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/throwAwayWd73 May 30 '21

Empty the lint trap after EVERY SINGLE LOAD

My wife is bad about that one. The build up after even two loads isn't good.

77

u/tvtb May 30 '21

When I started dating my wife, I learned her parents empty the lint filter like once every 100 loads. It was the thickest, densest mat of felt you’ve ever seen. I had to gently tell them they were doing it wrong without alienating them

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u/DILGE May 31 '21

I lived in an apartment that had a washer/dryer double stack combo unit and I couldn't find the lint trap so I figured there wasn't one for some reason. (Yes, I was dumb.) I lived there an entire year before I finally found the lint trap inside in the back. When I popped out the panel, the lint practically exploded out it was so densely packed in there. After that, the dryer finally started drying my clothes!