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A good quality leaf blower is one of the most useful tools you can have in your garden. An electric leaf blower can blow away dry leaves and dust from your garden in no time. Imagine how time-consuming and tiring the same job would be if done by a manual rake.
While it’s useful throughout the year for maintaining your lawn, it’s nothing short of a blessing during the autumn season. Autumn is when your garden will be flooded with brown leaves, and you’ll need the tool most.
Other than keeping your garden neat and tidy, it also comes in handy for a good load of chores around the house. One such task is cleaning the dryer vent inside your home. Since the appliance is essential for drying your clothes after washing them, it needs to be kept in shape.
This article will tell you exactly how to clean dryer vent with a leaf blower.
Why does the dryer vent need cleaning?
Over time, your clothes dryer vent will fill up with lint. It may even become blocked by it if precautions aren’t taken. When you wash and dry clothes in your washing machine, minute fibers come off together with the dust. The lint that does not get trapped by the lint screen that’s included in most of the dryers will find its way into the dryer vent.
As more and more lint builds up into the vent, the machine’s drying efficiency will reduce. Even more of a problem is the fire hazard that it poses since lint is flammable. Keep your house safe and your dryer operating at its maximum by cleaning the vent at least once each year. Keep reading, and you’ll understand just how it’s done.
Procedure to clean dryer vent with a leaf blower
Cleaning out dryer vent with leaf blower is rather simple. Just follow the steps and you’ll have it good as new in no time. No special equipment is required, except for your magic tool: the leaf blower!
Preparation
Before starting the actual cleanup, you need to prepare the dryer vent to allow access with the leaf blower. Here is what you need to do:
- Move the dryer away from the wall to allow you more room to work behind it.
- Loosen the clamps at the back of the dryer using your hand. You can also loosen it using a screwdriver.
- Once you’ve removed the back of the dryer, you’ll see the hose. Remove the hose from the vent.
- Now move to the outside of the dryer and remove the cover on the vent at this side. You may need a screwdriver to unscrew the cap. Keep the cover and the screws somewhere where you’ll find them when putting everything back together.
- Use a brush to remove the lint that’s build up around the cover.
- Move back to the backside of the dryer. Insert the end of your leaf blower into the opening of the dryer vent.
- Use duct tape to seal the connection so that there’s no path for the air from the leaf blower to flow back.
Cleaning
Now that you have the leaf blower at just the right spot for cleaning the dryer’s air vent, we are ready to begin. Here’s how to clean dryer vent with a leaf blower:
- Turn on the leaf blower.
- Wait a couple of seconds before turning it back off.
- Move to the outer end of the vent and see if the lint has collected at the opening.
- Use a vacuum to suck out all the lint from this end or use your hand to remove whatever has collected at this opening.
- If you can still see lint stuck inside the vent, repeat the process by turning on the leaf blower again at the other end.
- After turning off the leaf blower, clean all the lint that collects at the opening at the other end.
Packing up
That was how you clean dryer vent with leaf blower. Once you’re done with the major part, it’s time to put everything back in place.
- Make sure that the leaf blower is off.
- Remove the duct tape from the end of the leaf blower.
- Pull the leaf blower out of the air vent of the dryer.
- Replace the cover on the outer end of the vent and screw it using a screwdriver.
- Clamp the other end back to the dryer, either with your hand or with a screwdriver.
Test your dryer
Now that you have cleaned the vent and fixed everything back in place. Turn on the switch and start the timer to see if the dryer is functioning correctly.
Once the entire job is done, you’ll be rewarded! You get to enjoy the efficiency as that of a brand new dryer. However, the improvement in efficiency will only be seen once you actually use it to dry wet clothes. It’s worth it!
Conclusion
So you see how a leaf blower makes this cleaning chore so simple. If you’ve ever tried picking on the lint from the vent with a cleaning brush before using this intelligent technique, you’ll realize just how hard that was! Now that you’ve learned how to clean dryer vent with a leaf blower, let’s get to work and have a clean dryer with optimal functionality in no time!
It’s not just cleaning the dryer vent that a leaf blower will come in handy. You can use it for countless other chores as well, making each one much easier than it was with the manual tools.
