Dryer Vent Cleaning In an Hour

Every two hundred loads or so, or every 6 months, you should do a thorough dryer vent hose cleaning to get the most out of your dryer. The lint trap is not meant to hold a week's worth of lint. It should be cleaned after every load. Failing to do this restricts the air flow necessary to dry the clothes and can quickly become a fire hazard.

Even with the most conscientious lint trap cleanings though, lint inevitably builds up in the dryer vent hose.

The curvier the hose is, the more area there is for the lint to cling to. If you have a straight shot from your dryer to the outside vent, you can probably go up to about 25 feet of hose without much problem. If it has to bend quite a bit to go around obstacles, try to keep that length of hose as short as possible.
That will not only keep the air flow stronger (dry the clothes faster) and blow the lint through but it will make the dryer vent cleaning considerably easier.

Ideally, you'll want to clean the hose every 4-6 months. The cleaner your dryer hose, the more efficient your dryer.
Okay, let's clean the dryer vent.

Tools you'll need for this job:
1. Screwdriver
2. Small prybar or hammer
3. Vent cleaning brush
4. Shop Vac

Open up the dryer and remove the lint trap.

Go outside and take the vent cover off that is mounted onto the house and snake the brush into the dryer hose from there and pull it back out.
In most dryers it is much harder to start this at the lint trap end. There are lint trap brushes you can buy for the more occasional cleaning. Sometimes if your hose is longer than the brush, some of that lint gets pushed into one spot and doesn't come out with the brush.
Bring your shop vac into the laundry room. Set it to "blow" by putting the shop vac hose into the exhaust hole on the vacuum. NOTE: if you usually use your vacuum for "sucking" rather than "blowing" you may want to run it a minute or so outside on "blow" so the dust that inevitably blows out when it's turned on doesn't coat your laundry room and all the laundry you just folded. (Yes, I am speaking from experience here)

OK,now if you have a thin tip attachment for the vacuum, put that on so the air pressure is concentrated. Stuff a rag or towel or two into the sides of the dryer's lint trap and try to get it so just the tip of the vacuum can get in there. Turn it on blow and all that loose lint should blow to the outside of the dryer vent. Cleaning accomplished.
Just in case you didn't have that lint trap all closed off and some of that lint blew in and not out, well, just switch your shop vac to "suck" and there you go.

Dryer vent cleaning is not something we think of (or do) as often as we probably should.
There is a noticeable difference though, in the time it takes to dry a load of laundry when it has just been cleaned after 6 months to a year of lint buildup.

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