Five signs your duct is packed, ranked by how much they cost you

Nobody calls us about lint. They call because the laundry takes all afternoon, or because something smells warm. Those are the same problem at different stages, and they are not equally urgent.

Here they are in the order we would worry about them, cheapest to most expensive. If you recognise the last one, stop reading and stop using the dryer.

1. Clothes come out damp

The cheapest symptom and the most common. Restricted airflow means moist air sits in the drum instead of leaving the house, so the machine runs longer to do less. Annoying, not dangerous — yet.

2. A cycle takes twice as long

Two cycles per load is roughly double the energy for the same laundry. On an electric dryer in Boulder County that is real money over a year, and it is the stage where the duct is more than half blocked.

3. No lint at the exterior hood

Counterintuitive, but a clean-looking hood with nothing coming out of it usually means the blockage is upstream. Air should be visibly moving out there while a load runs.

4. The laundry room smells warm or damp

That is exhaust air finding its way back into the room, often through a disconnected or split duct behind the dryer. It brings moisture with it, and moisture in a closed closet becomes a different kind of problem.

5. The top of the dryer is hot to the touch

Stop here. The machine is holding heat it cannot exhaust, with a duct full of the most flammable thing in your house sitting against it. Unplug it and get the duct cleared before the next load.

If the top of the dryer is hot to the touch, the heat has nowhere to go. That is the one that starts fires.

What we would do about it

One clean, about an hour, $129 for most homes in our five towns and $169 if your duct terminates on the roof or runs a long way. You see which one you are before you book. We meter the airflow before and after so the improvement is a number, not a feeling.