I bought my house from a heavy smoker. Part of my offer was that they have the air ducts cleaned. I think having it done once a decade or sooner is probably a good thing, especially if you have allergies.
I’m thinking…REPORTED!
When we moved to a new apartment we thought we’d have the dryer duct cleaned, but neither that guy nor I could find the dryer exhaust on the outside of the building. I slowly convinced myself that lint was just being spewed into the underfloor cavity of the floor above, and a fire disaster was inevitable.
Then this week I got a guy with a fibre optic camera to come and investigate and he actually found the concealed exhaust on the roof, working perfectly happily. Major load off my mind in fact.
So dryer vents - more fun than you’d think :)
Our dryer ducting was installed poorly. Apparently it shouldn’t run more than 35 feet to an outer wall, and whoever built our townhouse did a run of about 50 feet. This led to wet lint collecting towards the end of the dryer vent, close to the end of the duct, especially in the winter, and it was resulting in build-up of a soggy mess inside the duct (which eventually would have rusted and needed replacement) and increasingly long dryer times. I know this because our condo association actually pays for these ducts to be cleaned every two years, and it was taking twice as long at my unit and my neighbour’s (with a similar poor build) than the others in the complex. The vent cleaning guy recommended installing an in-line airflow booster, and it works amazingly well. It kicks on automatically when it detects something (heat? air flow? pressure change?) when I run the dryer, and boosts the strength of the flow. It wasn’t cheap (about $600 Canadian, about two years ago) but it’s been worth it. Drying times are literally half of what they used to be using the “automatic” setting on my dryer.
My in-laws had a small fire in their laundry room due to lint buildup, so I’m happy that the condo association is on board with frequent cleanings. Every two years seems about right.
Right, I think it’s 30 ft here, minus 5ft for every right angle turn. I wondered if we would need a booster too, but it turned out to be taking quite a direct route to the outside, and then just hidden like it was part of a stealth bomber.
I may have mentioned that the fuckups that redid our roof decided to use a leafblower to clear out our dryer vent.
From the outside.
The whole house was filled with lint dust.
Morons.
They should have put in some dryer sheets first.
Reported :-)
I just peaked in this thread because the concept of getting ducts cleaned seemed interesting, and then I found this post from 2008:
I have zero recollection of this. Obviously I haven’t had my home’s ducts cleaned since.
Who’s gonna say it???
Welcome to our community!
Haha nice!
I was thinking more “starts with an R, ends with eported!”
Oh, I know : )
I have posted that a number of times myself.
Reported
I think mods may want to lock this thread for a week or so. Third time in as many days this baby’s been bumped by a bot…and not in a good way…
Reported.
And yeah, this thread has outlived its usefulness - only spam in the past 15 years.
Well I for one just scheduled a duct cleaning, for what its worth. It hasn’t been done since I moved into this house over 20 years ago. It was just one of those things I intended to do but kept putting off until I just simply forgot about it. This thread popping up reminded me that I needed it done so I went and got it scheduled for this coming Monday. So I guess the thread still has served a purpose beyond being a spam trap.
I’ve also been reading through these home repair threads, even if this one convinced me I probably don’t need to bother.
All the spam in this thread reminded me to clean out my dryer duct the other day, so at least it’s got that going for it.
Also: it probably would have been easier and cheaper to replace the dryer duct, but I feel slightly less guilty cleaning it rather than adding to the landfill. Also, if you haven’t cleaned your dryer duct in the last ten years, think about doing that. ;-)