We recently moved into a house and hooked up a new (LG) washer and dryer. The dryer was showing us an error message related to decreased performance due to poor venting exhaust. I went outside to see where the exhaust was and encountered this:
The dryer is venting up out of the ground:
After some searching, it looks like this is one of these dryer vent seals. The original owner says there used to be a cap on top, but it came off some years ago. From the few YouTube videos I was able to find though, it looks like these should be used above ground and the vent air down through the bottom of the top piece of the dryer seal vent, which can't happen here because the bottom of the vent is pressed against the ground/mulch.
I talked to the home inspector (this was not mentioned on the inspection report) and he says that this is fairly common with slab houses in my area.
So three questions:
- Is this actually ok or common? I've never seen anything like this, but this is my first home purchase.
- How bad is this? It seems very bad to me. The most frustrating part is that the dryer is right next to the outside wall, so a straight pipe out to the porch would work fine. I plan on getting that done at some point.
- What is the right way to maintain this until I can get (2) accomplished? I considered buying a new dryer vent seal like I showed and replacing the top part, but something feels off here.
- Why would you ever do this instead of venting directly out of the exterior wall? The only idea the inspector had was aesthetics.
I should note that our dryer vent coil on the inside is much too long, which could be contributing to the poor venting situation. It might be the case that once that is fixed, there's enough airflow to force the cap up and vent somewhat properly.