Have you ever experienced that sickening feeling when you discover that your dryers not drying as well as it used to. It usually happens slowly over time and by the time you discover that something is really wrong you have lost many dollars in extra high utility bills. It can be a few things causing your dryer not to dry; something with the dryer itself or something with the dryer vent. This is my life lesson on dryers not drying; hopefully it will save you some dollars and some sanity.
Two years ago my family relocated from West Virginia to Delaware, in the move we brought our old dryer. Our last year in WV the dryer sensor failed and then the dryer timer failed, so we knew the dryer was on its last legs. This would not have been so bad except the dryer was in the mudroom off the garage in the basement. So you guessed it there were many days when the dryer ran for hours, I do mean hours, destroying the laundry inside. We used the dryer for the first year after the move but I noticed after a few months that clothes were taking an extremely long time drying so after a service call we replaced the dryer.
The new dryer came and the old dryer was removed. My husband and I hooked up the dryer, first mistake, at first everything was fine but after a month or so the clothes were taking even longer to dry then before. I searched the internet looking for reviews of the dryer and searching for what the problem could be. Around the same time my husband and I noticed that one of the pipes in the basement was dripping water, we couldn’t figure out why but assumed it was condensation from the cooling system, second mistake. Did I mention the new dryer never collected as much lint as expected but the dark clothes were always covered in lint?
After about a year my sister and her family were visiting from out of town, my brother-in-law is a contractor and I asked him to help me clean out the dryer vent and duct. I figured that there may be some lint build up that was keeping the dryer from drying properly. We pulled the dryer from the wall, unhooked the exhaust hose and there it was, a huge wad of lint in the opening of the dryer exhaust. The lint in itself was not strange but why was it wet? Yes wet. Reached into the dryer vent and pulled out another wad of sopping wet lint. Where was all the wet lint coming from? Turns out the leaking pipe in the basement was the dryer duct running from the dryer vent. Yes, our dryer vent had been leaking water for over a year. When the dryer duct was opened up the water and lint filled up about eight inches in a tall kitchen trash can. Serious the water and lint flowed like a bath tub faucet. After marveling at the travesty that was in my dryer vent we cleaned it out, allowed it to dry and hooked it back up and cheered when the first load of clothes took less then half of the time it was taking before.
After clearing the dryer vent and duct the dryer was working much better but still not as expected. To figure out if something was wrong with the dryer or the vent my brother -n-law unhooked the dryer from the vent and we dried a load of clothes. It was amazing the clothes were done in less then 40 minutes (a large load) and the lint trap was full of lint. You could almost hear my dryer sigh from the relief of not having to work so hard to do its job. Or was the sigh me and my husbands’ relief from finally finding out the problem and it not being the dryer.
The ductwork affecting how the dryer works? I had never heard of such a thing so I had to check around. After speaking to a few people and doing some research it turns out there are a few ways that the water could have accumulated in the dryer duct work.
If you have an uncovered outside dryer vent or you get a lot of heavy rain then you might experience rain water splashing into the vent opening. In my case I don’t think this was the major culprit. It might explain a little of the moisture but not the lake that was in my dryer duct.
For me a more likely explanation of at least some of the water is the condensation of moist dryer air as it goes through the duct that runs through the unfinished basement. While this does seem like a more likely possibility it does not explain all of the water that was in the dryer duct.
The most likely explanation for all the water build up in my dryer duct is probably the most simple, the dryer duct is to long. Yes your dryer duct can be to long, if the duct is to long then the dryer does not have enough power to push the wet, hot, heavy air out of the duct to the outside. A lot of air makes it out of the duct, we can feel it, but enough lingers to allow the moisture to condense and form a lake in the duct. It turns out that dryer duct length concern is a relatively recent problem, older homes have the dryers in the garage, basement or in laundry rooms with the dryer against an out side wall. With an outside wall you only need a few inches of duct work and bam your dryer is vented. With newer homes the laundry room is many times housed in the center of the home making the dryer work harder to get rid of the moist, hot air. Another issue is that newer more energy efficient dryers use less energy and there fore have less power to push or pump out the moist air. If you notice lint build up in your dryer or very linty clothes then duct length may be your problem.
To prevent my dryer issues there are a few things that could have been done differently.
We could have paid more attention to the leaking pipe in the basement. Whenever a pipe or something is leaking it is best to find out what is leaking, why, and to fix the leak as soon as possible. Doing this would have saved us a boat load of money, energy and heartache.
Checking the dryer vent & duct months earlier. It is probably best to pull the dryer from the wall and check the vent at least once a year if not every six months. Just looking into the vent would have clued us to the possible problem we were having.
Taking notice of the heat build up in the laundry room. When the dryer was on, it was like a sauna. As soon as the vent was cleared the laundry room cooled down.
Having a dryer vent & duct brushon hand. A vent brush comes in handy in cleaning out or just checking if there is lint build up. There are different kinds of dryer vent brushes and they come in various lengths for any type of dryer vent system.
Most importantly paying attention to the decreased quality of my dryer performance. Clothes were taking 3X what I was used for drying. The lint trap was not accumulating the usual amount of lint but my clothes were very linty coming out of the dryer. If I had paid attention to the signs, all of which bothered me weekly, would have saved the wear and tear on the dryer, clothes and pocket book.
I hope my tale of dryer vent troubles can be a help to you and possibly save you some headaches and money! Happy drying!
