Our "laundry room" is I guess about 15' away from the outside of the house. This means that the vent hose tube thing runs under the house, hangs under the bathroom and continues out the wall on the side of the house that far away. Why they didn't make it so it could go out the the right 8" I'll never know. If we were to fix this could we do it ourselves or would we need to hire a contractor? Honestly, I'm not comfortable drilling a hole in the back of my house but I feel this is a fire safety issue. And I'm sure my dryer would operate better if it were corrected!
There was probably a MAJOR REASON why the dryer vent was routed that way not the Shorter & more direct way. Are there any plumbing pipes or electrical wiring in the way of the shorter route? Was your home added on to? This is a DIY project & not a contractor job, but DH & DD are both handy DIY-ers.
The washer and dryer are right next to the wall behind the back door. They sit sideways against the wall....yeah, now that I think about it the washer is nearer the wall. Maybe it IS there for a reason. ...plumbing?.. gah... DH has to (regularly go under the house hand clean the hanging, extremely long tubing to be free of lint. Add to that there is about a foot of crawl space under there. Not a happy man. **If there are any newly weds or future home owners reading this thread: Don't say "yes" just to make her happy. We bought the 2nd house we saw, just because I liked it. I was so stupid. Lemons come with shingle roofs too. And for God's sake, if they say "as is", run! I don't even want to get started on buying lemons! If you add up what we've bought we already own a whole friggin orchard!
Maybe just a dryer vent company if you decide not to take it on yourselves..Let me knwo if you need a couple of references. Since I'm in property management, I've weeded through alot of crappy vendors..
No{quote]Honestly, I'm not comfortable drilling a hole in the back of my house but I feel this is a fire safety issue. And I'm sure my dryer would operate better if it were corrected![/QUOTE]Yes it could be a fire hazard and yes your dryer would work better.
DH wants to use that... whats it called. The hard PVC pipe in it's place. My inner child/queen says buy a new house but since this one apparently isn't disposable we can't do that.
NC Building Code now requires hard pipe no longer than 45 feet for dryer venting. The older uninsulated flexible duct connectors can only be used to attach the dryer to the duct under the house. When calculating the total length of pipe used, you must add 5 feet for every 45 degree elbow and 10 feet for every 90 degree elbow. I would get hard pipe and install it in place of the flexible duct, that should help the clogging issue.
Also, when you are installing the pipe, make sure you put the seams of the pipe so that nothing is pointing towards the dryer (this is so that lint doesn't get hung up). The crimped end of the pipe should insert into the non-crimped end flowing towards the end cap and away from the dryer. I hope this is not confusing.
