Our dryer vent exits on the roof. It goes straight up from the floor of the laundry room, through the attic, to the roof. I guess they thought that was shortest route. Probably the easiest to install, but far from easy when it's comes time to clean it. And we try to do that once a year, or when cloths start to dry more slowly as the case has been in the last few weeks.
To do this, one of us has to get up on the roof. That's usually me. My hands are smaller and can get under and into the vent, which is curved to keep the rain out. The top wasn't that clogged this time, which is good. A few months after the roof was replaced the dryer started taking forever to dry cloths. It seemed odd since while they had the roof off and the dryer pipe open we cleaned the heck out of it. The vent hood was also being replaced and it was the one and only time we had a straight shot down it to clean it. When I got up on the new roof that day, I found that there was a screen on the hood, and that was completely clogged. This after we'd called out service to look at the dryer. "Your vent's clogged... We don't do vents... $40 bucks, pleased". We removed the screen... permanently. Sigh.
I climbed up on the roof that morning. Not the best time to be doing this. It had raining, which meant the roof was still damp, because the sun hadn't risen beyond the trees. It was, to quote one of Edward's more colorful phrases, "slicker then snail snot" up there. I didn't stand, but crawled the 8 feet to the vent. To clean it, besides sticking my hand up under the vent to pull out the caked on lint, we drop a chain tied to a rope down the pipe. This usually knocks off any clumps of lint stuck to the inside of the pipe. It also allows us to tie the vent dryer brush to the rope and pull it through the whole length of the pipe. You see, the pipe is about 15-18 feet long. The brush handle, before we snapped off the last foot was maybe 6 feet long. We tried just using the brush but ended up clogging the pipe about 6 feet up, where the brush pushed all the lint to.
The chain was being difficult that morning. It didn't want to feed into the vent and fall. Once that was done, I fed Edward the rest of the rope. Unfortunately, I was supposed to hang onto one end so that we could tie on the brush and pull it down the pipe. So I had to feed it in again. Then once the brush was tied on it didn't want to feed in to the hood. It is a tight corner. In the process of doing that the handle of the brush first pinched, then caught and stuck the skin on my left arm. Son of a b***... It took a second to free it. It's kind of like slamming your thumb in the car door. First there is the Son of a b*** moment, then the tug... sh** I'm caught moment, then the trying to get yourself free moment, follow (optionally) by the colorful language moment. It left a bruise about the size of silver dollar and a welt about twice as thick on my arm. In a few days, it should be a lovely shade of purple, turning to that even lovelier shade of "jungle rot green" healing bruises always acquire.
At least the vent is clean and the dryer is working. Sometimes we have to fiddle with the hose to get kinks out of it after we're all done. But it seems to be fine at the moment.
And as a bonus... I didn't even fall off the roof...
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