How to SUPER CLEAN Your Dryer and Dryer Vents!

in this video I'm going to show you how to super clean your dryer and your dryer vents and we're going to do it right now dryer maintenance is something that I have personally been putting off and I know a lot of other people do the same thing you get busy you remodel your entire house whatever the case and you put it off but it's really important so recently I just reattached all of my dryer vents and I made sure that all of these seams were nice and taped up and I added a strap here so that the pipe wouldn't move around and disconnect and I know that I have a nice solid sealed up vent for my dryer but now I want to clean it like crazy I'm going to start with the most basic thing that you could do and go to I guess the most extreme thing that you could do to clean it and it's pretty important for two reasons because of the dryer lint the dryer lint can clog up and in some cases definitely affect the performance of your dryer but in extreme cases it can just break your dryer if that exhaust is blocked up it will also be dangerous and let me show you why so on my dryer the lint trap is actually in here when you open the door some of them will be up top but mine is is right here and as it says right here clean filter after each use this is a regular load of laundry and you can see if you don't clean this after every use this is going to build up really quick um so I'm going to take this off so if you have this dryer lint all built up in your dryer and in your vents one little spark can get that to just go up and Flame and this is not to scare you at all but it's to show you how flamable this stuff is so obviously you don't want that built up anywhere in your house and that's another reason I sealed up the vents was so that it didn't just blow into my crawl space and in my basement and it can also clog up your furnace has an intake it can clog that up and just cause all kinds of issues so that's why we're cleaning it out today first step I'm going to unplug the dryer Safety First make sure you clean this every single time and I'm going to clean this up a little more have some lint stuck here a good place to start is if you hold this open you can see there's a lot of lint stuck in here and then if you look even further down you can see that there's a ton sitting on the bottom there if you have a vacuum with a long attachment like this you you can try sneaking it in there and getting all that builtup lint out of there but I'm going to use something else I'm going to use this attachment that I found online I'll leave a link to all of the stuff that I use in this video in the description I'm not sponsored by any other products by the way but this thing looks like it's going to do a good job so I'm going to use this vacuum I cleaned it out so we can see how much lint I actually get and it'll fit in here this will also fit a regular size shop vac and any kind of vacuum that you might have you should be able to make it work so let's hook this up and start getting that lint out of there here's something else I'm going to use I'm going to use this first actually this is a little broom it looks like a Chimney Sweeper and I'm just going to go in here and kind of loosen up all this [Music] lint and that way I can suck it out with the vacuum now this is going to be a little tricky just because this door and it's really tight this is nice and long it can get around these Corners here just loosen all that up turn the vacuum on and clean it up all right that actually got a lot out of here let's go a step further though so that did a pretty good job you could do that with just the stuff you have in your house probably or you could get that adapter but what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to take this entire piece out so I can clean it better on the inside there's a philli screw right here right here and right here we're going to take those out just don't lose those screws oh quarter we're already making money now I pull it out this way now I'm just going to leave this here you can see right here there's a couple connectors I'm just not going to disconnect those this is just on mine yours might be different but I can pull this out a little bit like that and I'll be able to clean up all of this lint in here and then this piece I'm going to grab and pull straight up so I got a to pull it out a little bit like this and then I can pull that up now you can see on here you have all this lint and dirt we have some change 26 Cent so far Red Bull tab more dirt now I have a lot more access to the inside here to scrape this wall of all that lint and suck it all out the vacuum all right let's start cleaning I'm actually going to reach right in here that's not a surprise bobby pin find those all over the house I'm just going to put everything in this vacuum except for this change put that in my piggy bank before I start going crazy with the vacuum I'm going to make sure these screws are accounted for so I don't suck them up tags all right [Music] see [Music] now I'll try and get in here and really scrape that back wall get all that loose lint off here [Music] careful because some of these edges might be sharp by the way yeah this brush definitely works good to loosen this stuff up okay suck [Music] up just using a small Flathead to get spots like that that are really stuck on and that's