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Laundry Room Home Repair

dryer outside exhaust vent Install

3 years ago

so for the record I know how to install and mount a dryer Exterior vent, Thats not the exact issue, I have a weird situation I never worked with before, it’s the mounting to the type of sheathing I’m having a hard time figuring what to do. So the house I bought a few years ago has a older vinyl dryer vent with a 4 horizontal flap opening, pretty typical, just old and beat to living hell, flaps won’t close etc. I’m finally replacing This thing after I finally got to remodel my laundry room. Its mounted to a fiber board ( nothing solid , I should say barely mounted) that I have never seen before. from research I’ve done it’s possibly a celotex fiber board House was built in 60’s, and the existing mounting block the mounts to sheathing under the siding was installed with wood screws into the celotex which are all loose and stripped out to all living hell ( oviously this stuff is not ridged enough for screws) not sure why they installed this vent like this. and I dont really know what a easy way to attach a new vent Would be with nothing for screws to bite into. i don’t want to remove siding and cut this stuff out and replace it with plywood or some other rigid hard sheathing, that’s just seems like a nightmare. just the most simplest last finishing touch to my projects to run a damn vent through the exterior wall to hook up to my dryer exhaust hose and this is the thing I run into. Please any suggestions, do they make hardware that would go into this type of weak material that holds etc. I can’t find much info on this sheathing when I search.

thank you

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Comments (2)

PRO
GN Builders L.L.C
3 years ago
Picture worth a thousand words.

As the stripped screws go, use screw extractor bits, they available in any box store for a few $$ and you will get them out in 2 minutes.
ci_lantro
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
i don’t want to remove siding and cut this stuff out and replace it with plywood or some other rigid hard sheathing,...i don’t want to remove siding and cut this stuff out and replace it with plywood or some other rigid hard sheathing,

I had the same situation with that same fiber sheathing that won't hold a screw. Also one of those louvered covers that I wanted to replace because it was always clogging w/ lint and wouldn't stay closed. Since I live in WI, that resulted in a very cold laundry room in the winter.

There was no way around having to cut back the siding and installing plywood.

I wanted in install this vent:

So I had to buy the largest mounting block I could find and orient the vent on the block so the hole for the vent pipe would fall low enough on the mounting block and still have room for the upper support to fall on the block.

On the back side of the block, I cut & fit pieces of plywood and glued the plywood to the vinyl cover w/ OSI Quad Max adhesive. The plywood backing glued to the mounting block gives good purchase to the surface screws that mount the dryer vent to the block.

This wasn't a 15 minute project. Involved several days, the making of templates to make certain the hole got cut in the right place and everything related to the siding. Time for the OSI to cure and also painting the vent to protect it from UV rays. All the gaps were sealed w/ canned foam. Results are that the laundry room is much warmer and have far fewer spiders. All the gaps, now sealed, had been a superhighway for spiders to come & go. Downside is that the vent is big & ugly but it is on the back side of the house. Benefits outweigh the cons, IMO.

So, it was a lot of work but I very much needed to go thru what I did because of living in an extreme climate.

You have the option for an easier solution--simply glue some strips of 1 x 2 material to your fiber sheathing--OSI Quad Max is a really great product but I haven't used it on fiber sheathing. If it holds then you can screw your vent to the wood strips.
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