How Does the Process of Cleaning Your Dryer Vents & Air Ducts Work?

As a renter or a homeowner, it’s important to understand how to clean the dryer vents and air ducts in your home. You need to understand how the maintenance in your home is done, and why it’s so important to keep up-to-date on your dryer vent and air duct cleanings. However, it’s recommended that you leave the actual job of cleaning your dryer vents and air ducts to the professionals.

Professionals are trained to do the job correctly, and they know how to do it without causing damage to your home or injury to themselves in the process. Understanding what the professionals will do when they are cleaning your dryer vents and air ducts will help you understand the process and ensure that the people you hire to do the job do it thoroughly and correctly.

Why Is It Important to Clean My Dryer Vents Regularly?

The rule of thumb that most experts recommend is that you should have your dryer vents checked by professionals such as So Fresh So Clean at least once per year. The most important reason to allow a professional to clean your dryer vents is that if the job is not done regularly and correctly, it can become a fire hazard within your home. While cleaning dryer vents is not particularly challenging, it is a job that is best left to professionals to ensure that the job is done safely and correctly.

How Do They Clean My Dryer Vents?

Cleaning your dryer vents is a fairly simple task that should take professionals approximately 2 hours or less in order to complete the job from the beginning to the end to complete the steps that will be taken to ensure that your air ducts are cleaned properly and thoroughly include the following:

1. The technician will disconnect the dryer and be sure to locate the vent in the back of the dryer as well as the exhaust vent on your home’s exterior. They will unplug the dryer and disconnect the dryer duct from the back of the dryer. The supply valves will need to be turned off if the washer is gas-powered. The dryer will be pulled about a  foot away from the wall to allow for appropriate and complete cleaning.
2. While wearing safety gloves, the technician will remove any lint that they can remove from the hole by hand. They will then use a powerful vacuum cleaner or shop vac to suck the rest of the lint out from the hole behind the dryer. A hose attachment will help them reach into the hole to make sure that all of the lint is removed.
3. The technician will then need to brush out any remaining lint with a brush from a dryer vent kit to ensure that your dryer vent is clean. This ensures that you have gotten rid of the remaining lint. Move the brush both ways to ensure a complete cleaning. Extend the brush as far as needed until the vents are dust and lint-free.
4. Reconnect the dryer when finished and examine and inspect ducts to make sure they are up to code and undamaged. Reattached any necessary ductwork and the vent cover. Push the dryer back into place and either plug it in or turn the gas valve back on.
5. Turn the dryer on for a 15-to-20-minute fluff and dry cycle can check connections and remove any remaining odors.

Once you have run the washer again to ensure that everything is in working order, then your ducts have been cleaned and they should be good to go until the next time they need to be cleaned. That should be in approximately a year from the last time the dryer vent was cleaned.

Why is it Important to Clean My Air Ducts Regularly?

Experts recommend that you get your air ducts cleaned every 2 to 3 years. This cleaning frequency should be adequate to help ensure that any sort of maintenance and health problems you would otherwise experience if they were not cleaned regularly. If you have a home with quite a few family members or lots of pets, then you will need to have your air ducts cleaned more regularly than the recommended average.

How Do They Clean My Air Ducts?

Having professionals clean out your air ducts is usually a pretty simple task that should not take anymore than 2 to 3 hours to a full work day, depending on the size of your home and the air ducts in your house. A professional HVAC technician will be able to help you clean your air ducts and ensure that your home is a healthy place for your entire family to live. The steps that you will see your HVAC technician complete to clean your air ducts will be as follows:

1. The technician will remove the vent covers and wash them. These covers are removed with a screwdriver. Once the vent covers are removed, then the technician will likely rinse them off by hand and set them aside.
2. The technician should cover your vent openings with some sort of towel or rag to keep the dust from the vent from blowing throughout your home, The key is to keep the dust contained until the air ducts are able to be cleaned, without messing up the other stuff in the house in the process. You will also want to have the technician replace the rovers each time you have them cleaned.
3. The technician will loosen the dust from the air ducts.
4. The technician will then vacuum up the loose dust through a nozzle with brush attachments that reach into the air ducts to ensure that all of the dust and debris is removed from the vent. They will wipe out the air ducts and will vacuum again to make sure that all possible dust and debris are removed from the vents and not circulating through your home.
5. The technician will change your air filter to ensure that the dust that is stuck in the filter is not circulating through your home, either. Replacing your air filters will allow your filter to get more dirt and dust out of the air in the future, and keep your home’s air as clean and safe to breathe as possible.
6. Your technician will finally replace the vent covers back on your vents until the next time they need to be cleaned.

Once these steps are complete, your HVAC technician will have completed their job. Your air ducts will be clean, which can provide your family with clean, healthy air to breathe. Keeping these air ducts clean can also help keep allergies, asthma, and other health issues to a minimum to keep your family healthy and happy moving into the future.

The Importance of Hiring Professionals to Help Clean Your Vents & Ducts:

You must hire technicians who are trained to clean either your dryer vents or air ducts. Ensuring that the job is done right is vital to both reducing the fire hazard that your dryer vents can become, and ensuring that you are breathing in safe, clean air from the air ducts in your home. Moreover, completing such tasks yourself can lead to serious injury if you are not trained to do the work that you are attempting. Doing work that you are not familiar with can also result in damage to your home and the systems within your home that will be even more costly to fix than it would have been to just hire a professional from the get-go.

Get In Touch with Us:

Whether you need your dryer vents or air ducts (or both) cleaned, please reach out to us here at So Fresh So Clean at your earliest convenience. We will be happy to provide you with a cost estimate, so you will know what to expect before you even schedule your appointment! We look forward to servicing you shortly and helping give you dryer vents and air ducts that are cleaned by the best professionals in the business!