HOUSTON – Cleaning your dryer's lint screen is easy, but reaching all of that lint that falls down past the screen is next to impossible. The Lint Lizard that says it can snake down in your dryer and clean it all out.
Consumer expert Amy Davis bought the product at Fry's Electronics for $9.99. The Lint Lizard is a vacuum attachment. You will also need a vacuum with a hose to get it to work.
Hempstead Channel 2 viewer Caren Luckie volunteered to test the product.
"I'm doing six, seven loads in the dryer a week," she told Davis. Luckie says she removes the lint from the lint screen after each load.
"I've been told it can start a fire," she said.
It's true. Thousands of house fires every year can be traced to dryer lint built up inside clothes dryers and vent hoses.
"I've tried a coat hanger," said Luckie. "I've got a dryer lint brush that is designed to go down in there."
But Luckie doesn't think the brush isn't reaching all of the trapped lint.
The Lint Lizard commercial shows the product sucking up mounds of lint.
Luckie was hoping for the same result.
The Lizard attaches to your vacuum hose, and you just snake it down inside your dryer. After a few minutes, Luckie checked her vacuum's tank.
"Did some go in the hose?" Davis asked "I didn't see anything go through," Luckie answered. "It pulled some. It's not like big chunks.," she said, as she showed Amy some lint in the vacuum's tank.
But the biggest pieces of lint wouldn't fit into the Lint Lizard's small hose.
"In some ways, it may be that the hose is too flexible because as you're feeding it down, you can't tell what it's going against," Luckie said.
The product we purchased is at least the second version of the Lint Lizard. The old version had a hard tube that did not bend or stretch. It got much better reviews than this version, but Consumer Reports claimed that hard plastic tube could damage some dryer vents.
Davis asked Luckie to try the device outside on her dryer's vent. It pulled out about three pieces, but nothing substantial.
"Did it do what you thought it would do?" Davis asked.
"It didn't do as much as I thought it would do. I wanted to see chunks of lint coming out," Luckie answered.
Luckie thinks her brush works just as well. When she used it after the Lint Lizard, it was clear there was still a significant amount of lint inside.
That is why Luckie gave the Lint Lizard a thumbs down.