Can You Vent Your Dryer Into The Attic

Should you direct that humidity into your garage you would greatly increase the odds of developing a mold problem in your home.

Can you vent your dryer into the attic.

Be careful you don t cut through any studs electrical wires or pipes in the process. Once a mold issue has begun it s often hard to detect in a garage and by the time it s shown up it might require extensive remediation. When venting a bathroom exhaust fan make sure to vent the air to the outside rather than into your attic where it can cause mold and mildew to form. It s ok to vent the dryer directly into the house so that the air can be used as either a source of humidity or a source of heat.

As seniors cleaning out the vent is a hassle because we can t climb into the attic or move out the stacked washer dryer to get to the vent. Our association will not permit any outside venting. 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 international residential code allows you to run a dryer vent through the attic but you can t terminate it there.

Venting the dryer outside in cold weather wastes a lot of heat. 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. If your laundry room has access to an outside wall cut a hole and install a standard dryer vent. 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.

The dryer vents into the attic and not outside. Dryer lint is also highly flammable. Not all dryers will allow for this so be sure to check the owners manual to ensure it can be vented in this manner. Your dryer vent s job is to carry hot damp air to the outside of your home.

In these cases it may be necessary to vent your dryer through the attic. Sometimes such as in town homes or condos it s not possible to vent a dryer through a wall outside. A dryer vent should be vented outside. If venting outside isn t an option you can vent the dryer out of the attic through the roof using a special roof vent to keep rain out.