Dryer vent cleaning is a vital practice in home maintenance. Dryer vents need regular cleaning to keep our homes free from fire hazards. Clogged dryers can cause fire outbreaks leading to huge losses. So, as a responsible homeowner, you should carry out regular dryer vent cleaning to increase its efficiency. But many homeowners will ask, how often do I need to clean my dryer vent? This question is answered here.
The standard requirement from all manufacturers and safety institutions is that dryer vent cleaning to be done once a year. If you go beyond one year before cleaning your dryer vent, then you are not complying with regulations. You are also posing a potential fire hazard to your house and family members.
However, you must not wait to clean the dryer at the end of the year. As a precautionary measure, you should clean the lint trap immediately after drying the clothes, one or two cycles. When this becomes a practice, your dryer vent will take a very short time to dry your clothes. This will also save you from huge overhead costs due to power consumption.
Other factors determine how often you should clean your dryer vent to keep it efficient. One of them is the number of clothes you are drying. If you have a large family size, then it means that the dryer vent will dry all the clothes in your house. When this happens, do bi-annual cleaning of the dryer vent. This also applies to commercial dryers. Because they are likely to have numerous cycles, you shouldn’t wait 12 months to clean. Make the cleaning regular, even on a quarterly or monthly basis.
How often you clean your dryer vent is also determined by the diameter of the vent duct. When the size is smaller, then there is a high possibility of clogging of debris. These types of vents should be cleaned regularly to avoid malfunctioning. When your dryer is taking a longer time than usual to dry clothes, there is a high chance that the vent is clogged. Inspection is required to check if any lint has entered the ducts, clogging them.
Sometimes you feel the dryer emitting heat, making the air in the house warm. Overheating dryers means that the vent duct is straining to dry the clothes. It’s clogged, that’s why you can feel the temperatures increasing in your room. Even if one year has not ended, you should clean the dryer vent immediately as a safety measure.
If you are dealing with warm clothes such as towels, jackets, blankets, and fiber sweaters, you should not wait a year to pass to clean your dryer vent. These types of laundry leaves a lot of lint in the vents, and immediate cleaning of the trap after the laundry is very crucial. This prevents the buildup of debris.
Sometimes when you cannot tell when your dryer vent requires cleaning, you can seek a technical expert. Therefore how often you clean your dryer vent depends on the daily use which the machine is subjected to and other observation warnings and signs.