I own a home built in 2003. The laundry room is in the middle of the house, but also adjacent to the garage, I live in Florida.
The dryer venting system is close to the floor, turns, 90 degrees, goes straight up, and into the attic. In the attic it does a 45 degree bed and travels directly to the roof. The vent is somewhere between 18 and 20 feet long.
I have had a long history of dryers lasting only a short time. I typically get about 2-3 years out of a dryer. The last dryer that died, I took apart and the dryer had all kinds of lint on the internal parts. My prejudice is that since the vent does not work very well, the lint gets blown back into the dryer, and kills it.
BTW, I regularly clean the dryer vent with one of those brush, drill and extension flexible pole things. I clean it about every 6 months and just did it the other day.
So my current dryer is acting up. When vented to the duct, clothes will dry after about 4 or 5 70 minute cycles. When I vent directly into the garage, the clothes dry in about 50 mins. (This is done by running the flexible hose from the dryer through a door open to the garage.)
What can be done here? Should I redo the duct through the roof? Should I pursue venting directly into the garage? Who is qualified to do this kind of work? I don't think I can pull this one off myself.
Again, we live in Florida so it has not been bad leaving the door to the garage open as it has been pretty cool, but in the summer this would stress our AC unit and run up our electric bill.
Best Answer
Add both a secondary lint trap and a dryer duct booster fan. Fantech and Tjernlund are a couple brands to help you start your search.
Also, replacing any easily accessible flexible duct with rigid ducts can help prevent lint from building up.
Finally, check that the exhaust louver/vent cap outside isn't filled with lint too. Sometimes contractors use dual use intake/exhaust vents and forget to take the intake screen/mesh/filter out that is used to keep bugs from flying inside when used as an intake.