Dangers lurk within clothes dryers

Not to worry you or anything, but your clothes dryer is inherently evil and bent on destroying your house.

On the plus side, it helps do your laundry. But a gas dryer can clog and spew carbon monoxide throughout your happy home, and whether it's powered by gas, electricity or a nuclear reactor, your seemingly innocent dryer might already have caught fire, without even having the courtesy to let you know.

The root of most dryer issues is lint, accumulating in your exhaust vent and then backing up into the body of your machine. Tim Reiher of Redford Township, the Paul Revere of dryer safety, points out that according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the United States averages 42 reported dryer fires every day.

That's a statistically small number in a nation of 300 million people, but only until one of the fires occurs at your address, at which point it becomes an enormous number.

Reiher can be evangelical on the subject, at least partly because he makes a living teaching snarling, dangerous dryers to become gentle and harmless blessings upon a household. He feels so strongly, in fact, that he says he doesn't even care if his company gets mentioned in the newspaper. The point is, "people need to learn this stuff."

Check the lint trap

The first thing to know, if you don't already, is that you need to check the lint trap on your dryer after every load. The second is that if your dryer vents into a plastic, vinyl or foil hose, it shouldn't -- even though most people's do.

The proper object to connect the back of your dryer to the outside world is a lightweight metal tube, typically aluminum. In a perfect world, it'll be no more than 8 feet long, with the fewest possible turns and angles.

In the imperfect world most of us occupy, Reiher worked on one last week that snaked for 27 feet, most of it behind drywall. Cleaning out the vent, he found two of those lightweight shoe covers a workman uses so he doesn't track mud on your carpet. There was no sign of the workman.

There also was also no sign of ignition, which was good. Before he and his dad started Clean & Green Dryer Vent Experts eight months ago -- Reiher had the expertise, his dad had the bankroll, his brother oversees http://www.cleanandgreenexperts.com">www.cleanandgreenexperts.com, and if you call (734) 377-4175, that'll be his mom -- he was a corporate trainer for a national dryer venting franchise. Often, he's found scorched patches of lint within the workings of a dryer, a telltale sign that a fire sparked but couldn't find enough oxygen to wreak noticeable havoc.

Tips for dryer safety

Consumer and trade groups offer the same sorts of tips Reiher does, though they won't come to your house in a green Dodge Caravan and roll out a Shop-Vac.

Wash your lint trap once in a while. Don't push the dryer so far against the wall that you crush the vent duct. Keep the dryer off when you're absent or asleep. Every year or three, call a pro for a proper scouring.

Joe Gagnon, local radio's Appliance Doctor, has been pushing dryer safety for a quarter-century. He says it was his research, decades ago, that inspired the accepted tally of 15,500 reported dryer fires per year -- and he figures about twice that many don't get called in.

He's big on do-it-yourself fixes, and he's particularly fond of the manly man method of clearing vent hoses: Disconnect the hose from the back of the dryer, shove a leaf blower up the tube, and let that sucker rip.

Better than nothing, concedes Reiher, but it won't do much with the lint fused to the sides of a vent or embedded in the folds, and it won't clean out the dryer cabinet.

You'll want to check into that now, he says, or better yet, 10 minutes ago. He can tell you stories.

nrubin@detnews.com">nrubin@detnews.com (313) 222-1874