Dryer duct safety

Lint from clothes dryers can cause a fire

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According to the fine folks at FEMA, 2,900 home clothes dryer fires are reported each year and cause an estimated 5 deaths, 100 injuries, and $35 million in property loss. The leading cause of home clothes dryer fires is failure to clean them (34 percent). They have a lot of interesting information about home safety!
Check them out at https://www.usfa.fema.gov/prevention/outreach/clothes_dryers.html
While inspecting homes, I often find a dryer transition duct being used as a dryer duct. (Confused yet?) A dryer duct runs through the house to exhaust the air from the dryer to the exterior. A dryer transition duct is a flexible section of duct material that allows the dryer to connect to the duct. The only place that a transition duct should ever be found is between the dryer and the duct. It should be as straight, short and smooth as possible. Diameter is important. They should always be 4″ in diameter, because a larger duct makes the air slow down, and lint falls out of slow moving air. Don’t use screws to connect ducts because they snag lint. Use clamps and foil tape, not duct tape.

Keep the ducts clean!

The folks at Ace hardware have a great video on how to clean your dryer ducts. I love those guys!

Spend another couple of minutes and click Duct cleaning from the guys at Ace