Hey, Where's All the Dryer Lint?

[Ben]

So as I'm doing laundry last night, it hit me that somehow in 4+ years I completely forgot to ever clean the dryer duct. "Holy crap!" says I, "I'm lucky the house hasn't burnt down!"

Off to Home Despot this morning to get one of those drill powered duct brushes.

I wrestled the dryer and washer out of the way so I could work, and I put plastic down with the shop vac handy because I expected oodles of lint to be shooting out everywhere. I literally got two handfuls of lint, brushing from both inside and outside. I was almost afraid that maybe there was some blockage after all that time that was keeping all the lint from coming out, but I ran the brush through one side to the other (I luckily have a short run to the outside) and went and visually verified that the brush went all the way through.

All I can figure is that it's because I don't use the dryer much. I usually dry clothes for no more than 15 minutes and then I hang them on one of those indoor racks to finish drying.  I reckon taking them out damp all the time keeps lint from forming. The only time I see a lot of lint on the screen is when I do bath towels or similar, since I dry those all the way.

Anyway, I guess I can safely go a couple of years between cleanings. I need to redo the ducting inside because it's an UNSAT overly bendy setup to me, but I didn't want to make another hour round trip to the store today, so that's on the "when I have spare time" list.

At least I didn't get this:

https://youtu.be/_9BH_ZrMvX4?t=29

 

[gunsmith]

iirc lint makes a very good fire starter, I bet "they" are stealing from you 

[K Frame]

What? No lint?

I used the my dryer for 3 seconds nearly 25 years ago and it's STILL producing lint!

The fact that you're only letting your clothes run for 15 minutes, so they're likely still pretty damp when you take them out, is why you're not getting much lint.

Lint is primarily caused by the abrasion of clothes against each other. When they're wet, you don't get nearly as much lint because the water in the fabric lubricates it, for lack of a better word.

Since you're not giving the lint much of a chance to form, you don't really have to worry much about it.

I'd bet that most of the lint that you get out of the dryer screen is actually... Steve's fur.

I know that if I'm drying Seren's blankets or her towels I need to check the lint screen at least twice before they're even remotely dry just to remove all of her fur that's coming off and which somehow made it through the wash.

[K Frame]

Oh, and if you have smooth pipe, instead of corrugated flexible tubing, you're going to get a lot less lint in the pipe, as well. It gets pushed out.

[BobR]

iirc lint makes a very good fire starter, I bet "they" are stealing from you 

Take the lint, work some petroleum jelly in it, store is a small container (film cannisters used to be perfect), use it to start fires when needed.

bob

[Ben]

I'd bet that most of the lint that you get out of the dryer screen is actually... Steve's fur.

Possibly. Though I did order Steve from the dog factory with the 421-A package, which has the "not scared of thunder" and "minimal shedding" options. 

When he's shedding, I do notice his hair in the lint screen, but not tons. I've dog sat a friend's lab a few times and man, even after only a couple of days, there's yellow lab hair everywhere.

On the vent pipes, my pipe from the wall to outside is smooth. The one from the dryer to the wall is that corrugated aluminum foil-like crap. That's part of what I want to change up, though I've never seen any smooth flexible dryer hose.

[zxcvbob]

Possibly. Though I did order Steve from the dog factory with the 421-A package, which has the "not scared of thunder" and "minimal shedding" options. 

When he's shedding, I do notice his hair in the lint screen, but not tons. I've dog sat a friend's lab a few times and man, even after only a couple of days, there's yellow lab hair everywhere.

On the vent pipes, my pipe from the wall to outside is smooth. The one from the dryer to the wall is that corrugated aluminum foil-like crap. That's part of what I want to change up, though I've never seen any smooth flexible dryer hose.

Does it need to be flexible, or could you use rigid vent and ell couplings? 

My dogs sometimes look at me when it thunders (or there are fireworks nearby) to see whether they should be afraid or not    I just shrug, and they take that as an uneasy "no".

[Ben]

Does it need to be flexible, or could you use rigid vent and ell couplings? 

Unfortunately where the dryer is placed in the laundry room - between a wall and the washer - I'm not sure how to do that and get to to the outlet and inlet. I guess if I disconnected the washer completely and moved it completely out of the way, yeah, I could get to everything, but I hate the extra work. 

I did see that they have these riser thingies:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Everbilt-28-in-to-45-in-Adjustable-Space-Saver-Aluminum-Dryer-Vent-Duct-UD48HD/203632347?

But that's like a 3' vertical rise, then a 3' vertical drop back to the wall inlet, and I'm wondering if that sharp turn wouldn't potentially be a blockage point.

[MechAg94]

The first time I cleaned my dryer vent, I got a whole mess of lint out of it and cleaned a bunch out of the roof vent hat up on the roof.  Did it again a few years ago and got very little.  I figure the first time it hadn't been done by the previous owners for a while either. 

