How often should a dryer vent be cleaned?
How often should a dryer vent be cleaned?
Once a year for a typical household. Twice a year if you run more than about five loads a week, dry pet bedding, or have a duct run longer than 25 feet.
That is the short answer. The longer one is that general national advice tends to undercount what houses here need, for reasons that have nothing to do with how much laundry you do.
What actually drives the interval
Lint escapes the trap on every load and settles in the duct. How fast it builds up depends on how much air is moving through, how far it has to travel, and how many opportunities it has to catch on something along the way.
- Loads per week — more air through the duct means more lint left behind in it.
- Run length — a long duct has more surface for lint to settle on and less airflow at the far end to carry it out.
- What the duct is made of — corrugated flex hose catches lint on every ridge; smooth rigid metal does not.
- Bends — every elbow is a place where airflow slows and lint drops.
- Pet bedding and heavy fabrics, which shed far more than clothing does.
Why the Berkshires are different
Houses here make it worse than average in four specific ways. The heating season runs six months and more, so the dryer is working through all of it and everything dries indoors. Most of the stock is old enough that the laundry sits in a basement, which means a long vertical lift before the duct turns for an outside wall. Warm, wet exhaust meeting a hood that is below freezing condenses, and wet lint mats rather than moving. And a hood whose flap has frozen part-open is an invitation to whatever is looking for somewhere to nest in the spring.
A run over 25 feet is common in the larger houses and adds $40 to a clean — worth knowing when you are budgeting for an annual visit rather than meeting it as a surprise on the day.
Rentals and turnovers
A summer rental is a different problem from a family home. The dryer may sit unused for months and then run several loads a day for eight weeks, often with towels and bedding, and often with nobody in the house who would notice a cycle taking twice as long.
For those, timing the clean to the start of the season is worth more than any fixed calendar date.
Last reviewed Sunday, August 30.
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