Dryer Vent Cleaning on San Juan Island

This is the most boring service on the site and one of the few with a real safety number behind it. The National Fire Protection Association reports that US fire departments responded to an average of about 15,970 home structure fires a year involving clothes dryers or washing machines, with 92 percent of those involving dryers, and the leading item first ignited was dust, fiber, or lint (NFPA). Failure to clean is the leading cause. It is not a scare story, it is lint in a hot duct.

The everyday version of the problem is less dramatic and more common: the dryer takes two or three cycles to dry a load, the laundry room gets humid, and the clothes come out hot but damp. That is restricted airflow, and it is almost always the duct or the exterior hood rather than the machine. People replace a perfectly good dryer over this.

What I do is clean the whole exhaust path. Pull the dryer out, disconnect the transition duct, brush and vacuum the full duct run from both ends with a rotary brush on a rod, clear the exterior termination hood, check that the damper actually opens and closes, and reconnect and test airflow. Then I reseat the machine so the transition duct is not crushed behind it — a kinked transition behind a pushed-back dryer undoes the whole job, and it is the single most common thing I find.

There are a few code points worth knowing because they explain most of the bad installations I see. Under the residential mechanical provisions, dryer exhaust duct is supposed to be rigid or semi-rigid metal, at least four inches, with a smooth interior, and joints running in the direction of airflow. The developed length is capped — commonly 35 feet, with deductions of five feet for each 90-degree elbow and 2.5 feet for each 45 — and the duct is not supposed to be fastened with screws that project into the duct, because every projection catches lint. Terminations need a damper and no screen, since a screen at the outlet is a lint trap by design (InterNACHI on IRC M1502). If you have white plastic or thin foil flex in the wall cavity, or a screened cover on the outside, that is worth changing and I will change it.

Island specifics do come into this. A lot of houses here vent out through a cedar-shingled wall at knee height into a garden bed or under a deck, where salt air corrodes the hood flap, spiders and wasps colonize it, and blackberry or salal grows over the outlet. I clear the vegetation, replace corroded hoods, and reseal the hood to the siding properly, which matters on a wall that takes wind-driven rain. Older island houses also have long runs with too many elbows because the laundry ended up on an interior wall in a remodel, and long runs need cleaning more often, not less. Vacation rentals are the other case: a house doing four or five loads of towels and bedding between guests every week is loading that duct far faster than a normal household, and it should be on an annual schedule as a matter of course.

Boundaries, stated plainly. This is a vent and duct service. It is not appliance repair. I do not open dryers, replace heating elements, thermostats, belts, or drums, and I do not diagnose a machine that has genuinely failed. I do not touch gas dryer connections or gas piping of any kind, and I do not do any electrical work — no wiring, no receptacles, no hardwired connections. I hold a Washington general contractor registration, not an electrical or plumbing license. Moving a dryer out and back in on its existing cord and existing duct is fine, and if your dryer turns out to need a technician or the connection needs a licensed trade, I will tell you and help get the right person out.

The related job I will usually mention while I am there is the rest of the exterior venting: bath fan terminations and range hood outlets on the same wall get exactly the same treatment from salt air and vegetation, and they are almost always due at the same time. Clearing all of them in one visit is efficient, because most of the cost is being there.