How to Vent a Clothes Dryer | Ask This Old House

[Music] so Richard upon moving in I took on a lot of projects around here one of them being which I decided to tear apart and clean out the dryer vent very good discovered it was pretty clogged okay and there's something else I'd like you to see okay seeing an electric dryer right here the dryer vent goes right here into the wall does it go right outside you'd think so it doesn't let me show you hi all right so here we are in the basement underneath the dryer this here's the exterior wall that we saw when we were originally upstairs yeah you can see the duct from the dryer comes down makes a turn comes all the way over here to turn to go up to make another turn and then come all the way back here yikes weird vents through the exterior that's like 40 feet 37 I measure it all right well there's a lot I do not like about just this from a basic ductwork standpoint you've got a dryer upstairs it's an electric dryer and that air is filled with temperature and moisture a little bit of lint pushing down through this duct work and moving along here any lint might want to fall out to the bottom now it comes along horizontal at this it starts to pitch right here see it down here so that means any lint could settle right here now it gets to here there's an elbow that's like a perfect lint trap so that Forsyth at it would never be strong enough to push the lint up and out of the building so it's gonna should collect right here and I can confirm when I tore it apart to clean it it did collect and was a good closet well if they're meant to right what I don't get is how this could get this way meaning if you had a dryer right here why they wouldn't just pick it to come and dis vent it to outside so I mean here's an old duct here look at this you know here's a dryer vent and there's a wire next to it said I wonder if they ever had the dryer right here originally it would have had an elbow on it going right onto that ductwork that would've been perfect it would have been a perfect straight line to outside with pitch okay I wonder if they abandon that dryer location and moves it to here this was probably the easiest thing for them to do possibly it was in its current configuration when we move but quite possibly well this ductwork is gonna give you fits it's gonna keep on clogging I want to look at if we can just vent it directed outside the shortest distance between two points is a straight line that'd be great all right so on this side of the building pretty wide open canvas you can see the window from the laundry right here that means our dryer would be right about here we put the dryer vent right there probably once at a cable box electrical meter and the exhaust from the fireplace right here I mean there's no prohibition against putting it right there great let's grab some tools all right all right first thing we want to do is to drill a hole through your building for the vent in the correct place they sawed off the back of the dryer there'll be a four inch galvanized smoke pipe elbow that'll stick on to the back right here and that helps us now determine our height so we'll be about six inches off the finish floor to Center and our wall wants to be right here so that wants to be about what about two inches two and a quarter inches from the back wall six and two and a quarter so here's our pilot hole right here and this is vinyl siding so a good tip is to actually start the drill bit in Reverse so we just score the vinyl carefully this is a four and eighth inch hole saw switch the drill make sure we get a clean cut from both sides we'll finish the cut on the inside all right so the termination the outside of the building would look like this and it has these one directional louvers that'll open when the fan is on and close when it's not a really nice optional critter cover they'll go over the top of them all right so now we need the measurement from inside here with a straight piece of pipe like this is that galvanized duct right here we've got to cut this to length to fit onto that elbow so it is at the end of it it'll bring us right to about 12 inches right here to the side and then I take the measurement here and that's five to five and a quarter so we need 17 to cord I'm gonna make that a little bit heavy so we make sure the machine stays off the walls it doesn't bother great I'm gonna see all the connections with a foil tape not duct tape okay don't you pass it in to me from outside thank you beautiful fit lovely all right let's muscle it in come to me a little bit more slow keep coming in keep coming in keep coming push now okay right there good now let me just snug up this clamp let's just get this old maze of duct work out of your basement how do we do after a couple years so too bad okay no no better take that here we go look at that good riddance okay just pull that down send it right down the hole there you go finally we'll plug up that old vent to outside all right time to put you back in business plug you in the new duct runs outside that lint doesn't stand a chance great alright now any dry there's one more thing people always forget about there's a lint filter somewhere all right see the down bar down the bottom sometimes it's in the door in your case is right here so let's see how you've done oh boy you still got some work to do oh boy all right I'll leave you to it great all right my friend thanks for coming ok thanks for watching this whole house has gotten a video for just about every home-improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you're likely to see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our newest videos writing your feet

Channel: This Old House

Views: 791,333

Rating: 4.8842268 out of 5

Keywords: richard trethewey, plumbing, vent, dryer, appliances, upgrade, This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Kevin o’connor, kevin o'connor house, kevin o'connor this old house, kevin o'connor ask this old house, kevin o'connor interview, home renovation ideas on a budget

Id: mKLot_EgcJw

Length: 7min 29sec (449 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 27 2019