Clean the Exhaust Duct on a Clother Dryer - PEP BB nest.straw.cleanexhaust

All I can say is...  Holy Fuck!!!

I hadn't done this since we bought the house.  The dryer might be 15 years old so it maybe has never been cleaned.  Very recently it hasn't been working right and putting lots of humidity into the laundry room so I figured I'd do this little job.

Holy Fuck there was a lot of lint in the machine.  Not so much in the duct but... after the lint screen.  Shit balls!

Based on what I found, I'm thinking about editing the BB to require checking more of the dryer.  This was amazing.

I probably got 1-2 cups of lint from the duct.  I think it was mostly at the elbow just after the dryer.  Under/behind the lint screen was somewhere between a quart and half gallon of lint.  I had to remove the plastic guide that holds the lint trap to get enough access to get it all out.  Just had to remove two little screws.

With the dryer running it blows soooo much harder out the exhaust.  I'm very glad I did this BB!

I bought a kit to clean it that had a round 4" brush on a flexible wire, a lint trap brush and an attachment for a vacuum cleaner.

Side note: the duct had detached itself from the back of the dryer which is what caused the humidity in the laundry room.  All fixed now.

Here are the pics:

not applying for the pep but the other day i put a pair of chainsaw pants in the wash and i had emptied the pockets however there was a tear in the pants and huge amounts of sawdust was down in the pants which i was unaware of.
when i went to empty the dryer there was sawdust everywhere and the lint trap was overflowing
so much had gotten in there that i couldnt even return the lint trap to its position
what i did to clean that area out was roll up some paperboard (like cereal box)
to make a nozzle narrow enough to fit into the lint trap spot and held the vacuum hose over the end and stabbed around down there until it was cleared out

Tried to do this  today... "Tried" because I took apart the venting tube and found that the previous person vented the dryer into the crawlspace.  You know, the part of the crawlspace that's about two feet high and way in the back with all the spiders.  Debating whether to spend the $199 service charge to have the HVAC guy run 15' of rigid pipe or brave the spiders.  Anyone done the duct work and, if so, on a scale from 1-10, how difficult is it?

I used my hands and an old rag to clean everything.

Our electric dryer wasn’t working so well. This fixed it.

Edit to add: I used a brush that attaches to a household drill, with extension poles that you add as you progress up the pipe, much like a chimney sweep kit. This one was made specifically for cleaning dryer vents so it was a good diameter to reach into the duct. I also used a brush that is made for cleaning out dryer lint traps. For the washing of the lint collector I just used water and an old dish brush to scrub what I could clear, no detergents.

Wow!! This was harder than I thought it would be! I was cleaning the outside of the dryer for another BB and decided to get this one done at the same time. It took awhile…
I cleaned the lint trap first with a dry rag, then a damp one and I used the vacuum to get some of the tricky spots.
Then I pulled the dryer away from the wall and began the process of cleaning out the exhaust pipes. For this, I tied a paper towel to a long wooden spoon and used it to clean as deep as I could. Then I used a dry rag to scrub the edges as best I could.
For the outside, it was quite frozen, but I managed to reach in a bit and used a dry rag to get as much lint and gunk as I could.
It looks like 100 times better!
But hopefully I don’t have to do that again anytime soon. My poor 5 year old had to help me get out from behind the dryer when my 5ft frame got stuck between the wall, the dryer and the shelf above. Good thing the two of us are tough