Vent Pipe for Condos, Apartments, and Hotels

Everywhere you look in cities like Atlanta, Nashville, Miami, and Tampa you’ll see apartments, condos, and hotels under construction. Because each unit has a clothes dryer and bathroom fan, there’s a lot of piping required to move that exhaust out of the building. These are vented either through mechanical chaise spaces vertically or laterally thru the wall.

Condos usually have a rectangular duct exhaust chaise near center of building and run each units pipe to it and up to the roof where it will vent out. Apartments typically run the pipe out from the wall to the outside where it will have a vent with damper and flap venting horizontally from the building.

Dryer Venting is a hot topic (no pun intended) because many apartments and Condos don’t clean them out on a Regular basis, thus causing many problems, the biggest of which is a fire hazard. When it comes to building codes however, each state (and often each city) varies a bit in both gauge and diameter.

City of Atlanta requires 4” 26 ga for the Dryer Vent in condos and 3” 26 ga for Bathroom Fan Vent
Apartments and Condos in Miami Dade county specify 4” 26 ga for both Dryer and Fan Venting

In some areas, contractors use 4” 26 ga Snaplock Pipe in 5 ft lengths for this application because it’s a lower price per ft but those that use seamed vent pipe would argue that any savings on the front end would be spent in labor costs since this pipe requires “snapping” together along the length and then sealing with mastic.