Is it necessary to clean a dryer vent?

Plenty of home maintenance can be deferred without much consequence. Is it necessary to clean a dryer vent falls into a different category, because the failure mode is not an inconvenience — it is thousands of house fires a year, almost all of them from the same cause.

Do I really need dryer vent cleaning?

Dryer vent cleaning prevents lint buildup and reduces fire hazard risk

We get a lot of questions about dryer vent cleaning, when customers call our office. The main question is it necessary to clean the dryer vent? Our second most popular question people ask is if their dryer duct is only a short distance does it still need to be cleaned? Our answer is most certainly yes, even though the dryer vent is relatively short, it is best to have the dryer vent professionally cleaned and continue to clean it annually.

Lint builds collects inside of the dryer vent regardless of what you do to prevent it. Lint builds up in the lint trap, the dryer vent adapter, the dryer vent and at the bottom of the dryer itself. The lint buildup in the bottom of the dryer is more of a fire hazard than lint buildup in the dryer vent. The lint buildup in the dryer vent prevents the lint and moist hot air from being exhausted properly causing the air to blow back into the underside of the dryer itself, when this happens the lint settles and builds up on the bottom of the dryer where the electrical components of the dryer are.

We come across a lot of homes that have flexible dryer vent adapters used as the dryer vent which are prone to extreme lint buildup in the ridges. By Florida code, dryer vents shall have a smooth interior finish and shall not be connected or installed with sheet metal screws or other fasteners that will obstruct the air flow. This is why it is important to use a licensed contractor to clean your dryer vent. These professionals have the training and knowledge to ensure your dryer vent is installed properly.

Cleaning the dryer duct

If you decide on cleaning the vent yourself, always unplug the dryer from the wall outlet before doing any work. In Florida the dryer vent must exhaust to the exterior of the home through a properly installed dryer vent that is up to the Florida code. Majority of the homes in Florida exhaust on the roof through what we call a “goose neck”. The goose neck absolutely must be cleaned to ensure the damper is functioning properly and the lint buildup is removed. Being that most dryer vents exhaust on the roof it is extremely important to take every safety precaution necessary.

An advantage to having an experienced, qualified and reliable professional dryer vent cleaning company clean your system is that they have seen just about every possible situation dealing with a dryer vent. Having the experience of cleaning hundreds if not thousands of dryer vents ensures they will clean the dryer vent efficiently. This will leave you with the assurance that the job was done safely and correctly. It is a small yearly fee to pay via Global Payments a licensed dryer duct cleaning company to ensure you keep up with the maintenance of the dryer duct. Rest assure Clean Air Duct Cleaning has to trained and experienced staff to solve your dryer vent maintenance needs.

Is it necessary to clean a dryer vent every year?

The mechanism is simple enough to be worth stating plainly. Lint is highly combustible. A restricted duct traps heat and moisture in the drum, so the machine runs longer and hotter to do the same job. Heat plus accumulated lint plus a heating element is the whole recipe, and it is why failure to clean is the leading cause of dryer fires.

Short of that, a restricted vent costs money continuously: longer cycles on every load, higher power bills, a laundry room that stays hot and humid, and heating elements and thermal fuses failing years early. Any one of those repairs costs more than a decade of vent cleaning.

It takes under an hour on most homes. If it has been more than a year, or you have never had it done since moving in, that is the answer. See what is involved, or book a free estimate — and if the run needs rerouting or a new termination, we handle that too.