Adequate laundry room ventilation makes a difference in this humid climate, especially as the weather heats up and the humidity builds and doing the laundry creates plenty of both. Between the warming weather and the conditions in the laundry room, it could become uncomfortable and unhealthy.

Dryer Venting

The first step in assessing the condition of the laundry room is to look at the dryer’s venting. The hose should vent to the outdoors and be no longer than 25 feet. The current building codes require solid metal vent pipes for dryers and the old corrugated vent hoses are now obsolete.

Check the vent annually or more often if you do a lot of laundry and remove the lint. It’s even more important to clean the vent and lint screen if you use dryer sheets. They create a residue that coats the vent and the lint screen., reducing the airflow. When the lint screen develops a coating, even less air goes into the dryer and it will run much hotter, which could start a fire.

Using Fans

An exhaust fan will pull the heat and humidity from the laundry room as long as you can vent it to the outdoors. Although this is an effective way to provide laundry room ventilation, it will pull air from other parts of your home that you’ve paid to condition.

The better option is to install an energy recovery ventilator (ERV). These appliances use balanced airflow to provide fresh air without driving up heating and cooling costs. They use a material that extracts the energy from the outgoing air and puts it into the incoming air.

ERVs have two fans, one of which pulls out the stale indoor air and the other brings in fresh outside air at the same time. Some use air filters for the incoming air, which remove pollen and other airborne particles.

If you would like to learn more about laundry room ventilation, contact Powers Heating & Air. We provide HVAC services for Peachtree City homeowners.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Peachtree City, Georgia and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 770-487-2040.