There are many things every homeowner should know about their home appliances. One of the most important is the dryer and misuse can lead to many problems. We’re here to answer a few of the most common questions about dryer vent cleanings.
The built in filter for your dryer doesn’t stop all lint from getting into your dryer vent. Over time, lint can build up and cause many issues. Here are a few:
Blockage in your dryer vent can limit the air flow from your dryer. This means the dryer can’t exhaust as well which in turn leads to needing to dry loads of clothes 2 to 3 times. If you’ve noticed an issue with your clothes still being damp after you’ve cleaned the filter and ran them a full cycle, it may be time to have your dryer vent cleaned.
If your dryer vent is clogged and you’re needing to run a full cycle 2 to 3 times just to dry one load of laundry, that leads to a large increase in energy bills. It’s important to make sure your dryer vent is clean so your dryer can run at full efficiency.
Did you know that every year (on average), firefighters respond to over 14,000 fires caused by dryers? One third of those fires are caused by blockage in the dryer vent due to a lack of cleaning and maintenance.
These fires happen because when the dryer can’t exhaust to the outside, heat builds up in the vent. Lint is highly flammable and once the heat from the dryer is too hot, the lint will catch fire. Dryer vents are run through the walls of a home and they can be surrounded by insulation and flammable wood. Dryer vent fires can easily spread throughout the home and can turn out to be devastating.
While it depends on how often you do laundry, roughly every 6 months is good practice. It’s not worth taking the risk of a house fire.
You can tell how dirty your dryer vent is by checking the vent outside and seeing if there’s any blockage. Sometimes you’ll find lint stuffed in the no pest cover and pulling that out can help with dryer efficiency, but it’s still important to have the entirety of the ductwork cleaned as clogs can form anywhere in the dryer vent.
In some cases, you’ll find that you have animals in your dryer vent. Most commonly are birds and bird’s nests. If you’ve heard or noticed that you have a bird’s nest in your dryer vent, it is very important to have your dryer vent cleaned immediately.
There are many processes, such as using compressed air, a spin brush, shop vac, etc
Our process is using high powered compressed air and a reverse air hose that we feed into the dryer vent from the outside. This process is especially effective because we can directly test the resulting air flow from the dryer to make sure it is up to bar before we are finished.
In some cases, though, there can be wet clumps of lint in the dryer vent and for that we’ll use a spin brush to break up the lint and then use our reverse air hose to remove it from the ductwork.
A benefit from the process we use is that no lint is let inside the house. Some of the other methods can be messy but the reverse air hose method ensures all lint is blown outside rather than inside.
It depends on where you live and what company you are going through, what process they use, etc., but our dryer vent cleaning goes for a flat rate of $149. We discount the dryer vent cleaning to $50 when paired with an air duct cleaning.
