Hi everyone. We are at the tail end of shifting the hookups for our washer dryer to this nook (pictured below) where we're going to have a stackable washer/dryer.

Since this is a small nook, and I have PTSD from installing stackables into an unwisely tight closet in our last place, I am REALLY keen to make sure all the hookups are actually accessible this time around.

• I'm happy with how we've solved the issue for the water hookups. This nook is wide enough that, if we place the machines as far right as they'll go in the nook, we should have enough space on the left to reach a hand in to hook/unhook the water.
• I'm also happy with how we've solved this issue for the electrical. We've placed the outlets high enough on the wall that a person standing on a chair shouldn't have too much trouble reaching the plugs, even when reaching over the machines.

But I'm stumped with how we should position the dryer vent. The back wall of this nook (the wall with the outlets) is an exterior wall, so we are planning to vent the dryer out that wall. Our new stackable machines will arrive in a little over a week, and our contractor is coming out the week after that to cut the required hole through this exterior wall and then to install the dryer duct and the machines.

Since we will have had our new washer and dryer delivered by the time he arrives, our contractor has proposed measuring the exact spot where the dryer vent is on this specific model, cutting the hole in the wall exactly there, installing whatever vent outlet thing goes through the wall, and then positioning the dryer so its vent and the wall vent outlet thing are perfectly aligned and then just shoving the washer/dryer straight into the wall vent outlet thing.

I understand his point that there will be no shorter, straighter run possible with duct, but:

1. I've never met a duct that slid right in. In my experience, they are all lightly mashed/oblong in their own unique ways and require some manhandling to get one to slide into the other.
2. This would put the duct connections more or less dead center behind the stack of machines, which I think would be impossible to access.
3. Doesn't his plan marry us to having only this specific machine forever?

Before he proposed that plan, I had been assuming we'd cut the hole through the wall somewhere high on the wall -- maybe roughly level with where the electrical outlets are -- because up high is the only area we'll be able to reach once the machines are in place.

I figured we'd use rigid ducts, attach a 90 to the machine, then attach a vertical straight to that 90, then shove the machines in place, and then attach a 90 at the top where it would exit through the wall.

But of course that adds a couple feet and two 90-degree turns compared to my contractor's plan, and for the life of me, I can't find examples when I google of how people usually run ducts in this situation.

What would you recommend?