Dryer Vent

All the time I spent thinking about the bathroom vent brought me to think about the dryer vent as well.

I had installed the dryer vent very early on--well before installing the shingles on the north wall of the JayBee.

I installed it low on the wall, even though the dryer will sit on top of the washer in the house, because no appliance lasts forever and a possible future washer/dryer combo unit could still use this vent without having to blow upwards to vent. With my current washer and dryer stacked, though, it will require snaking duct hose down the wall from the dryer to the vent lower down the wall.

Here is the wall with the dryer vent, all insulated and protected with the vapor barrier.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that the dryer vent wasn't quite right. If an elbow and round duct was installed on the inside of this wall, the washer and dryer would be pushed out from the wall by more than four inches. Too much real estate inside the house wasted.

I briefly considered buying specialized duct that is flattened rather than round and takes up less room, but I was worried that it would encourage the buildup of lint. (I know I should regularly clean all lint out of the dryer vent, but I rarely actually do so.) So, I am sticking with round dryer duct.

I decided I had to build a channel inside the wall so that part of the diameter of the duct can run inside the wall.

<sigh> I opened up the finished vapor barrier...

...and pulled out the insulation--at least the insulation in front of the wires. Hmm, there certainly are a lot of wires in this wall.

All those wires take up so much room in the wall that I can't push the dryer duct as far into the wall as I was hoping to. Nevertheless, I trimmed the vent stack to be shorter, and I built this channel.

I primed the channel and covered the back side of it with plastic--so the vapor barrier will end up being uninterrupted across this wall. I installed the channel in the wall, and I installed one of the elbows in the vent.

I insulated well behind the channel and insulated the rest of the wall cavity.

Then, I restored the vapor barrier.

Without extending the duct or installing it, I propped the duct and upper elbow in the channel to get a rough idea of how this will work.

While it looks like all this work and the special channel will only save about an inch of space, once the tongue-and-groove boards are installed on the wall, it will save close to two inches. I'm pleased with the results.