Have you noticed that a load of clothes that used to take 30 minutes in the dryer now takes 2 hours? It could be due to a blocked dryer vent. Most people don’t pay attention to the drying time, thus wasting a lot of energy and money.
The cheapest, and best $1 dryer vent cleaning
If you don’t clean your dryer vent, not only may it cause a fire, but it also will take longer to dry and cost more energy and money.
I will compare those tools you can buy from home depot with my own $1 solution and let you know which tools will work better for your situation.
I am going to show you how to do it whether you have an easy short duct or you have a very long or difficult duct such as this periscope. No matter which other tools you use, you can also use my rope method along with those tools to get to the hard-to-reach areas, because pulling is always easier than pushing.
If you don’t own a blower, see if there are weekly gardeners blowing the leaves on your street, even if they are hired by your neighbors, just give them a bottle of water for them to rest for 10 minutes so that you can borrow their blower to clean the duct.
Index
0:00 dryer vent cleaning saves energy
0:22 will demo cleaning kits, periscope
0:58 make $1 brush
2:18 home depot $10 brush
2:48 use 12 feet poles to clean 16 feet duct
3:13 periscope problem of 180 degree
4:02 long & difficult turns both inside and outside
4:22 rope solution: both push and pull
4:42 tennis ball goes through periscope
5:42 leaf blower blows ball
6:34 attach and pull brush
7:00 blow lint
One viewer had the advice using the rod-type lint cleaning: “NEVER put the drill in reverse” or else the rods are lost. Yes, if your duct is relative straight from outside, the rods type would work. Here are the product links:
- LintEater Cleaning System https://amzn.to/2TMjMQ4
- LintEater Cleaning extension rods https://amzn.to/2HZvLZi
- Deflecto Dryer Duct Cleaning Kit https://amzn.to/2E2mXxY
The video mentioned that you can get the RYOBI Leaf blowers with 440 CFM at home depot. You may also order others from Amazon. For example,
BLACK+DECKER Leaf Blower with 450 cfm currently sell at $40
https://amzn.to/3lmYCFm
another leaf blower has 530 CFM currently also sell at $40
https://amzn.to/2I15XwM
We know when dryer vent is blocked, it costs more energy. Even though the cost increase is small each time and you don’t see it until next bill, since this is a recurring cost, it can add up quickly. We have a long 20 feet dryer vent running from laundry room to outside of the house. Most professional duct cleaning service charges at least $100, because of the turns of the duct and the periscope connecting the duct, we will have to spend more than $200. When the professionals use the flexible rods to go through the periscope and bending ducts, there is possibility they will loosen or damage the ducts, but you won’t find out until many years later. My first tip is that I use “poll” rather than “push”, this provides optimal strength and it will not cause any damage. The second tip from my experiment is that vacuum method is fine with short duct, it does not perform well for long duct because the earth atmosphere pressure only has maximum of 14.7 PSI no matter how good the manufacturer is.