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...

554 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

127 comments sorted by

View all comments

8

u/Gr8tfulhippie May 30 '21

Including the shield on the outside of the dryer vent! We found a washcloth type mat in ours, and it was right against the bird guard. If your clothes are not dry after one cycle, that's a big red flag that you have lint built up somewhere in the system. Especially if you have an HE washer that spins well.

3

u/[deleted] May 30 '21

Including the shield on the outside of the dryer vent!

I think having a screen on the dryer exhaust vent is against the building code in some places.

1

u/[deleted] May 31 '21

Shield doesn't necessarily mean screen. My parents used to have one that flopped open super easy but folded in quite a bit so the smallest pressure would open it from the inside but wind from the outside would hold it closed. It was very thin and light. Don't use it during a rainstorm though lol. It'll stay shut.