[zxcvbob]

Mine all collects at the little weatherhead where it vents outside.  There's probably some in the vent pipe but I don't think it's much.  (I should check occasionally)

I take my clothes out of the dryer still slightly damp.  Wife bakes hers.  Most of what I get out of the lint screen seems to be dog hair, cottonwood fuzz (in late spring) and weed seeds (now.)  The baffles at the end of the vent fills up with stuff like the first one in that video and I have to clean it a couple of times a year.

[MechAg94]

What is the benefit of taking the clothes out damp?  Just curious why you do it.


I try to take shirts and stuff out hot as they don't wrinkle and I don't have to consider ironing.  Of course, the weather is "dry" down here when it gets down to 60% humidity.  That isn't the case everywhere.  Mildew sucks. 

[zxcvbob]

What is the benefit of taking the clothes out damp?  Just curious why you do it.


I try to take shirts and stuff out hot as they don't wrinkle and I don't have to consider ironing.  Of course, the weather is "dry" down here when it gets down to 60% humidity.  That isn't the case everywhere.  Mildew sucks.

They don't shrink as much, (even tho' they stretch back out) and not as much lint.  I assume the more lint there is, the faster the clothes are wearing out.

[K Frame]

"I've never seen any smooth flexible dryer hose."

They don't make it.

I plumbed mine with rigid smooth ductwork for the first few feet, with the last couple of feet being flexible corrugated tube.

As long as you don't have plastic corrugated tube on your dryer you're ahead of the game.

[K Frame]

"Mine all collects at the little weatherhead where it vents outside.  There's probably some in the vent pipe but I don't think it's much.  (I should check occasionally)"

That's where a lot of the lint I need to clean out collects, as well. A few years ago my dryer stopped drying well. It was because there was so much lint clogging the exhaust port.

With big dogs that shed like mad I have to fully open up my dryer (take the front off to get to the exhaust pathways and the fan) every year or so so that I can clean out all of the lint.

First time I did it was when I rebuilt the dryer about 10 years ago. The squirrel cage fan was so jammed with lint that it was essentially smooth... you couldn't see the blades.

[Kingcreek]

Mine is rigid with only one 90 and it retains no lint.

[HankB]

My laundry room is in the middle of the house, so the dryer vent pipe goes up the wall into the attic, where there are two 90-degree elbows before it exhausts through a roof vent. Bad design.

At the very least, they SHOULD have made them 45 degree elbows. The dryer vent brush I got won't address anything other than the first straight vertical pipe, so I was left trying to figure out a way to clean the horizontal and final vertical runs without making a BIG project out of things up in the attic.

What I did is take a small metal coffee can and cut the bottom out - this makes an adapter so that I can couple the input (suction) end of my Toro corded electric leaf blower/vac to the dryer vent pipe in the wall once I've moved & disconnected the dryer. An old pillow case duct-taped over the blower extension catches "most" of the dust, more than the leaf catcher bag. I still close the laundry room door and the day after the dryer duct cleaning is my "clean the laundry room" day.

The 1st time I did this (AFTER cleaning the vertical run with the brush) it sucked so much lint out it clogged the input. Twice. So it turns out there was a LOT of lint in the last two sections of pipe. This was after maybe 10 years without cleaning, so now I do it annually and get only a fraction of the lint I did initially. This thread reminds me that the exhaust duct is overdue for its annual cleaning. And I'll check - and maybe replace - the washer hoses too. (I usually change those out every 5 or 6 years.)

[Kingcreek]

We had a stack washer/ dryer that vented up to the roof with 2 90s and some flex duct. It was terrible. When we replaced it with the speed queen commercial units I had the option of venting straight down through the floor, one 90 and 10’ of rigid to the outside. Amazing how much better it works.

[K Frame]

My washer and dryer are in the basement, so my dryer has two 90s on it -- coming out of the unit, then it goes up to the near the ceiling, about 8 feet, so that it can get above the concrete foundation, and a 90 to take it through the rim joist to the outside of the house.

When the house was built the washer and dryer were in the pantry just off the kitchen. A lot more convenient, but I got to looking the other year and... there's no exterior vent pipe that I've ever found for the dryer. It simply vented into the pantry and main part of the house. Just another one of the dozens, if not hundreds, of damned near criminal shortcuts they took when building this crap shack. No wonder they moved it to the basement. The dust/lint and humidity loading must have been an absolute nightmare.

[Ben]

I don't know how they managed to do it, but in what is about a 5' run to the outside, they managed what appears to be four 90s (maybe a couple of them are 45s). Immediately in the interior wall it drops 90 down, then 90 (45?) left , then 90 (45?) right, then 90 down and out. Plus the only way for me to get to the dryer vent outlet without disconnecting the washer and moving it completely out of the narrow laundry room on a dolly is to pull the dryer out, twist the washing machine over until it contacts the laundry sink, then squeeze into that space. It requires that I leave 4' of flex hose between the dryer and the wall, so when the dryer is pushed back, of course that flex hose bends and the best I can do there is about a 90 and a 45.

That's one reason I'm looking at reworking stuff back there, but the limited space makes it a bit of a conundrum.