ordan Peterson in his bestseller 12 Rules For Life tells us to
clean up our room. But we at Random Biology
have found something that's even more important for you clean up:
your clothes dryer exhaust duct.
If your dryer is slow and your clothes are not dry when you open it, the most likely cause is that the exhaust duct or vent is partially clogged. This is a very dangerous situation.
Clothes dryer vent with dryer running showing vanes fully open
An electric clothes dryer has a thermostat that maintains the drum at a constant temperature. When it can't exhaust, it reaches that temperature with less heat, which means the water doesn't get removed. Eventually, the thermostat (one or both, if there are two of them) reaches a limit and it trips a fuse, which makes the dryer appear dead. This fuse is designed to be hard to replace, and it's expensive. The idea is to make you call a repairman, who will refuse to fix it, telling you your ductwork is clogged, it's lucky you called him, it's now a fire hazard, and you're lucky to be alive.
Of course this doesn't mean very much. Everybody says that, from your doctor to your car mechanic to the person to whom you mentioned about giving your cat a bath to someone giving a review of a local restaurant. But in this case, it could be true.
If the vanes on your vent don't fully open when the dryer is on as shown in the photo at right, it means the duct is clogged (or worse, broken somewhere) and must be cleaned out and repaired immediately. If the fuse doesn't trip for some reason, the motor could overheat and start a fire.
Clothes dryers may be not be exciting high-tech appliances, but according to FEMA they're a leading cause of house fires in the US. “Failure to clean” is the biggest cause of dryer fires, accounting for 72% of them. Even a partial clog will raise the temperature inside the dryer, causing it, in the best case scenario, to stop working.
Clothes lint burns rapidly because of its high surface area
So here's our Rule #1 in life: the more unpleasant the task, the more important it is. This follows from the fact that the universe wants you to be as miserable as possible.
Clothes lint burns rapidly because it's dry and has high surface area. The image at right shows that a sample of lint that I tested to see how fast it really burns. After 2 seconds it was fully aflame. By 18 seconds it was almost completely burnt. By 45 seconds nothing was left but black ash. If you're in a survival situation, you might be able to use a piece of lint, maybe even your own navel lint, as tinder to start a fire—something Bear Grylls never considered.
If your dryer has a plastic or flexible foil duct (as my contractor at my previous place wanted to use) it's a good time to replace it. Use only semirigid or rigid ducts. If the dryer vents into a crawlspace or attic, it will likely invalidate your insurance. If the duct is long, vapor will condense inside it and attract lint.
Rule For Life #2: Don't buy a house with a crawlspace instead of a basement. Arrow points to the clothes dryer duct, which was as far away from the crawlspace door as humanly possible
That's what happened to me. From the day I moved in, my dryer always took 90 minutes to dry a load. I assumed it was just a slow dryer. Then one day it simply went dead. I discovered that there was a duct that travelled 35 feet through the crawlspace under the house. The vent on the outside still worked, but crumbled away when I touched it. Even though the dryer looked new, the ductwork had not been cleaned in at least thirty years.
Even worse, the duct itself was hanging by a single piece of electrical copper wire twisted around a little screw. Further back, an even thinner uninsulated wire was wrapped around the duct and nailed right through a live electrical cable. The vent was held in place with a four-inch-thick glob of caulk.
After dragging 35 feet of heavy lint-filled duct out through the crawlspace, hosing it out, letting it dry, dragging it back in, and then re-installing it with proper strapping and new screws, installing a new fuse in my dryer, chiseling out the caulk, and installing a new vent, I was surprised to see that a load of laundry was completely dry in twenty minutes.
An alternative is to pay somebody to steam clean your ductwork and then pay somebody else to install a new fuse. And maybe a third person to install a new vent and make sure your ducts are hanging properly. That will cost money. But not doing it will cost a lot more.
jun 24 2024, 6:46 am. updated nov 03 2024, 7:33 am
