Venting Electric Dryer Into Attic

Dryer lint is also highly flammable.

Venting electric dryer into attic.

A dryer vent should be vented outside. You can buy a box called an indoor dryer vent kit at home improvement stores and it manages to control most of the lint but not the water dumped into the air. To make the dyer more efficient you can buy an inexpensive heat diverter and install it in the exhaust duct of electric dryers only not gas dryers you ll save about 50 worth of heat per load in the winter. The attic is usually colder than the rest of the house during the winter and that can create a problem for a dryer vent.

Venting the dryer outside in cold weather wastes a lot of heat. When our dryer was replaced we decided to bring the dryer venting system early 1960 up to code by replacing the tubing that vented into the attic. But we don t recommend it for two reasons. In these cases it may be necessary to vent your dryer through the attic.

The air is usually loaded with lint and if you don t vent it outside it can cause all kinds. The problem with attics. Not all dryers will allow for this so be sure to check the owners manual to ensure it can be vented in this manner. Every electric dryer has to have an outlet through which it expels warm moist air or it won t work.

Some homeowners use a much simpler system of venting down into a bucket of water like in the photo at the top of this page. For dryers that are located in a place where venting to the outside is difficult it s ok to simply vent the dryer into a container of water.