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When I removed some old elevated cabinetry in my laundry room, I discovered two holes in the wall. The first I documented here,

How do I close and seal an old external vent?

and the second can be viewed here:

enter image description here

My dryer in my single floor home currently vents downward through another (third) gnarly hole in the wall:

enter image description here

It continues down a couple feet into my crawl space, and then horizontally out through a wall vent by my deck:

enter image description here

None of these holes were put there by me. :)

I was going to try to address this by:

  1. Covering the old vent (hole #2),
  2. Fixing the current gnarly hole (#3) in the laundry room wall where the flex tube goes through, or patching it entirely and making a new hole closer to where the dryer will be,
  3. Replacing the extra long flex tube in my crawl space with insulated rigid pipe.

I'm considering, however, reusing the older vent pipe in #2 which goes up the wall, straight through the attic, and out the roof. I wouldn't have to run any new pipe and I could just patch the current gnarly hole (#3) with drywall.

This seems to have some drawbacks as I can't see how lint won't just settle at the bottom of the vertical pipe and clog it. Going down and out instead seems like it would give lint the chance to settle along a greater space and get cleaned out by me later. I suppose this is true only if the rigid pipe can be install co mpletely horizontally or at a downward angle to the outside.

The advantages of using the vertical pipe would be that I don't have to run any new rigid pipe and this hole is actually closer to where my stacked dryer will be.

Should I reuse the vertical pipe via hole #2 or close it and fix and use hole #3? If the latter, what is the proper way of closing #2? I'm thinking I should shove some steel wool in the opening, pull out the short horizontal tube and fix up the wall.

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    What's that opening next to the dryer vent in the deck photo? The vent on the deck looks like something mice would love.
    – BMitch ♦
    Oct 31, 2011 at 11:49
  • Its a protective cover for the crawl space. I presume it is for crawl space ventilation and to also block rodents. The vent itself has a flap which I think would deter them as well.
    – Ryan
    Oct 31, 2011 at 18:16

1 Answer 1

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The vent flaps are easy to open (by design, it has to open with air pressure) so birds and rodents could easily open them up and make a home. Birds are relatively easy to evict, but rodents are likely to chew their way through the duct and find their way into other places. As for the crawl space vent, I wouldn't want a possible intake vent so close to to the dryer exhaust, it's a humidity issue waiting to happen. So because of that, I'd go for the roof vent. Try to clean it out yearly, and make sure to clean the lint trap out of the dryer between each usage.

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  • I hadn't thought of the humid air going into the crawl space! What if I were to close off that intake vent and just rely on the others around my foundation? Would you still favor the roof vent?
    – Ryan
    Oct 31, 2011 at 21:42
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    I'd still worry about rodents. You'd want a screen to protect it from them, but that would require frequent cleaning to avoid a lint blockage. In fact, because of the lint issue, the screen might not be permitted by code.
    – BMitch ♦
    Nov 1, 2011 at 0:51

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