Cloths dryer vents????

[benick]

A friend posted this question on another message board and I thought I'd ask here as well...Thanks for any help...

Clothes Dryer "make-up-air" After reading about it, I have come to realize that a clothes dryer will suck the warm air out of your living area in very short order. I believe I read the internal fans are in the range of 500 ft3/min, which means that when they run for 45 minutes or so to dry your clothes, they are emptying the rest of the place of warm air several times over, and pulling air down the chimney as need be, ruining a fire if you have one going.

I'm hoping that the salt of the earth types on AMG can vector me to dryer make up air venting kits/designs to solve this problem

Our dryer is in a separate laundry room on the first floor, with a window. When I know it is running, I open the window a few inches and close the door, and put a draft stopper across the bottom. I think this helps, but there must be a better solution.

The wife will not stand for putting the dryer in the garage, so don't offer up those options. What I need is a convenient kit/design for pulling the air from the outside directly into the dryer, rather than having it suck air from the general living area.

Any ideas or information?

Thanks

[hallerb]

hey theres a energy waster i havent seen addressed.

perhaps incoming air at zero degrees might use much more energy to get it to drying temp?

other devices like a furnace extract the heat, wheres a dryer uses the heat directly in the air stream

[Calab]

Build a heat exchanger, so any incoming air is routed around the outside of the dryer pipe to pick up heat. Just be sure to compensate for condensation in the dryer pipe.

[HeyBub]

1. Clothesline.

1. I've got a dryer exhaust valve on mine. One position of the flap and the dryer vent air goes outside. Turn it the other way and it exhausts into the house.

[aemeijers]

Do you have a lint trap on the in-house exhaust? (like one of those water-bucket things?) If not, you aren't doing your lungs or your furnace any favors. Depending on the clothes being dried, you could be spiking the dust and microfiber count in your inside air bigtime.

aem sends...

[Edwin Pawlowski]

First off, the 500 cfm is bogus.

systems for Whirlpool dryers must meet the following

requirements:

¦ The capacity to handle 200 CFM of air for each dryer in the

system.

¦ A back pressure of 0.0" (0 cm) to 0.6" (1.5 cm) of water

column when measured at the connection to the dryer.

From my observations of years of having a dryer, there is not all that much air sucked out and it has never changed the fire one flicker worth. Try it out before you go to drastic lengths to solve what is a non-problem.

[gfretwell]

Way back in the Carter administration when we were savng the world they said you should put a nylon stocking over the vent pipe to trap the lint and exhaust it into the house. This brought up the humidity (good in winter) and saved the heat. I think a few fires made this less popular ... people never changed the stocking. This is actually a bigger problem in the summer than the winter since you are going to have to heat the air in the dryer anyway (the thermostat is in the output pipe). When the A/C is on you are pumping the air you cooled into the dryer and sending it outside, pulling more hot air in you have to cool.

["Blattus Slaf]

Install another 4" dryer vent through the wall but put the louvers on the inside behind the dryer. If any vacuum is produced in the room or house, the louvers will open and let in outside air which will be indirectly sucked into the dryer inlet. There will be some mixing with room air so it won't be so cold. I also let some of the heat exhaust blow into the house which helps with the low humidity winter air. Some people put a nylon hosiery on the end of the pipe to catch the lint and let it blow into the house in the winter.

[CDET 14]

What's wrong with opening the window? You need 100 cubic inches of opening for the make-up air to be sufficient.

Alisa LeSueur Certified Dryer Exhaust Technician