How to Clean Out a Dryer Vent
Cleaning out your dryer vent is one of the most important home maintenance items.
According to the US Fire Administration, failure to clean the dryer vent is the leading cause of house fires, causing 34% of all residential fires. Approximately 2,900 home clothes dryer fires are reported each year and cause an estimated 5 deaths, 100 injuries, and $35 million in property loss. This shows the importance of proper maintenance and regular cleaning of the dryer for your home and family’s safety.
I made a video about how to clean out a dryer vent and posted it on Youtube. You can watch it and read the transcript further below.
First, here is a list of tools you will need if you want to do it yourself.
Tools
In addition to a drill and a vacuum, here is a list of the tools I used:
An air blower can be helpful too, though I didn’t show that in this video.
Dryer Vent Booster Fan
I didn’t show how to do it in this video, but I’ve installed this dryer vent booster fan in a few different homes. It is quiet, works great, and lasts a long time. I highly recommend this one:
Video
Transcript
Hi, I’m Cole. In this video, I’m going to show you how to do a deep clean on your laundry dryer and to clean out the dryer vent duct behind the dryer all the way to the outside.
This small brush can be used to clean out the lint trap on your dryer.
A larger brush like this, with a flexible wire can be used into the back of the dryer to clean up that part of the vent.
This one with a semi-rigid pole, kind of almost like tent poles can be used to clean out a longer run of duct. Connect the poles together as needed.
This is a flexible crevice tool attachment to be connected to a shop vac or a vacuum cleaner to clean out the lint trap inside the dryer. And you can buy a set with various attachments to attach to different sizes of vacuum hoses.
If you do want to do it yourself, I’ll put links in the description so that you can buy these tools that I showed you.
I recommend wearing a dust mask while you’re doing this.
I usually start with the lint trap of course
I’ll use my flexible crevice tool to vacuum this out.
Your lint screen or lint trap might also be in here instead of like this one is up top.
Remove the vent from the back of the dryer, the duct just like so. You can use this flexible big brush to kind of ream this out. Push it in as far as it will go. Might as well clean up the area behind there too while I’m at it. For good measure I’ll put this one up there too.
Make sure this flex duct is clean as well. There’s no holes or leaks in it. Or else it should be replaced. They’re pretty cheap and easy to replace. So it’s a good time to do it while you’re cleaning.
Then on the outside I have these plastic louvers. I can bend them just a little bit and pop them out just like so.
Then run this in.
Now connect this all back together.
Blow any of the loose dust and lint out .
It’s working good again. This one is quite special. You can see how full this one is. Pretty much almost blocked, almost fully blocked with lint. All that lint just in that little bit of pipe there.
So what I’m going to do is replace all that duct work and reroute it so that it’s a shorter distance. And also I’m going to install a dryer vent booster fan.
You can see that cleaning the dryer is usually pretty easy. Although some cases can be challenging. Sometimes it’s hard to reach the outlet of a dryer vent if it’s up high, maybe on the roof or something like that, sometimes there’s a bird’s nest inside of the vent. That’s a difficult situation.
You can probably do it yourself. I’d say give it a try and if not, let me know. I can do it for you.
How Can I Help You?
Cole Chesnut
Agile Remodeling Handyman LLC
Kenmore, WA 98028
Phone: 206-696-4626
Email: info@agileremodel.com
Website: https://agileremodel.com