looking pretty clean good I tried to get in here too and that little crease right there got as much of that as I could and these two pieces now we can reinstall them now these are going to go back in same way they came out going to clip right back under this metal there we go just take note as you're removing this stuff how they go back in and on some dryers this whole piece comes right out and there's a long piece attached to this just depends on what kind of dryer you have make sure those wires don't get pinched I can reinstall that oh to make sure this is like down like this the door gets stopped right here and that was having trouble staying closed before I cleaned all this up got all the stuff out of there so we don't have an issue I can put those screws back in here's something you could use to clean this stuff especially this caked on stuff like right here it's an old toothbrush just don't go putting it back in the uh toothbrush holder if you really wanted to you can get some cleaner and really clean this up this stuff is a little caked on there I'll just loosen it up with my flathead screwdriver there we go scrape it a little bit that'll do the same thing as if we were to use some cleaner as long as it comes [Music] off so put the filter back in we can move on now I'm going to pull the dryer out it depends on how your vent is just be careful don't pull it out too far and break something mine is pretty flexible and then I'm going to take the hose off the back on mine I just have this hose clamp that I can loosen up and I can take this hose right off just like that now we're going to spin the dryer around just so you can see I'm going to do some stuff on the back side here so on the back of the dryer if your lint trap is on the top you might have a large tube kind of thing that goes like this and you can take screws off and pull that whole thing off and you're probably going to find a bunch of lint in there that you can clean out but with this style dryer the only place that the lint is going to be is right at the bottom here and you can see that there is a little bit in there and if you look all the way back it's a straight shot to the front of the dryer so I can just clean this out and the entire dryer should be clean I can see where the lint is built up so I can just use this to get it and then suck it out with the [Applause] vacuum now I'm going to clean out the exhaust pipe so this goes right out through my crawl space and I've seen people clean this a couple different ways one is you use like a leaf blower and you put it in the bottom here and just blow out as much as you can now that is going to be stronger uh the air moving with a leaf blower I would assume than a dryer but as you saw that lint can get really stuck to things and I'm sure that there's some buildup in here I think these are probably between 10 and 20 years old and I have haven't cleaned them at all so we'll see how bad they are I'm not sure but on the bottom here you can see for the purposes of this video I put a little strap here and that might not be a bad idea if your vent is loose just to keep it in place what I'm going to use is this little device right here this is like a brush made for 4-in duct work it's going to go right in here and this comes in different lengths so this one's a 30-footer it has several of these lengths that you just add as you go you put the other end on a drill and this will go around and scrape the sides of the vents hopefully I'm going to be able to get around this is very flexible I'll be able to get around all these I think there's two 90° elbows um and I've never used one of these I've seen them in action and I'm kind of excited to use it uh so what I've done is is I've taken this little Paint Bucket and you can actually buy a kit that comes with a little adapter but I'm going to put this right in here and then I'm going to put this take this hose clamp off put this right here and then I can attach my hose right to this hole so I'll work from the inside work all the way out and as I clean this the vacuum should suck out all the lint that's in there and you should be able to see it because this is clear so before we do that I want to see if we can get a look at the inside so we can see what it looks like before and then we can see what it looks like after so there's a big pile right there so this is where the dryer vent comes out on the outside and if you take a look up in here you can see that this flap is wide open and that's not ideal one way to fix that or to help that situation would be to put something like this on here sometimes referred to as a squirrel cage the only thing about that is these are notorious for clogging up as well so every now and again take it off clean it out if you you do have one of those but after I'm done cleaning out this pipe I'm going to try and clean all that out so that flap closes and I might actually put this on maybe that'll help because I don't know if those clumps in there are caused by mice or if they're just buildup so they could definitely get in there anyways let's take a look oh yeah whole bunch right there this definitely needs to be cleaned okay well obviously this is pretty clogged up a lot more clogged up than I thought so let's clean it out this little bit right here goes to the drill I'll use that so I don't damage these right here you I suppose you could do that