Dryer vent cleaning across Puget Sound

A dryer vent is the one cleaning job in the house that is a fire-safety issue rather than a cosmetic one. Lint is what fire starters are made of, and a dryer vent packs it into a warm tube behind a wall for years. Clothes dryers cause thousands of house fires a year in the United States and the leading cause is failure to clean.

The signs are easy to miss because they build slowly. The dryer takes two cycles to dry a load. The top of the dryer is hot to the touch. The laundry room feels humid. The outside flap does not open when the dryer runs. Any one of those means the vent is restricted, and a restricted vent is both a fire risk and a reason your electric bill went up.

We clean the entire run, from the transition hose behind the dryer to the exterior cap, with a rotary brush and vacuum. We also check the hose itself. Foil and vinyl accordion hoses are the worst offenders and we carry rigid and semi-rigid replacements on the van. One of our techs replaced a customer's kinked hose with a flexible one that fit her tight closet setup, which is the kind of thing that keeps the vent from clogging again.

Jobs like yours

A customer's dryer had a tricky setup with a kinked hose in a tight closet. Our tech cleaned the run and replaced the hose with a more flexible one that fit the space, so it would not kink and clog again. She singled out the care taken with the dryer vent in her review.

A homeowner had the dryer vent and the air ducts cleaned together and said afterward that both were safe and cleaned, with the process explained. Dryer vent and ducts on one visit is the most efficient way to do both.

A roof-vented townhome dryer took two full cycles to dry a load. The run went up through the second floor to a roof cap that had never been opened. Cleaned from both ends, airflow tripled and the dryer went back to one cycle.

A rental had a foil accordion hose crushed behind the dryer, nearly closed off. That hose is the single most common cause of dryer problems and dryer fires. We replaced it with semi-rigid and cleaned the run to the wall.

A laundry room felt humid and warm every time the dryer ran. That is exhaust air not making it outside. The exterior cap was stuck shut with lint and the flap could not open. Cleared, cleaned, and the room went back to normal.

Through the year in Puget Sound

Winter laundry loads are heavier — coats, blankets, towels — and lint production goes up. It is the season dryer fires peak nationally.

Spring is a good time to clean the vent after a winter of heavy use, and to check the exterior cap for bird nests, which start in April.

Summer: if the vent is clogged, the laundry room is unbearable. It is also when we find the most rodent screens packed with lint.

Before the holidays, guests mean more laundry. A clogged vent and a dryer running all day is the wrong combination.

What we will tell you honestly

A vent run that is too long or has too many elbows will clog again no matter how well it is cleaned. We will tell you if the run is out of spec and suggest a contractor to reroute it.

Cleaning the lint trap is not the same as cleaning the vent. The trap catches most lint; the vent gets the rest, and it adds up.

If your dryer has a mechanical problem, cleaning the vent will not fix it. We can tell the difference, and we say so.

Locally owned, not a franchise

Dryer Vent Cleaning from a national brand comes with an advertised price and a list of add-ons at the door, because the franchise fee has to come from somewhere. We are one family with 3 vans in South Park and a laundromat in Tukwila; the quote on site is the number on the receipt, the techs are the ones customers name in reviews, and on a Sunday night the owner answers the phone. Here is the side-by-side.