Dryer Vent Installation in San Diego, CA

Why dryer vent installations fail here, and how we route them

Most bad installs start with the duct the dryer was shoved against. Flexible foil or vinyl gets crushed behind the machine in garage-corner installations. The crush point becomes an elbow that was never planned. Lint stacks there first. In tight laundry closets we still find foil transition duct from a replacement era, coiled and pinched into a loop. Rigid metal cannot kink. That is most of the fix.

Routing decides everything else. Short exterior-wall runs in older single-story stock are simple: one straight pass, hood with a damper, no screen. Long multi-elbow second-floor runs to roof caps in post-1980 tract homes are a different job. Lint packs at elbows where upstairs runs turn vertical. We use long-sweep elbows, seal joints with foil tape instead of screws, and keep the total equivalent length honest.

Soffit-routed condo closet runs usually cannot be re-routed at all. There we rebuild terminations and the transition, and plan on annual service.

Check your own termination before calling. Sidewall caps get buried behind shrubs or stucco-patched flaps that no longer open. Roof caps collect screens, bird nesting and dust-caked flappers. If the flap does not swing freely while the dryer runs, the run downstream of it is already loaded.