the vented dryer was a better choice. I asked if he could give me any information about how much better the vented dryer's performance was than the condenser model and how much the venting I was considering would reduce the vented dryer's performance. At that point, he said he wanted to talk with one of the senior technical reps and put me on hold. When he came back, he told me that the dryer was rated for up to 60 feet (which I already knew) and that I should be fine with what I was planning on doing. He also told me that the sr. rep had indicated that having a condenser dryer in a closet could be problematic because it puts off a lot more heat than a vented dryer - you'd need a lot more air circulation into the closet with a condenser dryer. The closet I'll be putting the w/d into is 68" wide by 29" deep, so the extra heat and air circulation need may not have been as much of an issue for me as it might be for others with a more confined space. One learning that I took away from this: if you start to get the sense that the technical or customer service person you're talking to may not be as knowledgeable as you'd like, ask to talk with a senior rep. Like anywhere else, initial phone calls will be answered by more junior staff who will route the more complicated issues to more experienced staff. I've decided to go with a vented dryer, and now just need to decide between the Miele and the Asko. I'll let everyone know which one I end up with. Jan

You'll probably just get higher air volume and a slightly lower temperature. Drying should be just as good or better. It makes perfect sense. If long vent dryers didn't perform well in shorter applications the manufacturers would probably caution against it in their manuals.

The "Periscope" pipe or solution mentioned above is a quick fix, but they are surprisingly very very inefficient. At 7 minutes into the vid the fitting is tested (.50 wci of pressure delta). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFOHGVhmyQA name of vid: How to reduce your clothes drying time and save energy costs The Dryerbox option is more work, but if the retro fit box installation goes smoothly, the benefits are huge. Here are links to installation pictures and instructions: bottom of this page: http://www.dryerbox.com/photo_gallery.htm instructions: http://www.dryerbox.com/pages/retro/index-500.html Generally it takes about 30 minutes to complete.