Every reasonable home owner has to have a dryer vent. It makes the process of drying your clothes increase in efficiency tremendously. The problem is that they as all spendable goods need to be changed from time to time in order to function properly. But there is a catch! With proper maintenance, you can expand the lifetime of your dry vent by a significant margin. Most of the lint created goes right through the vent, but with time and use a lot can actually get stuck in the vent itself. The usual amount is not that big but in some cases, it can go up to 60 percent. This is not only a problem in itself but dry vent lint is a big fire hazard because lint is a very flammable material. Not doing the cleaning might directly lead to a fire.
Other things you can find in your vent are all kinds of small creatures like rats, small birds,and their nests. Again, nests can block the vent flow and cause a potential fire. The damage does not stop there when nests block the flow, lint is gathered and moisture with it. Once this gathering reached an adequate level, your home will get flooded, not a nice surprise to see when coming back from work. So, let’s learn more about dryer vent cleaning.
Img source: nwabatement.comPrevention
You won’t believe it, but if you are lucky enough to be reading this article just after buying a vent or if you have a well maintained, clean dry vent the simple preventive solution is a vent cover. A vent cover will prevent small animals from living in your dry vent. But unfortunately, it won’t prevent the gathering of lint. For this, you will have to do regular maintenance, either by hiring professionals or doing it yourself. Of course, since the job of cleaning your vent is rather dirty and time-consuming, most hardworking people just can’t find time for it. So it’s best to give the job to the professionals that will do it for a bargain price considering how dirty the work is. But if you are still determined to do it yourself here is how.
How To DIY
1. Find the duct. The most important thing here is to find the beginning and the end of the duct. The beginning is coming from your dryer and the end is somewhere outside of your house sticking through the wall.
2. Unplug the dryer. This is an important step for preventing getting electrified when the electricity mixes with the water caused by the moisture or getting burned by hot airwaves that can reach quite high temperatures because of the increasing heat that comes with congestion.
3. Make it shine. This is the hard and dirty part, you will have to scare the animals away, dispose of the nests and clean the lint. For the equipment necessary you can just go to any bigger DIY store and buy a cleaning kit for vents for probably a bargain.
4. Connect it all back. Everything needs to go to its place, of course, expect a very dirty floor on the house side and maybe even some excess lint debris in the coming days on the exit side. All this said after a good cleaning you should be all set for the next two to three years.
Summary
With prevention, proper use and maintenance you should be good of with a dryer vent for years ahead, being able to reap all the benefits that it offers!
