Dryer Vents in South Salt Lake's Older Houses

The ducting archaeology of an old basement

What we find under these houses is layered. A section of rigid metal from one decade, a length of white plastic flex from another, foil accordion hose where somebody needed to get around a beam, and joints held together with duct tape rather than foil tape and clamps. Each material change is a step in the duct where lint catches, and every accordion section is a ribbed surface that lint grabs onto along its whole length. Plastic and foil flexible duct are not appropriate for a dryer at all: they sag, they crush, and they are combustible.

Then there is the route. A basement laundry frequently has to travel a long way to reach an exterior wall, threading between joists with several turns, and the final section often exits at the rim joist close to ground level where it can be blocked by soil, snow, shrubs or a deck built over it years later.

What the machine is telling you

Drying times creeping up is the earliest signal and the one people rationalize away. A humid, warm laundry room while the dryer runs means moist air is not leaving the building. Clothes that come out hot but damp mean the machine is heating fine and the moisture has nowhere to go. If the dryer trips its thermal cutout partway through a cycle, the restriction has become severe and the appliance is protecting itself.

How we clean and what we fix while we are there

Rotary brush on flexible rods driven the full length, with a vacuum capturing what comes back, so the lint ends up in our machine rather than your basement. Then the outside termination: does the flap open freely, is it clear of soil and vegetation, has anyone screened it over. On the narrow lots South Salt Lake was platted with, that hood often ends up in a side yard a few feet from a fence or the neighbor's wall, where the discharge has nowhere to disperse and the lint settles straight back onto the louvers. A hood caked from the outside restricts the duct just as effectively as a blockage inside it. Finally the connection behind the appliance, which is where crushed flexible hose does the most damage because the dryer has been pushed back against the wall.

Where the duct material or the route is the underlying problem, we will say so and quote replacing the bad sections in rigid metal with properly sealed joints. That is a one-time fix. Cleaning a plastic accordion duct every year is not a fix, it is a subscription.