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/BlueStateSaint May 30 '21

The woman who we bought our townhouse from had redone her dryer vent—said that the dryer had stopped drying, so she had someone put in a new vent into the garage. The chimney sweep that we brought in to scrub the chimney offered to take a look at it, and he found 35 to 40 FEET of solid lint. He removed it for us as part of the dryer vent cleaning. I’m a stickler for making sure the lint screen is clean.

13

u/TitanActual May 30 '21

I seriously don't understand how these people survive! When we bought our house the basement was very heavy wet feeling in the air and we noticed during our tours that the previous lady always had clothes out on a drying rack bit she insisted the dryer was operational. Turns out the entire 12' of vent was completely full of wet lint and it wasn't attached to the exterior vent either. It was only

28

u/mulchroom May 30 '21

it was only what? are u ok?

11

u/cplforlife May 30 '21

Reddit Sniper got him. RIP.

r/redditsniper

3

u/monke_man136 Nov 17 '24

reddit sniper origin story (sad animation)

1

u/Jonilul21 2d ago

Damn I finally found it, it’s s

2

u/[deleted] May 31 '21

Lol, nice. Sub won't load though, just your post and the sticky. Is it new? Cause I'm down with that, seems fun

1

u/cplforlife May 31 '21

Made it 5 minutes after I made the name with this comment.

I realized it didn't exist. So I rectified that.

Join it and spread it.

2

u/[deleted] May 31 '21

Can I be a mod? First member discount? :D

2

u/Alive-Match1164 Nov 17 '24

Are we on a museum tour?

Here we can see the genesis of reddit sniper

1

u/Littux 23d ago

Thankful that this sub doesn't have archiving

1

u/Hzzif Nov 17 '24

It was only

IT WAS ONLY WHAT??! (pls answer)