Cleaning out the dryer vent hose

lorist202

Can I do this myself?  DH is not handy, so it's me or the appliance man.  I have a gas dryer if that makes any difference.

If you've done it yourself, can you give me some tips? 

TIA

skhk

good

 

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Magdala9

I have an electric dryer and clean out the vent annually.  I pull the dryer out as far as the cord will allow and lay down a drop cloth.  I also put a fresh bag into the vaccuum cleaner.  When I remove the vent, stuff falls all over the drop cloth, I then fold up the drop cloth into a sack and take it outside to shake out the mess into the trash can.  I then vaccuum the the area behind the dryer and vacuum the coils with the upholstery attachment. 

I have no experience with gas dryers.

jobiann

This reminds me that I need to do this!! Someone just mentioned a dryer fire the other day.

jabu814

We just bought a new dryer, and the guy who delivered it said to take off the hose and basically shove the hose of a shopvac up as far as it goes...don't know anything about removing the hose or anything though.

curlylocks3

We did it ourselves.  The vent hose on ours tore (and was puffing lint everywhere) so we cleaned it at the same time.  We just vacuumed it out.  No real tips, except that the hose material seems kind of flimsy and tore the rest of the way in our efforts to remove it, so I'd be prepared to have to replace it.  The prior owners had used that duct-tape type stuff to attach it to the vent and the dryer and that might have been part of it.  Oh and make sure you have one of those short screwdrivers- DH laughed at me when I wanted to get one and then we got home and found out we couldn't get a good grip/angle with the regular length one.

Oh, and don't forget to solidly clean the ENTIRE dryer.  Ours has a little opening on the back you can unscrew and vacuum the interior.  We just had to have an appliance repair guy come out and replace the bearing on our dryer and he commented that most people forget to do that part (aka our former owners, don't think they ever cleaned a single appliance).