Pudgeder - Thanks for the reminder. That's one of those things that I'm fanatic about. Dryer vent fires are one of the top causes of home fires - after kitchen mishaps. When the kids were at home I had it cleaned every other year. I've also nagged my kids to have theirs cleaned too, especially when they lived in rental units.

Thanks for sharing this reminder pudgeder. My DH is fanatical about this because as a young boy his house burned down, on his 10th birthday.... when his mom left the dryer on as she ran out to pick up candles for the cake, and his party guests arrived to firetrucks.

Local, that is sad way to spend your birthday!

That is one thing we never do -- leave w/the appliances running.

I'm lucky with this house because the dryer vent run is very short and horizontal, so it's easy to clean it out periodically.

@localeater, that's so sad.

It is sad, but in some regards he remembers it with affection. He was 10, they moved onto a motel, every morning he went to the coffee shop sat at the counter and ordered his breakfast before school. He loved that. Kids are resilient.

Who did you call to clean the dryer vent? Also, is there a tool to use if cleaning from the outside?

DD2 just bought a house that had a twisting turning looooong flexible vent pipe for the dryer. They even used a screw to hold together not far from the dryer. You do not use screws because that catches lint. DH and our handyman immediately said it was getting redone and the exterior vent relocated. Both said dryer vents should never go vertical. Always horizontal. The new vent pipe is only flexible at the back of dryer, and once it goes through the wall it is a hard metal pipe.

In a previous home of hers, the vent went in wall between garage and master bathroom, so you couldn't get to it to change out. We removed the outside cover, then took the yard blower (not gasoline powered) and blew out the pipe before the dryer was put into place. You would not believe the amount of lint that came out of the pipe.

Ratherbesewing - In my other house I used COIT (they also do carpets, drapes, rugs air ducts etc) because it was a fairly long run. In this house my dryer is right next to the exterior wall so DH can do it. At our other house our local contractor/handyman does it for us.

Good reminder - I need to find someone to do this. We had a house in the past where the dryer wasn't drying - often caused by buildup in the vent. We worked it as much as we could from the inside and then the outside and finally a huge gob of lint made it's way to the outside where it got caught in the louvers of the exterior duct. Once we extracted it from there the dryer worked perfectly. That was a long duct run with a sharp turn. I need to take a closer look and see what I have now.

I’ve done my duct a couple of times, but haven’t in about (eek) 5 years! It’s such a huge pain, even with good tools— shopvac, and a device that goes halfway down the duct and spins to grab the mounds of lint and cat hair. Then we have to go to the other end of the duct and clean from that end. The holes in the drywall don’t match up so it’s imoossible to put back together, it vents to the garage so we need a looooong series of pipes that turn twice to go out the the side and include a piece of flexible duct. It surely isn’t to code. And it’s scary. We tried venting to the garage for a few weeks, there’s an adapter for that, but the moisture just caused everything in the garage to become damp+dusty=grimy. Sigh, I need to call someone to do it, I just don’t have it in me anymore.

My brother (in a larger city) calls a dryer vent cleaning service every year for theirs....laundry room is located in the middle of the house and I'm really not sure where it exhausts - it can't be directly to an outside wall. But he told me its so inexpensive that he asked one time how cleaner could do it so inexpensively and come out ahead. He was told 'my sister died in a fire caused by a dryer years ago and this is a service I perform in her memory at almost cost'.

When we bought this 1955 house I was finding the utility closet across from the dryer often smelled 'steamy' (if steam has a smell) when doing laundry, and a couple of times my dryer shut off with clothes still quite damp. The HVAC man was here doing a well furnace checkup and I asked him about running duct work from the dryer, asked if he would do that. My dryer vents into the floor, goes under/across the laundry room and under that closet, vents at the sidewalk outside by the patio in back. He installed a straight shot of stainless slick duct for me...not inexpensive but worth the peace of mind. What he removed was ghastly - a mouse couldn't have made its way through the space not clogged with old lint that looked like felt. There is a ground level grate by the patio that DH can remove and clean any lint in the ground well.

Good reminder. I've regularly done the duct (ours is very short), but spent last Saturday repairing my dryer and found that the inside of the dryer were full of lint as well. For those with an older dryer it might be worth checking that as well. I'm guessing even newer ones could have some build up too. I spent almost a couple of hours just trying to clean off all the lint inside the dryer when all in all the actual repair should have taken me less than an hour.

Ratherbesewing, if you do a search in your area for vent cleaning, they should list if they do dryer vents.

I asked on our neighborhood NextDoor site for recommendations, and found this company.