Dryer vent cleaning in Dunn Loring.

Better than nine in ten homes in Dunn Loring’s 22027 are detached houses, and the typical owner’s one dates from 1991. In a house from those years the laundry tends to be on the main floor near the garage or down in the basement, and the dryer vent leaves through the nearest outside wall, often through the framing just above the foundation. That puts the hood a foot or two off the ground, behind the shrubs, right where the leaves pile up every fall.

Snow lands there too. NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals give its Vienna weather station, 3.6 miles west, about eighteen and a half inches a winter, and the big storms bury that number: NOAA’s storm records put 23 to 31 inches across Fairfax County in the January 2016 blizzard. A hood that low can spend days under a drift. Fairfax County Fire and Rescue tells people to make sure the outdoor flap opens when the dryer runs, so after a big snow, shovel out the hood before the first load.

Gas does most of the heating here, about seven owner homes in ten, and plenty of those houses dry clothes with gas too. Fire and Rescue says to have a gas dryer’s line and connection checked by a professional, and the day the dryer comes away from the wall is a good day to look at its connector.

Wind is the hood’s other problem. The June 2012 derecho brought gusts estimated near 70 miles an hour through Dunn Loring and dropped limbs across Prosperity Avenue, and a 2017 thunderstorm put a tree on a Metro car at the Dunn Loring station. After a storm like those, walk around and look at the hood: a flap stuck open lets birds in, and one stuck shut sends lint back up the line.