What a dryer vent cleaning involves
Lint collects along the whole duct, not just the four feet you can reach from behind the machine. A rotating brush goes in on a flexible rod and turns the full length of the run, from the dryer to the outside hood, while a vacuum holds suction at the source so nothing lands on your laundry room floor.
We pull the machine out, take off the transition hose and clean that separately, since it is where most blockages start. Then we check the exterior flap actually opens and closes. Airflow gets measured before and after, so the difference is a number instead of an opinion, and you see the pile that came out before we take it away.
Signs your dryer vent is blocked
Drying time is the one to trust. A load that used to take 45 minutes and now needs two full cycles is telling you the wet air has nowhere to go.
- Clothes come out hot and still damp
- The top of the dryer is hot to the touch while it runs
- The laundry room smells like a hot iron, or faintly of burning
- Little or no air coming out of the vent hood outside during a cycle
- Lint showing up on the outside wall around the hood
- The dryer stops partway through and shuts itself off
A newer machine with a sensor will often flag the restriction on its own and refuse to finish a cycle.
Why a packed vent is a fire risk
A dryer works by pushing hot, damp air out of the drum and outside. Lint rides along with it, and whatever does not make it out settles in the duct. Over a few years that lining gets thick enough to hold heat, with a machine on the other end of it that produces heat by design.
That is the whole mechanism, and it is why this is maintenance rather than a nice-to-have. It is also why a landlord, an HOA or a home inspector asks for it in writing. A vent that moves air the way it was built to move it does not do any of this.
Bird nests and rodent blockage
A vent flap stuck open is an invitation, and out here it is usually a bird. The timing tells you which problem you have: a slow decline over months is lint, and airflow that stopped more or less overnight is something that moved in.
Nests pack tight against the hood and fill the last few feet of duct. That has to come out physically before running a brush is worth anything, and the hood or the flap usually needs replacing afterwards, because whatever got in was helped by a part that was already broken.
How to tell a nest from lint, and what keeps them out covers it in full.
Roof vents and second-floor runs
Plenty of homes here vent through the roof instead of a side wall, and an upstairs laundry room nearly always does. Those runs are longer, they turn more often, and they trap more, so they need doing more often than the fifteen-foot straight shot on a single-story house.
It is also the version nobody should attempt themselves. The work happens on a roof, over a duct that can be twenty-five feet of vertical, and a shop vac at the bottom of it does not reach.
Condos, high-rises and apartment buildings
A unit in a tower vents into a shared stack, which changes the job. Access is usually from inside the unit, the run is long, and the building's own rules often decide when the work can happen and who has to be told first.
We do individual units, and whole buildings for HOAs and management companies that want every stack done in one visit. If somebody needs paperwork afterwards, say so when you book and it comes with the invoice.
Dryer vent repair and replacement
Cleaning does not fix a duct that is crushed, disconnected, or made of the wrong material. Foil and vinyl accordion hose sags, catches lint in every ridge, and is not rated for the job. Rigid or semi-rigid metal is.
The usual repairs are a transition hose kinked behind the machine, a duct that came apart inside a wall and is now venting into the cavity, an exterior hood whose flap no longer closes, and a booster fan that quit. If your vent needs a part rather than a brush, you hear it on the visit with a price attached, not in a callback three days later.
Air duct cleaning
The dryer vent and the HVAC air ducts are two separate systems, and the work on each is different, though one visit can cover both. If the reason you are looking is dust in the house rather than drying time, air ducts are what you want.
Say which one you mean when you call, or ask for both and they get quoted together. The air duct page explains when it is genuinely worth doing, and when we will tell you to leave them alone.
What it costs and how long it takes
You get a price on the phone before anything starts, once you say where the dryer sits and where the vent comes out. That is what decides the number. A ground-floor laundry room venting straight through an exterior wall is the quick version, and an upstairs room venting through the roof is not.
No trip charge, no diagnostic fee, and nothing added at the door. A standard cleaning runs under an hour. A roof run, or a vent that turns out to have a nest in it, takes longer, and you hear that before the work starts rather than after.
Same-day service across the valley
Call before mid-afternoon and you can usually be seen the same day. We cover Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Summerlin, Spring Valley, Enterprise, Paradise and Boulder City.
You do not have to be there the whole time, but somebody has to let the crew in, and it is worth being there at the end to see the airflow reading and what came out of the duct. The photos come either way.