Finding out how often to clean a dryer vent could be the one thing that saves you from a fire outbreak. And we are not even fooling around.
Every year, about 15,000 dryers catch fire in America alone. And this is something that could have been prevented if the dryers were not blocked with dirt and debris.
That said, while cleaning your dryer vent is as important as we just described, it isn’t one of those appliances that you need to clean every day. Now, let’s find out how often the cleaning needs to be done.
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So, How Often?
Well, like a good number of other things, the frequency with which you clean your dryer vent will be determined by a number of different factors. So, let’s see what those factors are:
How Many People Use The Dryer?
This is also related to how often you use the dryer. Because the more often the dryer is used, the quicker it will be able to gather dust and debris which will then necessitate a more frequent cleaning.
So, if you do not use your dryer very often or there aren’t many people trying to use the dryer at the same time, you could actually get away with cleaning your dryer vent once in a year.
However, if the dryer gets used frequently, you’ll have to get it cleaned about three (3) times in a year.
Now, when we talk about getting your dryer vent cleaned, we recommend that you get it professionally cleaned in order not to mess anything up.
How Big Is The Dryer?
Very important. A small dryer will have to be cleaned out more frequently than a big dryer.
This is because a small dryer will have a smaller vent which means that it will get blocked faster than a big dryer which has a big vent.
So, if you have a small dryer that is used by just you and doesn’t get so much use, you’ll might have to get it cleaned out about two times in a year.
That said, if you have a small dryer that gets a lot of use, you might have to get it cleaned more frequently than three (3) times a year. However, you’ll need to get recommendations from the professionals you decide to hire.
A big dryer that gets plenty of use still needs to be cleaned about three (3) times in a year. While a big dryer that doesn’t get so much use could go one year before it needs to be cleaned.
How Many Pets Do You Have?
Interestingly, this is something important to consider. Why? Simply put, pet hair. Pets shed hair all the time which is why you’ll find pet hair on your chairs, your floors and basically anywhere.
So, it isn’t odd to find that they’ve shed hairs on their clothes. If you decide to dry these clothes in your dryer, the hairs will definitely clog the vents overtime.
So, drying your pets stuff in your dryer could speed up the time that it takes the vents to get clogged.
How Often Do You Get New Clothes?
Because new clothes shed more lint than older clothes, always purchasing new clothes might prompt you to have to clean out your dryer vent more often.
Bearing all these factors in mind, you could decide to create a routine for cleaning your dryer vent. Or on the other hand, you could check out the next section.
How Do I Know My Dryer Vent Is Due For A Cleaning?
One telltale sign that your dryer vent needs to be cleaned is that your clothes take longer than normal to dry.
A blocked vent will make it difficult for the dryer to push out the heat necessary for your clothes to get dry. And this is why your clothes will take longer to dry.
Something you could do to be really sure is to touch the external cabinet of the dryer. If the cabinet is really hot, it would mean that the dryer is overheating as a result of trying to work around the blockages.
In some extreme cases, you might notice that lint has collected on the floor very close to the dryer.
That said, we recommend that you do not wait to see these signs before getting your dryer vent cleaned.
The idea is to keep the dryer maintained instead of waiting till it is bad to repair it. And an overload is pretty close to bad.
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