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/HeyCc1 May 30 '21

I have a friend that's a firefighter. We were talking about new dryers (mine had just died after 18 years). Course of the conversation he mentions that dryers catch fire, in his experience, more than any other appliance. So yes! Clean all that lint!

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u/_head_ May 30 '21

Similar story. Have a friend who is a former fire fighter. He told me the #1 cause of house fires he responded to were caused by people not emptying the lint trap. That always blew my mind. It's hard to believe something so simple causes so many house fires. Needless to say I'm very diligent about it now.

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u/HeyCc1 May 31 '21

Same. I clean the lint trap inside the dryer every load and a few times a year clean out the pipe or vent? Not sure what it's called lol. But the one that goes outside. I also heard this from the man who came to repair the dryer wall plug. He said he's seen the dryers catch fire a bunch. I mean we save the dryer lint to make fire starters so obviously it's really flammable.