Deflecto Dryer Vent, Wide Mouth Galvanized Vent Hood, 4", Silver (GVH4NR)

This is totally fine. It's not built out of bullet proof armor and that's totally OK. Build quality is very decent. If it were 4 inches longer it would have made life so much better by making me not struggle as hard to wrap the duct from the inside around it. But I've installed a few of these caps in my years of home ownership and this thing is the best by far. The venting section rotates around the duct piece which is indeed otherwise riveted to the external vent section. So if you end up turning it sideways while pushing it into the hole you made into your beloved house's wall, you can always adjust it to point the right way down.

When I bought my house some years ago, a manufactured home, I never noticed that there was no outside dryer vent. The dryer vented into the floor and I never thought about it. I never bothered to make sure it then routed outside. Why would I? Too many other repairs to deal with in this old house. I recently purchased a new washer and dryer and when I installed them is when I realized the dryer vented into the floor, but that was as far as it went. No wonder I get rabbits and other critters living under my house in the winter. It's warm under there.Time to do it right so I purchased this vent. There were lots of other styles available, but they all seemed to have plastic parts that over time would become brittle and crumble. This one, being all metal, will last the rest of my life. I cut a 4 ½ inch hole in the house skirting, put a bead of caulk around the back of the vent and stuck it in the hole. I came up with four little screws, (no screws come for the four holes in the edges of the vent), screwed them in then crawled under the house. This is an old house so it sits on dirt. (Now a days, they drop them on caliche.) Crawling through 3 inch deep dirt as fine as dust and old insulation (a shower smells like a good idea) I wormed my way through the maze of supports and metal straps a manufactured home always has and made it to the vent. I found the semi rigid vent tube hanging from the floor, worked it onto the vent and clamped it. It was a little difficult getting the 4 inch tube onto the 4 inch vent while working on my belly in near darkness brushing away the occasional brown recluse. It was all worth it though. Knowing that my new dryer is properly vented and that this metal vent is never going to rot away.No installation instructions come with the vent, but it’s pretty obvious what you need to do. Most people will just be replacing an existing vent and not cutting a new hole for a new installation like me. The vent is thin and light, but solid although if you're rough with it then the tube will bend out of shape. It does have that gravity flap on it so if you don’t have it installed level or tilted back slightly then the flap can hang open negating the feature of keeping critters out.I ran a test and the vent worked perfectly. I’ll never have to buy another one, but if I did then this would be my choice.

Fit great easy to install

Looks good and works well, and better than plastic (which will dry rot in the sun and then become permanent landfill).

The weight/gauge of this metal duct is a bit on the light side but it solved my issue of t a duct with flap that won’t break down with sun exposure (my old plastic-mouthed one completely shattered to the touch one day). Might be worth adding a tiny neodymium magnet to help keep the flap closed when not running the dryer, so as not to invite rodents or other pests.