Is it taking longer and longer to dry a load of clothes? The problem may not be your dryer. So before you rush to call an expensive repairman, you may want to take a few minutes to check out your dryer’s vent and the vent leading from your dryer to the outside of your home.If you happen to have a vertical dryer vent with duct work that goes through your roof, lint blockage will most definitely be the culprit. Many newer homes with interior laundry rooms suffer from this design flaw, which can be dangerous if not maintained on a regular basis.
Whether your dryer vents horizontally, vertically, or makes a few twists and turns, the Lint Eater device should work just fine.
From personal experience, calling a dryer vent cleaning company can be costly ($100+ per trip). I consider myself pretty handy, so I decided to give this Lint Eater Dryer Vent Cleaning System a try.
It is reasonably priced, at about $30 for the basic kit, and since it is something that can be used over and over again, I consider it to be a wise purchase. In my case, the purchase of the extension kit was necessary because the vent extends way beyond the 12 feet of length provided by the basic kit.
The kit comes complete with flexible rods that connect end-to-end until you reach your desired length, an auger tool, a brush tool, a vacuum attachment, easy to follow cleaning instructions and a DVD that includes a demonstration on how the vent cleaning system can be used. Although I feel that it is overkill, they claim that you can attach your cordless drill for extra cleaning power.
Set up was easy. I was a little skeptical that the rods would stay together because they were so bendy and flexible, but there was no problem. Feeding it through the venting and pulling it back down, easily dislodged years of lint build up - yuck. Actually, the first time I tested this out, I had someone else handy to go on the roof just to check the vent from the other end.
The Woodeze 5GA-RLE202 LintEater Rotary Dryer Vent Cleaning
did a great job of removing years of lint build-up! It quickly cleaned all of the lint out of the exhaust vent, filling a kitchen-sized (13 gallon) garbage bag – no kidding!The worst part of the entire process was attaching that darn accordion style aluminum duct hose back on the dryer! My dryer now dries a load of laundry in ¼ of the amount of time it took before cleaning the vent.
Update: After the initial cleaning job, I continued to check and clean the vent every six months and can say that this vent cleaning system worked perfectly.
