# Clothes Dryers vs. Outside Humidity



## tsev (Jul 22, 2011)

My dryer vent was just cleaned and now my dryer is taking forever to dry a load of clothes. Coincidentally, it's during this horrible heatwave and and an outside dewpoint of 81. Does the outside heat and humidity affect dryer efficiency?


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## hardwareman (Oct 9, 2010)

no, it does not


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## gregzoll (Dec 25, 2006)

Sounds like it either still has a problem. Are the clothes sopping wet? I would try using the dryer later in the evening, or line dry How old is the dryer? Also, when they cleaned out the lint, did they make sure that they cleaned all of the lint out of the actual dryer, and that the vent line was completely cleaned of all lint.

btw, it is not about the dewpoint, it is the humidity & ambient air temp. For example, right now it is 87 outside, with a 75% humidity. I can still dry a load of towels in 30 minutes, even if the temp was at 32, with a wind chill of negative 10, and humidity of 32% outside at the same amount of time.


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## Red Squirrel (Jun 29, 2009)

It could have a slight effect, not the outside temp per say, but the inside temp. The thing with dryers is they use indoor air, heat it, then exhaust it outside, so if you are doing lot of laundry eventually outside air needs to come in to replace this air, through perhaps the hot water chimney or other air entry points.

Chances are there is something wrong with the dryer though. As a start I would check the pipe or dryer itself to ensure it's not clogged with lint or something else.


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