but it should be easy enough to do that and then take it off and as I do this I'm actually so I'm going to put this in this like this the vacuum will go here and then as I do this I'm actually going to wrap electrical tape around these pieces because as you could imagine I don't want to lose them in the PIP PPE and have to take it apart and retrieve them so another thing is to make sure you're going clockwise with the drill because otherwise you could unscrew these going the other way so electrical tape we'll start with two of these and I'm going to leave a little tab on the electrical tape so it'll make it easy to take apart and I turn the vacuum on start going and just keep adding pieces until I get pretty much to the outside you will feel some resistance on the '90s uh in tight spots like that um but once you hit outside you should be able to feel it I don't think I'll be able to get through that vent out there so I should be able to tell if not we'll jump out there and take a look but here we go turn the vacuum on and start cleaning [Music] oh boy already a bunch right [Music] there that was a big Clump that came out of there already wonder if that big one up there just fell when I pulled the camera out I'm going to pull this back back out a little bit to see if I can get past that 90 to see if I can drop some of that lint down in here otherwise I think I'm just pushing it and letting it sit there I think a lot is going to come back out when we pull it down so I'll start to see if I can get some clumps down there we [Music] go yeah definitely getting a lot of lint out out of there I can see it through that I'm glad this is clear okay I don't know if you notice but I am going kind of slow at some points I'm working my way back and forth just to try and clean out as much as I I can okay so I'm at the end there wasn't a ton of lint in the bucket out there um so I have a feeling as I pull this in I'm going to do the exact same thing spinning clockwise and taking these off one by one and hoping to pull all that back and I think I'm going to pull a lot of lint through that vacuum so these really tighten up in there going have to use pliers on some of them there we go okay back to business there we go look at [Music] that that's it so we got some lint that missed the bucket and before I go checking out seeing how we did on the inside of the pipe I'm going to take a hooked pick and try and clean some of this lint here so I can get this door to actually close look at that that lint like Frozen the humidity hits it and it starts clumping so that's what I want to get out of there let's see I don't know if it's going to happen I don't know if I'm going to get that to shut there's a lot of t on that the other thing is this is a good way for cold air to come into the house you know I think it's just so packed in there at the top all right after a lot of uh pulling this lint out of here I finally got it so it's closed now so as the dryer goes it'll lift open like this and then it'll shut that's how it's supposed to be awesome now I don't have to use that squirrel cage cuz I don't like those they get all clogged up and if you forget then you got problems so good let's check out the inside of this pipe see how we did okay looking pretty clean there that looks way cleaner let's see once we get up over this 90 there we go all the way to the flapper cool now before we reconnect this all together I just for fun want to try to measure the air flow with an anomet I did this in a previous video where I resealed all the pipes and I got a comment that said I should measure the air flow from the back of the dryer to get the max amount of air flow and see what it reads and then I can test it outside to see before and after before it was reading about 7 m/s so after cleaning we'll see if that has changed and just out of curiosity we can see what's coming out right from the back of the dryer I hold this here if I hold it that far away the about 7 7 to 7 and 1/2 but you'll see as I get closer it's going to be hard to get a reading so eight I could go 1 m/ second at a time that's nine because that's restricting the air flow and pushing more through the fins if I block it up [Music] completely almost 11 about 11 for the person that commented there you go like I said it was read about 7 m/ second before it was cleaned let's see how it did after we'll hook all this back up and check it out looks like about 8 m/ second so improved about a m per second or more that's awesome okay here's the big reveal let's see how much lint came out of the dryer and the vent yeah pretty good amount so this isn't even the dryer is probably two years old the pipe like I said maybe 10 or 20 years old you may have a dryer and vents that haven't been cleaned in way longer than that so if that's the case I hope this video helps if you want to see more videos like this I have a ton on my channel and if you haven't subscribed yet definitely consider it for videos like this and a ton of home repair stuff thanks for watching we'll see you on the next one

Channel: The Fixer

Views: 532,192

Keywords: the fixer, home repair, super clean dryer vent, dryer vent, vent trap brush, power tool cleaning, the fixer home repair, how to clean dryer vents, how to clean a clogged dryer vent, dryer vent cleaning tool

Id: lJv1Eu77cHM

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2024