infiniteMPG wrote in news:13e9d44d-37aa-4968-ba26-
:

Our clothes drier isn't very old and over the last year has slowly
taken more and more time to dry a load of clothes. The drier appears
fully functional, the heat seems to get quite hot, and we keep the
lint trap cleaned. We're suspecting the duct might be clogged up.
The round flexible drier duct hooks up to an outlet in the utility
room at the base of the wall. We're assuming there is some sort of
duct running up thru the wall and I have seen the round duct coming
from the wall up to the duct going thru the roof.

Just not sure how to go about tackling trying to clean this out.

Any hints or things to watch out for?

Thanks!

First, where does it exit to outside? See if that's blocked with lint,
birds nest, bees nest, etc. How does the air feel coming out. You
probably have no reference for that but if it has flaps they should open
to their max. If flap is not opening, see if it opens freely with you
fingers. If it does but opens weakly with dryer on then, yea, you either
have a clog or disconnected hose.

Next disco vent from dryer. How does air directly from the dryer feel?
Strong? If not, you need to pull panels from behind dryer and clean out
passages.

If above is all good then ductwork is suspect. You could try the Shop-
Vac or leaf blower thing recommended next. My guess is the vac may get a
lot but I would not feel comfortable with just that. If there is flex vs
smooth ductwork beyond where the dryer commects to it, the flex ridges
tend to collect lint and it gets caked being combined with moisture. It
holds on pretty good to the ductwork. The leaf blower thing I've never
tried but some happy campers in this NG say it worked for their
particular case.

Truly cleaning the duct pipe means you have to run a 4" duct brush
through it BUT first you have to determine what kind of duct it is. May
have to go into attic or crawlspace to see. It should connect to the
outside vent maybe 6" inside the exterior wall. If it's that tin foil
flex, running a duct work brush, even the nylon ones, will punch a
zillion little holes in it as it runs through. The rigid flex duct and
solid plastic pipe is fine to run a brush through.

Oh, and by the way. If it's that plastic flex it's a fire hazard. May
have been OK to install at one time but it's illegal now.