The house was built in the mid 80's and the couple we bought it from were older and dealing with some health issues so a blocked vent seemed pretty likely. When we bought the house I had not really taken notice of the dryer vent location. It turned out that is was in is pretty far from the outside wall and makes about 4 90 degree turns as it goes under the house slab and comes out outside the house where the tube rises out of the ground about 2 1/2 feet. The run is about 18 feet or so.
I bought 3 of the standard vent cleaners you attach to a drill and hooked them together. I ran that through the vent but got nothing out except maybe a piece of fuzz. I was baffled a bit and did some more research to find out that the drier is tuned to a max "effective" run of 25 feet. The "effective" part relates to adding additional feet on for each turn in the run. Each turn results in reducing flow so the formula attempts to tell you what an equivalent straight run would be.
Our effective run is somewhat over that 25 feet so at this point I made the guess that this was the problem. I was a bit upset that the dryer people would tune things so close to this but I know it is a safety item since dryer fires have causes plenty of damage and deaths. So I just accepted this and started looking for solutions.
I had pondered rerouting straight up through the roof but after days of thought I decided that putting a hole in the roof was not what I wanted to do. It would be one more item which could leak and cause headaches down the road and with the high winds and rain we will experience here it just seemed like the wrong choice.
I considered rerouting through the attic and out but still end up with a long run which might not work. I like this idea a little though since I get rid of a vertical pipe popping out of the ground around 12" from the foundation. I still think that pipe is going to get damaged at some point.
I started to look for a way to route through the walls and out the side but it would not be easy. It may be possible but I think that this solution will end up need to protrude into a room. I may look into this or the prior idea at some point but but I found a different solution (or I thought I did).
In my research I ran across dryer vent boosters. These are fans built to hook into your dryer vent and boost the velocity of the air resulting in being able to have longer vent runs. I researched this for a while and decided on an Acme Miami 9460 . This choice was primarily based upon my desire to keep the vent booster inside and I didn't want to put another lint trap in before the booster. I wanted to plumb the booster in at the laundry room since it either needed to be there or outside since the vent goes under the slab. The benefits of this particular brand of vent booster include the motor being out of the airflow (so as to not get clogged) and the manufacturer allowing installs at the dryer and not requiring an upstream lint trap.
I went ahead and ordered it and had been trying to figure out how I wanted to install it. The way it ships is that is that it sits on feet on the floor and plugs in to a standard wall outlet. The outlet wasn't a problem (ok, until I realized that there was only a single plug in the outlet in the laundry room which was taken by the washing machine). The problem was that this would result in needing to bump the appliances out from the wall more and space was limited. I finally decided upon a short/mid-term solution that was acceptable to my wife. I mounted it on a board above the dryer and relocated the air pressure switch onto the board in a horizontal position as instructions indicated. This mounting position did result in a couple extra feet of vent to rise from the dryer to the booster and back down but the booster should handle the the effective increase. I did make one enhancement to reduce the run and extra space behind the dryer by using a MagVent attachement. This meant I didn't have any substantial extra soft vent line laying behind things. It seems to work pretty nice as long as you get it tightened really well on the dryer side.
So after about 3 days of toying with everything needed, I had it in place one night and we just tested it quick by turning the dryer on and off. It seemed ok.
The next day I got a text from my wife saying after 40 minutes it did the same thing as before. Put out a code indicating a blockage. ARGGG.
So that put me into "what went wrong" and "what do I do next" mode because continuing to vent into a water trap filter in the house was not a long term solution.
I pondered all kinds of potential issues and solutions and none of them really seemed right. I finally had an "aha" moment and told the wife that I would be right back. I went out to the garage and got the electric leaf blower I borrowed from my parents. My wife gave me the "ah, are you sure look" and I said yes. I asked her is she wanted to run the blower or go outside and monitor the vent. She decided to run the blower. We called each other on the phone and I told her to let it rip. For a couple seconds nothing happened but then I saw some lint coming out and the sound from the vent got odd. I grabbed the vent cover and yanked it off. As the vent cover was coming off a large wad of lint came out. I guess it would fill a gallon bag or maybe even another half gallon.
In retrospect, I think the vent cleaner brush may have loosened stuff but it wasn't able to move the lint up the vertical rise from under the house.
The next dryer uses work fine with the booster in place. It may "work" without the booster but the dry times we have right now are really good - about 30-45 minutes. I think those would increase without the booster. We may still want to run the brush back through again and blow it out since I don't know how much might remain. I will say I won't put my face in front of the vent during that process. Also, I would NEVER use the blower from the outside in unless you want to make someone mad.. I'm glad I didn't make that mistake this time!
Here is the Acme Miami 9460 mounted on the wall. We still need to paint that room so I will clean up the look a bit at that point. The surge suppressor is the solution to only have 1 outlet and anyways I like to put things with electronics on a surge suppressor anyways. Not the prettiest of work but we are happy to be venting outside again.
Here is a behind the dryer view of the MagVent connection. Simply pulling the dryer out with a nice tug cause the coupling to disengage. I really like this so far. I was concerned about adequate sealing but so far it is ok. the pipe in this picture is the diagonal pipe in the picture above.
Scott
Jame 1 2-3
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
