The Fascinating World of Dryer Lint

It's not unusual for home inspectors to find dryer ducts packed with lint in the course of an inspection. When they do, they strongly recommend dryer duct cleaning. This is not a trivial issue because the lint is potentially combustible and a somewhat common source of house fires.

Do Your Clothes Take Forever to Dry?

But with that knowledge, it still didn't occur to Norris to have the dryer vents cleaned at his home or the rental condo he owns. Shortly after a new tenant moved into his condo last year, they called to say that his clothes hadn't dried after 3 hours. When Norris disconnected the dryer duct, he pulled out the pile of packed lint pictured below.

Call a Duct Cleaning Service

There are a lot of good companies that provide dryer duct cleaning services. Norris called Delintz. Their tech started with the lint trap and the duct within the dryer cabinet itself. He pulled out another wad of lint like in the photo above. Following that, he pulled 2 or 3 times that amount from the vent exiting the ceiling and extending out the building's roof. In many cases, you can probably get much of the lint out of vent yourself, but a company like Delintz has specialized equipment which makes this easier. The $90 fee Norris paid included the tech climbing on the roof of the 2-story building to make sure the duct and vent cap at the roof line were clear. Now the clothes dry in less than 30 minutes rather than 3 hours...so we're saving the planet too. This is an easy maintenance issue to forget about but also an easy problem to solve. Don't neglect it.

dryer lint, home inspection

Search the A4HB site

Agents for Homebuyers • 4450 Arapahoe Ave, Ste 100 • Boulder CO 80303
Phone: 303-448-8808 • Contact the A4HB team

Home page image @ 2017 thinairphotography.com