Our clothes dryer had been not doing its job for the past few months. It would take a couple of cycles to get the clothes passably dry. It wasn't like this when we first bought the dryer.
We checked the parts we could see first. We were regularly cleaning out the lint trap. The heat was definitely working; it was piping hot in the drying compartment. The ducting was connected.
After digging around a little bit online, we found that one culprit might be a clogged vent line. This was consistent with what we observed when we looked at the ducting that was connecting the dryer and the wall: it expanded when the dryer was turned on. This indicates back pressure.
$180 very well spent
We poked around looking for the dryer vent exhaust on the outside of the house. Unfortunately there are no less than five (!) vent exhausts on the house. So we called a professional. He indicated that he could diagnose and fix the problem regardless of whether it was with the dryer or with the vent ducting.
Well, let's say that the duct was just about completely clogged. He blew a lot of lint out, and collected probably close to a cubit foot of lin in a plastic bag for us. (He also cut the ducting from the dryer to the wall a bit for us. The system works more efficiently if the total length of ducting is less.)
Here's what was happening as a result of our clogged dryer duct.
- It was a fire hazard. The number of fires caused by dirty dryer ducts is in five figures. People die in these things, too.
- It was whacking us twice on our electric bill. The first whack was the fact that the dryer cycles were longer. The second whack was that the filament heating (it's an electric dryer) operated hotter because there was less air getting in there to cool it off. This was evidenced by the scorch marks on the metal housing piece next to the filament. Hotter filament and longer drying times multiply to a much bigger operating cost.
Now that we have a freshly-cleaned dryer vent, the solution to keeping things humming along is monitoring it. We should monitor how well and how quickly the clothes dry, and also monitor whether the vent is working by seeing if the flap valve is opening up on the exhaust end. If the air flow goes down too much, this will stop happening.
Give your dryer vents a check if you haven't in a while, m'kay? 😉
I try to check our dryer lines at least once a year for a full cleaning, meaning I disconnect it from the dryer, clean the tubing, as well as clean the outside vent. When we moved in there was so much buildup around the outside vent that the flap was permanatly stuck open. It took almost an hour of cleaning lint that had solidified to be able to get it to close. That had to be hurting the heating bill in the winter!
Wow, scary. I don’t even know where our dryer vent is, but it sounds like I should find out!
Crud, now I need to check our dryer. The outside vent looks fine, but I have no idea how it looks inside the vent line…
We had the same problem when we moved to our current home a few years ago. We knew it wasn’t the dryer because it had worked fine at the old house.
Since we use dryer lint as firestarters in our campfires, not very prudent to have a whole mess of it in the dryer duct. Thanks for the reminder. An ounce of prevention….
I am really glad you had it checked out! Thanks for writing about it as a reminder.
Good thing you got that all cleaned out! It’s things like this that if go unchecked cause massive damage (like fires!)
I’m not sure where my dryer vent is (I think it’s on the roof), but I’ll have to investigate now.
Great reminder for everyone, thanks. It’s seemingly little things like this that could have a big impact if not addressed. And that’s not even considering the secondary impact of increased energy bills
We experienced something similar. Fortunately, my husband knew someone who could fix it for us at a deep discount but the dryer still makes me nervous. I refuse to run it when no one is home out of sheer fear.