How to Clean a Dryer Vent

Video Transcript

"Hey, I'm Tim Gipson, I'm going to talk to you about how to clean your dryer vent. Now when you need to do a thorough cleaning usually you get some evidence, so as you can see on this door here, we're starting to get some of the lint built up around the edges, and that's a good indication that you're losing some of the airflow out the vent of your dryer. And this particular model - it has a front ended vent and we pull this screen out. This is something that you should clean and clean out every time you do a load. So whenever you put a new load in, you want to run your fingers along here and you want to make sure that all this is cleaned out. And it's a good idea, you can see here you get some accumulation in the filter over here that's just some dirt and particles. So, you know, it's something you may just want to bang out or you can get a screwdriver or just use your finger. Just try to clean those areas out, keep your filter efficient. Now, the other thing you'll notice there's a little bit deeper cleaner that we can do on this filter in the front here. Now this particular filter model has two screws. And even with this screen you'll still get a lot of accumulation of your lint even on the front end of this. So you can take your Phillips screwdriver and we can actually remove this vent and this whole plastic piece will come off. And what that will allow you to do is actually to get down inside here and clean this out. Now it's very important if you're doing this, there tends to be some sharp metal edges down there. So you want to make sure you have a glove on your hand if you do before you go reaching down in there to pull that lint out. And you can also use a electric static duster a lot of times to put that down in there. And that will actually pull a lot of that out. Now beyond that if you're still having some suction problems or some airflow problems with your dryer and it's not drying, the clothes are staying damp, you may need to pull this out and actually clean out between the vent of the dryer and the vent that goes into your wall. Then also there are times that you'll want a thorough cleaning of that whole duct system, and there are companies that will do that and actually go in and completely clear the line as it exhausts out to the side. And if you have a particularly long dust exhaust line, that might be something that you want to consider doing. So I'm Tim Gipson and that's how to clean your dryer."