When we are talking about the clothes dryer maintenance and care, there are a lot of things you have to bear in mind. Though it is likely something you think about the least, it could be the one cause you the biggest problem. Failure to maintain the dryer vent is the number one cause of clothes dryer related fires.

It is hard to understand the importance of ventilation maintenance if you do not understand the whole system in work.

As clothes dry, lint is removed and blown out of the dryer through the duct and vent. The lint trap in your clothes dryer will capture about 60 percent of that lint. Before you dry each load and start to remove the lint, this is the part of the clothes dryer you should pull out. But that’s only 60 percent. What happens to the other 40 percent?

The rest of the lint that made it past the trap is on its way through the duct system leading from your dryer to the outdoors. In case you don’t know, the duct work is that strange looking hose that comes right out of your clothes dryer and into the hole of dryer room. Sometimes you do not see the rest of that path, but it defintely goes to the outside of your home and right into the dryer vent. There will definitely be lint that is simply too heavy an sticky to make it out of the line so it will stay on the walls for indefinite time. This is something that should be taken care of in an annual cleaning.

Clothes dryer ventilation is the final stop for the lint that goes out of the dryer. At the end of the line there is a flapper vent top. And this is the final destination for all that hot and steamy air. Lint will slowly build up to the point where it not only becomes a fire hazard for your home, but it prevents your clothes dryer to do the job properly.

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