Do you enjoy using your clothes dryer without blasting lint, hot air and moisture into your home? Then you can thank your dryer vent for exhausting all that unpleasant stuff outside where it can’t bother you.
For all the lint it carries, it’s only natural that a dryer vent should accumulate a fair amount of the fluffy stuff. A restricted or clogged dryer vent is far from harmless, however. It forces the clothes dryer to work longer, and harder. It allows more humidity to enter your home, where it can nourish black mold.
Most disconcertingly, a dirty dryer vent is a serious fire hazard. Clothes dryers ignite around 13,820 house fires each year. More than one-quarter of those fires resulted from lint buildup!
How Often Should You Clean Your Dryer Vent?
Homeowners are advised to hire a professional dryer vent cleaning service at least once a year – or more often, if they do a lot of laundry.
When Should You Clean Your Dryer Vent?
If you do opt to clean your dryer vent once annually, then you may wonder which season is best for the job. The answer is simple: autumn. Here are the reasons why it’s so essential to clean your dryer vent before winter arrives.
- More dryer usage. With colder weather comes thicker clothing. Burly garments require more time in the dryer, making your dryer vent work harder as a result. Winter also removes the option of hanging your clothes outside to dry, which can mean even more dryer use over the course of a few months.
- More lint. Thick winter clothing produces significantly more lint than summer duds, which ultimately accumulates inside the lint trap and dryer vent. Once again, fall cleaning helps prepare your dryer vent for its busiest season.
- Pest eviction. Rodents are quite fond of living inside toasty dryer vents, where they build nests. Dryer vent cleaning removes these obstructions (and the unwanted guests that created them).
- Easier access. Dryer vents commonly lead to one of two places: an exterior wall, or the roof. As you might imagine, accessing a roof dryer vent is significantly easier when the rooftop isn’t covered in ice and snow.
Energy savings. Your home’s energy needs are probably at their highest during the winter. The prospect of spending any more money on energy is an unsavory one at best. Fortunately, spending less on clothes dryer operation is as easy as cleaning its vent.
Can You Clean a Dryer Vent on Your Own?
It’s certainly possible, although hardly convenient. DIY dryer vent cleaning requires tools and time that you might not have, as well as manual labor that you’d probably rather not perform. In contrast, a professional service can make short work of your dryer vent cleaning needs. It will create hardly any intrusion as you prepare your home for the cold months ahead!
Would you like to schedule dryer vent cleaning in the greater Sioux Falls, SD area? Then we encourage you to contact Dan’s Drain & Duct Cleaning today! Dryer vent cleaning is one of our specialties, and we’re committed to performing the quality work which creates true peace of mind.
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