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My wife commented that the dryer wasn't drying the clothes as quickly as before. I went outside and discovered this. As a side note, plastic dryer vents are no longer allowed, I think a project in the several weeks will be to replace this thing. I need one that the birds won't enter, which was a problem with the old one. I put a reoccurring notice in my calendar to check this every 2 months going forward.

The dryer is only a couple years old and the lint screen is cleaned after every load and it is in good condition. Lint still gets by the screens and will collect on the vents or in the vent pipe.

BTW I noticed it wasn't drying as quickly as well, I actually can and do run the machine on a regular basis. My bad for not checking this sooner.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sparky,

Sparky, did you disconnect the vent pipe from both ends, where it connect to the dryer and where it exits to the outside? I need to clean mine and was wondering if disconnecting and reconnecting the two ends might pose any problems for someone who hasn't done this before.

I did not. I do need to pull the dryer out and pull the hose off and vacuum out the bottom of the dryer. I've done that in the past. Today I just pulled the cover off and cleaned it out, once I pulled the cover I was able to remove the little louvers and reach in from the outside into the hose. It was relatively clean considering the condition of the cover.

If you can move the dryer and kill the power there isn't any danger in cleaning it out from inside. Or you can get something like this to clean it out, especially if the run is somewhat long an inaccessible.

http://www.qcidirect.com/dryer...yY9bMCFQWnnQodbUMANw

Thanks Sparky, I was afraid I might break something where it connects to the wall. I knew about turning off the power. Which in my case means turning off the gas connector and unplugging the electrical cord from the wall.

I do have a short run of vent pipe. DH has put the shop vac into the vent opening outside in the but I know that isn't enough to properly clean the vent pipe. I noticed our dryer was taking a lot longer to dry clothes so yesterday I went outside to stick my gloved hand into outside vent opening. I noticed the damper below the louver was stuck open. I pulled a wad of lint out from underneath the top of the louver that was causing the damper cover to stay open. Went back inside and turned on the air setting on the dryer and then went outside to check the airflow, which was good, but I know the vent pipe has to be caked up with lint because of how long it's taking for a load to dry.

The worst I experienced at our place in SoCA was when the gas drier wouldn't turn on. I opened up the front of the drier and replaced the $25 part.

When I was replacing it I had some trouble getting things back together (even though it was not difficult!) and I found a bend in the exhaust inside the machine was clogged with lint; it was a wonder that the machine was working at all! I pulled that out with my hand and found $.86 in loose change in the lint! Made my day!