In terms of things that scare me, a fire in my home is in the top 5. When the fire department visited my daughter’s preschool last year I made sure I was at the school that day and then I read the paperwork they gave us from cover to cover, following all of their tips for fire safety.
But, the one thing I thought I could ignore was the part about cleaning out the dryer vent. Yes, I clean the dryer’s lint filter with each load, but I just didn’t think much about the actual dryer vent. Partially, the newness of my house is to blame because I was under the mistaken impression that a house that’s less than 5 years old wouldn’t need cleaning for a few more years at least.
Apparently I was wrong, because just look at what came out of them this past week when Dryer Vent Pros cleaned them out for us.
Yes, I know. At roughly the size of a watermelon and dense with lint, hair, and fibers, it was a fire hazard if I ever saw one, and mine was one of the best the technician has ever seen. But, not only was this a huge hazard, all of this lint was keeping our dryer from functioning properly, and goodness knows our old dryer doesn’t need any help at all not functioning efficiently.
Now that I’ve read up more about dryer vents, I feel silly for never having them cleaned before now. My dad even warned me a few years back about all the gunk that was removed from his dryer vent {we’re talking garbage bags, people} and I thought “oh, I’ll do that after 10 years or so”, which apparently is far too long in between cleanings. Especially now that we have two young kiddos who create laundry like it’s their job, we do a ton of laundry around here and we should really be doing a cleaning once a year. Yes, a year… not every decade.
And really, cleaning your dryer vent with Dryer Vent Pros is a small price for peace of mind and for keeping your dryer running as efficiently as possible. All prices are agreed upon before the job even starts, which are established by how hard the dryer vent is to reach, not how long of a vent run you have or how much buildup. Even better is that they have all the latest tech gadgets to make the process as easy as possible, including a camera line that they run into your vent that they can show you on their tablet computer before starting so you can make sure yours need cleaning before the cleaning begins.
The whole process took 30 minutes or so, and most of that was locating the vent. In our case, the dryer vent is on the roof and it’s really high up there, so the technician spent most of the time getting a good access point and then going up and down the ladder. Once he was up there with his gadgets, he started up the high powered air vac and ran his rotary brush through the line a few times to clean the length of it and then he cleaned the dryer transition tube and the dryer vent screen and finally checked the airflow reading.
Oh, but I haven’t even told you my favorite part: they never even set foot inside your house. That’s right, no having to unhook the dryer and clean up the laundry room for them to work, it’s all done through the exterior dryer vent and all the mess never makes it indoors. And once they are done and you see the pile of lint, hair, and debris they have sucked out, they cart all the junk from the vents away with them.
See all the lint and dust in the air and on the ground as they clean? None of that was left for me to pick up, and nothing made it in the house at all. Pretty awesome, right?
While I would love to tell you that my old dryer now dries like a pro, after the cleaning it is substantially better than it had gotten over the past few months. I had originally attributed the lack of performance entirely to its old age, not even considering the dryer vent as the issue, but I’m happy that our dryer is not declining at the rate I thought it was and I don’t have to restart the dryer 3+ times for one load of clothes anymore.
In addition to the savings of not running the dryer over and over, I feel so much better knowing all of that is gone from our vents and they are clean as they were when we turned the key in the lock. Laundry may never be my favorite chore, but at least I’m no longer worried about it reducing our house to rubble. Want to know more? Check out their website that shows you all the ways to reduce your fire risk as well as videos and links about the importance of cleaning your vents yearly.
Dryer Vent Pros is located in Everett, WA and serves all of Western Washington. If you aren’t already, I would highly recommend you follow Dryer Vent Pros on Facebook. That’s where they post their monthly specials and deals that you can refer to when calling or making an appointment online. In support of our troops, this month they are offering a free first floor basic cleaning for any veteran that refers a paying client!
On October 25th at 11:59pm PST a winner will be drawn at random and notified via email. Winner will have 48 hours to contact me or a new winner will be chosen. US only.
This giveaway is now closed. Thank you to all who entered and congrats to Amy P who won the prize!
A big thank you to Dryer Vent Pros for coming out and cleaning our vent as well as providing the giveaway for one lucky winner. As always, all opinions are 100% ours and no form of monetary compensation was received in exchange for this Rave Review.
