In this video you'll see how to replace a dryer vent an old dryer vent that's seen better days
and the reason why this is important is not only for venting the dryer but you can see we have a
big crack here where insects and rodents can get inside the house so I'm going to show you
a few tips on how to replace the vent that will actually apply to different projects around the
home as well and I think they'll come in handy and we're also going to show you what tools will
make this a lot easier not only is there this wide gap here we also have a lot of lint that
has come out this is bad for a few different reasons first it's clogging the airway here
but also this can create fires inside the home so if you're seeing lint out here whoops then
obviously it's inside your tubing as well so inside your duct work
so I'm going to give you some tips for how to clean this out obviously I'm replacing
the vent but if you're not doing that I have one tip for you that is to clean out this duct work
at least once a year so how do you do that this is a duct cleaning brush you can get this at most
home stores you can order it online and by the way I'm going to put down in the description of
this video all of the different supplies I'm using so you can take a look at them yourself
and see what you want but this is pretty cool the brush attaches to this little
extension so you just thread it in this just goes right into my drill,
standard drill and then you can just clean this out
You can see what a big difference that made it's nice and clean obviously we have ductwork inside
the home that we need to clean out too but this little extension tube that goes through my wall
at least that's good to go for now and we can shop vac this out as well most dryer vents are going to
be secured to the home with four screws in this case because we have brick we have four tapcons
so you just need an impact driver to remove those so there's not even a screw there
And then typically you need to cut silicone that is holding this to the
to the wall in many cases this duct work will be sealed to the inside of the home so you'll
just have to score that with a utility knife and when you do that you can pull this out you can see
that this was sealed on the inside of the home using Great Stuff the next step for me is to
install the new vent and I want to show you what that looks like the wall vent hood I'm going to be
using is by Imperial and the reason why I like it is because it's really made to be heavy duty and
last a long time the other tip I have for you is make sure you choose a wall vent hood that
has the right duct work for your application so this is four inches that's perfect for what
we're doing I'm going to go ahead and dry fit this so we'll slide this in here it should go in
and you can see it's a nice fit now it's being held up on the wall and there's a reason why
here I'll take this back out show you you can see there's a whole bunch of old silicone
along the perimeter of this brick so we need to remove that how do you remove it it's fairly
simple this is a razor scraper and I like it it's just a razor blade especially for
a brick you know or like a sensitive vinyl siding you can get the silicone off without damaging the
exterior of the home so we just need to get it off the brick here you can see it's fairly
straightforward and sometimes when you get it started you can just peel it off
so we're going to dry fit this again because we need to see where we need to make our holes
in the brick first of all what you can do is make sure that this is level so it looks good
and then we'll mark the position of our holes then you want to place a level on this you don't have
to do this step but I mean if you want it to look nice so I'm going to put marks on the brick where
I need to place my holes so it's helpful to have a pencil that fits into these tiny holes like that
For this next step I'm going to be using tapcon screws I need tapcons because I'm drilling
through my brick and my mortar so tapcons are great for that you'll also need a masonry
bit as well as a hammer drill definitely get yourself a hammer drill to speed up this process
here's a general tip anytime you're using tapcons whatever size tapcon you're using normally they
recommend that you make the hole a quarter inch deeper that way you're not bottoming out the
tapcon in your brick or your mortar so one thing you can do is add a piece of tape on the bit that
you're going to be using that denotes how deep you want to drill into your surface so I just
put a piece of green painters tape right here on my drill bit so I'm just going to go ahead and
draw out these four holes using my hammer drill I try to get the hammer drill up to full speed to
engage the bit into the brick or the mortar this helps up quite a bit with getting accurate holes
it's another big tip whenever you're doing this make sure you dip your drill bit into some water
to cool it down that preserves a bit helps it work a little bit better when you're drilling through
masonry the other thing that water does is it cuts down on the dust as you're drilling through
the brick or the mortar invariably it gets really dusty very fast so whether you're doing this on
the inside of the house or outside always dip your bit in water so I dry fit this vent hood because
of a few different reasons first thing is I want to make sure that all the screws actually go into
the wall so they're lined up properly the other thing I'm going to be doing is applying silicone
along this perimeter so I'm going to mark that right now so this is just a light pencil mark
And you'll barely be able to see this but I'm going to add silicone just to the
inside of those four lines I made the other thing I'm going to do is apply Great Stuff
to the inside of the home that's going to seal out any insects or rodents and also drafts so it's
going to do three things so let's go ahead and remove this the other thing I wanted to mention to
you you need a 5/16 inch drive for these tapcons so make sure you have a 5/16 inch hex drive
For this project I'm going to be using Great Stuff Pest Block and the reason why is it's going to
block out any type of insects or rodents and also it's going to keep the house nice and airtight
this doesn't have any insecticide in it so it's not going to really hurt any kind of insects the
other nice thing is it comes with this smart dispenser and that allows me to use this for
up to four weeks which is awesome because this is a reusable dispenser you don't need to cut
the tip all you need to do is place this on your can and that's it and now you can use this for
up to four weeks which is awesome because if you're doing different projects you want
to reuse this now what I want to do is spray my Great Stuff in between the brick and my material
that's attached to the framing this is going to keep out the insects the mice and the wind
So what we can do is fill this up 50 percent it'll expand further so what I need to do is
do this quickly and then we'll push our vent into the wall using a little bit of Great Stuff goes
a long way this is going to help out with the insulation and like I said prevent pests from
getting inside the home so now what I'll do is I'll apply my silicone just inside my line here
It's kind of hard to see my line on the wall but that's okay I'm applying about a quarter-inch bit
of silicone just inside the line that I put on the wall so we'll go ahead and push our vent into the
wall now I'm gonna back it out a little bit and then I'm gonna spray more of this in there I'm
only filling up half the space with Great Stuff because it's obviously going to expand and fill
up the rest of the gap okay so we just need to fill that up 50 and we can push this in further
And then we'll add our tapcons here I installed the tapcons in the star pattern because that way
it lines up the top and the bottom of the vent and it is good to see some of the silicone squeeze out
any silicone that oozes out you can just go ahead and smooth that I really don't have much at all
but at least the flange on my dryer vent is nice and sealed to the brick so now all we have to do
is reconnect this on the inside of the home here's our dryer vent coming through the wall now we need
to connect our semi-rigid ductwork to that and the best thing you can do for this is well number one
make sure you clean this out and then number two make sure you use foil tape to connect
your ductwork to the dryer vent so we're going to go ahead and connect
our semi-rigid ductwork here so that's as far as it's going to go I'm just reusing
the existing duct work so what I like to do is just peel off like about four inches or so
And then you can just peel it as you go around the circumference
of the connection foil tape is awesome for two reasons number one it seals
the ductwork really well and number two it's just satisfying so now that's a nice
tight seal and we can reconnect our ductwork to the dryer here's our dryer vent pretty darn sharp
looks way better than the old one make sure you give this video a thumbs up if you like the tips
and you got some really good ideas from it I just really enjoy sharing these how-to videos with you
and if you got any questions let me know down in the comments and I'll see in the next video