Quote:
Originally Posted by Choro&Swing
I don’t know about your house, but in my house, the dryer vent pipe is metal and goes straight up the wall, through the attic, and onto the roof. It’s difficult for lint to catch on it, unlike a long, flexible plastic dryer hose that snakes through an attic and comes out of a wall twenty feet away. I empty the lint trap after every dryer load. I assume that you do, too.
Have you noticed that it is taking longer for your clothes to dry than it used to, or that they used to get dry at one setting, but now they don’t? Probably not.
If you have a metal vent pipe with a clear run, if you clean your link trap faithfully, and if your dryer is working normally, you really don’t need your dryer vent pipe cleaned, especially if you don’t use the hot setting on your dryer (I never do—it’s hard on the clothes). How is it going to catch on fire if the maximum air temperature is nowhere near the temperature needed for combustion? Companies are happy to clean the pipe for you, but you are wasting your money. Dryer lint traps these days tend to be very effective.
As for cleaning your heating and air conditioning pipes, that is also really unnecessary so long as you replace the air filter a couple times a year, especially if it’s a high quality filter. The filter catches nearly everything. If your HVAC system is like mine, here is what you have. There is a big return air grille in your living room near the garage. That sucks air down a big rectangular foil-covered fiberglass board duct about eight feet to the air filter, where almost any dust is filtered out. You would need several inches of dust on those duct walls to impede the air flow, and that is not going to happen.
After being filtered, the dust-free air is sent by fan back up a similar fiberglass board duct into the attic, where it is distributed into several round flexible pipes with wire springs inside to keep them from collapsing. These have plastic walls on both the inside and the outside and an inch of fiberglass in between the layers of plastic. Even if there WERE dust in that air, it isn’t going to easily stick to the plastic.
Thus, having your HVAC system pipes cleaned is really money down the drain. The companies will happily take your money, but it is a triumph of advertising over necessity. There is also some danger that vacuuming out the rectangular fiberglass board pipes can loosen fiberglass on the walls of that pipe and allow it to float through the ducts and into the air and then into your lungs. (This fiberglass board is made from a mixture of fiberglass and glue with thin foil on the outside. The inside is bare fiberglass. Rubbing it can break off pieces of this glass fiber. Your attic is filled with these glass fibers, and this fiberglass dust is quite unhealthy.
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I agree that cleaning the HVAC ducts is a water of money, and it could result in the contractor puncturing a flexible duct.
But, I don't agree that cleaning a dryer vent is never needed. There are many ways that the dryer vent can become clogged and can actually cause a fire in the house. Humidity can cause the lint to clump together and collect in a vent pipe fitting, birds can build a nest in the gooseneck fitting on the roof, or a wasp nest can be constructed there. The duct is metal, but there can be a hole or a fitting separation that allows hot air to escape and cause a fire. If a dryer is getting hot but taking a long time to dry clothes, the vent needs to be inspected and cleaned out. A clogged dryer vent definitely has the potential to cause a house fire.
Here is a statistic from the NFPA.
According to the National Fire Protection Association, nearly 17,000 home clothes dryer fires are reported each year. These clothes dryer fires cause around 51 deaths, 380 injuries, and $236 million in property loss. Unsurprisingly, the leading cause of these fires, at 34%, is the failure to clean dryer vents.Jan 26, 2017