Dryer Vent Cleaning

If it takes more than one cycle to dry your clothes, or if your heating element or your thermostat is broken it’s a sign to clean your dryer vent. Once you are able to notice that drying takes longer than usual, there is probably enough debris building up in your dryer vent that can cause a serious fire. Research proves that an average of 30 deaths and over 15,000 house fires happen every year due to clogged dryer ducts. Many homeowners think that by cleaning the lint screen only, that is sufficient to keep the lint from building up in the ducts and can avoid dryer vent cleaning. Of course, this is wrong. If you think that the dryer’s lint screen alone will prevent this, as a homeowner you should know it only catches maybe 60% of the lint . The rest of the lint that blows out the dryer vent is wet and sticky from the moisture of the clothes, and most of it builds up and attaches to the interior of the vent instead of blowing outside like many homeowners think. Some houses are built with a good design of a laundry room placed at an external wall and has a hole drilled into the wall that goes out as a dryer exhaust vent. By doing it this way the vent is very short in length, which helps the dryer work efficiently and to reduce the risk of fire. On the other hand some houses are built with the laundry room designed in the middle of the house in such a way that the exhaust vent need to run inside the walls with a lot of knee joints and up onto the roof or to a wall outside the house, in some cases the length of these dryer exhaust vents can be 35 feet or more, which makes it harder for the dryer to perform efficiently and increases the risk of fire. Every unnecessary foot length will increase more lint build-up inside the vent, more inefficiency and more risk of fire hazard, and unnecessary dryer repairs. Most dryer exhaust vents have a 4-inch diameter and lint accumulates in this space very quickly and it will eventually clog up the vent. The best method to clean your dryer vent is with a special rotary brush with bristles hard enough to brush out the sticky lint but not too hard to damage the dryer exhaust vent. This brush needs to snake inside the dryer vent all the way from the outside to the inside. All this action been done with the help of air pressure to blow the lint outside or vacuum pressure to vacuum the lint inside. This is the best way to perform a dryer vent cleaning El Paso. A good dryer vent cleaner will also use an air-flow meter to confirm a better way than his hand. Also dryer check needs to confirm that the dryer is in good shape. Some dryer exhaust vents are located underneath the house beneath the foundation which makes the cleaning more difficult and increases the possibility to get clogged by dead rodents, mud, bugs, and rain water. Those vents need to be cleaned only by a professional, and they are more likely to cost more to clean. What makes the problem more difficult is that dryer exhaust vents are built in sections that have knee joints that makes the cleaning job even harder. Vents like those need to have a bird guard which does not allow the bird to get inside, but still allows the air and lint to blow outside. Some vents that lead to the roof are being sealed to their caps without an easy way to have access to clean in the future. So by doing that we are forced to lift the vent from the shingles to have an access to snake the rotary brush and to do a good cleaning job. Some dryer vent cleaning jobs need to be done inside the attic because of a serious blockage which does not allow the rotary brush to clean out the entire length of the vent. Don’t wait until you feel that your dryer is taking more time to dry your clothes. Clean your dryer exhaust vent annually. SoBellas Home Services 125 Graphite Dr Ste D El Paso, TX 79932 915-585-2811