I need to relocate my gas dryer vent. Are their any codes or problems locating the vent 14″ above a window and 24″ away from a sliding door. This is my only solution. I am just worried about dryer exhaust blowing back into the house if the door is open.
Thanks
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Replies
Couldn't say about codes, since you didn't fill in your profile and didn't say where you are. But one important consideration is the direction of the prevailing winds at your house. Is this vent installation to be on the lee side of the house, or the windward?
Also, you say this position is your 'only solution'. Why is that? What will you do if it won't work?
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
I live in Northern NJ. My laundry room is in the center of my house in the kitchen. When the buider built the house he vented the dryer vent into my kitchen ceiling then stopped, forgot to vent it out of the house. I found this out after living in the house for a year and went to install recess lights and found a ton of lint and hot air blowing when the dryer was on. The builder came back to fix it and decided to run a new vent through my unfinnished basement ( now finished) and out under my wood deck. i just torn down my old deck to build a new one and found wood damage and was told to have the vent relocated. I just cut holes in my kitchen ceiling to find the original duct comes up the wall from laundry room towards the outside wall through a joist bay then makes a 90 degree turn (cut through 2 joist) towards center of kitchen and another 90 degree turn towards outside of house then stops in ceiling never vented out, this would equal 4 90 degee turns and 30 feet in length, which I know is not acceptable (I do not know why the builder would do it this way). I want to discounect the pipe at the first 90 degrree elbow and bring it straight out the bay over a kitchen window, and next to a sliding door, way below the roof soffit and about 20 feet from my AC unit. This will eliminate 2 90 degree turns and will be only 15 feet long of pipe. I am just concerned about the vent being close to a window and sliding door. The code enforcement office in my town is of no help until they inspect and give you greif, they believe you should know the code yourself before doing any work, I delt with them before when finishing my basement.
I hope the additional information helps. Thanks for your advise.
wow. scary story. Lucky there wasn't a fire. Bet your'e looking at everything in the house now wondering what else is screwed up.
The beauty of the Fantech is you arent constrained as to where to vent your dryer.
Good luck.
Okay, if I read this right, you need to re-vent the dryer air, not the combustion exhaust...or are they combined in your unit? I gotta admit I don't know much about gas dryers; they're not common here in the land of cheap electricity....
Is this a one-storey or two-storey house? Any reason you couldn't vent it through the roof?Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Gas dryer has only one vent. Two story house with a bedroom directly over laundry room.
So you've got combustion exhaust in that mix. Amazing it was able to blow into your kitchen ceiling all that time without killing anybody. Your builder is damn lucky; the liability lawsuit on that kind of goof would have stripped him to his sox....
You still ought to be able to vent it through the roof, though; find the stud wall of the bedroom nearest to the point the vent rises into the 1st storey ceiling bays and bring the pipe up through that wall with as few bends as possible. Use big sweeping bends rather than 90-degree elbows if you can; it'll make clean-out that much easier later on. Run 3" rigid galvanized vent pipe and you stand a good chance of 'snaking' it up through the wall with no more gyprock destruction than a small hole near the sole plate, the fire-stop, and the ceiling plate. A 3¼" holesaw will get you through the plates and give you a bit of wiggle-room to push the pipe through. As for the fire-stop, just bust it out of there or cut through it with a sawzall.
Do take care to insulate the pipe as well as you can once you get into the attic; you don't want loose heat drifting up under your roof as this can lead to ice-damming. I frequently build a louvered coupola over plumbing and other roof vents to keep snow off the parts of the roof I can't keep cold enough.
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
I know that wouldn't be legal for a flue. Pretty sure it would be OK for an electric dryer, code-wise, but not sure about a gas unit.
From a practical standpoint, what you need to avoid is lots of elbows, long vertical (upward) runs, and, of course, flex ducts.
Sound to me this would be located under a
soffit? If so and if that soffit is vented,
that is a definite no-no.
Since CO two doesnt smell, you might want to think of other options.
Check out the dryer boosters from Fantech. I get them from these nice folks at http://www.hvacquick.com