r/preppers • u/Kitso_258 • May 30 '21

Advice and Tips Clean out your dryer vents

If your living situation allows you to have your own dedicated washer/dryer within your home-space, clean out your dryer vent. Unscrew the lint trap holder and vaccuum out the stuff stuck to the sides. You can get a lint duct brush and mostly clean the ducts yourself, or if it's bad/out of reach, hire a professional. This is especially important if you've got pets - my dryer was FULL of pet hair.

Why is this important? Several reasons:

1, new appliances are in short supply right now. Take care of the one you've got.
2, new appliances cost money, see above.
3, it'll increase the efficiency of your dryer and use less electricity.

But the most important reason is that this is a HUGE fire risk. Lint = tinder, and all it takes is one spark in the wrong place to cause the lint to combust. And by spark, as everyone else has pointed out, it could just be the dryer heating element doing it's thing.

Little things like this... make our lives just a little bit better and safer.

Edit: Didn't expect this to blow up. If you wish to save the lint for future fire starter, then save away. My household produces SO MUCH of the crap that I don't ever worry about saving it for the long term...

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u/OutlyingPlasma May 30 '21

FYI, the "professional" will show up with an electric leaf blower and a shop vac. One on each end of the pipe and then charge you $300 for the privilege.

7

u/GochuLover May 30 '21

They just turn the dryer on and drill brush from the exterior towards the dryer and the dryer blows it all outside. You can do the same thing, brush kits are $30 on Amazon or most people would probably be fine with using a leaf blower.

2

u/snackshack May 30 '21

Yup. I bought one of those kits a few years back. Works great. Had to buy the extension as mine is crazy long, but it works.

1

u/[deleted] May 31 '21

I don't know why I never thought of running the dryer while running a drill brush 🤦‍♂️

0

u/BlueberryNagel Oct 31 '21

Or they will do the job correctly (with a brush) and only charge $75... as is my experience.

Good on you for over-generalizing, though.