Dryer Vent Cleaning: Inspection Camera & From Inside Suite vs Outside or Both
Why Our Inspection Camera Is Great
This is a photo taken from a dryer vent cleaning job where a customer complained that we must not have cleaned their vent properly, as hot air wasn’t coming out from the other end of the vent. We peeked inside, and this is what we found:
The builder hadn’t bothered to extend the pipe all the way to the vent which was attached at the end of the building, so the hot air and lint was being jetted inside. Unusual, yes, but I’m glad we got the bottom of the problem. This was not something that could be corrected by cleaning. The resident needed their installation completed.
There are sometimes unusual problems that need digging into in order to find the source. Our camera can be used to investate what is happening deep inside the vents to ensure problems can be identified and afterward solved.
Why Cleaning From 1 Direction Works Very, Very Well
Did you ever take a straw out of a paper wrapper when you were a kid, then stuff some of that paper wrapper back into the straw, put your mouth on one end, and blow? If you did, you shot a piece of paper out of the other end of the straw. If you moistened it first, you might have called it a ‘spit ball’. Not pleasant, but a lot of fun if you’re eight.
Dryer vent cleaning is essentially the cleaning of a tube, like a straw, with some gunk in it. It’s a fairly simple idea: blow the gunk out. You want a clean tube to allow air flow from both directions, and that is what our dryer vent cleaning does.
However, there is often confusion between cleaning the dryer vent, or tube, from the inside or outside of a tenant’s suite and if one way is better than the other, or if even cleaning from both directions is required. Essentially, we are choosing one end of the tube, like picking one end of the straw, inserting our equipment, and blowing the gunk out. The difference is that we usually choose to blow in the direction of the outdoors so that you don’t end up with the gunk in your home.
The hose has an attachment on the end which directs the flow of air. If we insert it from inside the suite near your dryer, we aim the air forward so that it blows out the vent and outside your home. This will clean the tube from the point of insertion to the vent, because we feed the equipment forward, pushing and blowing the dryer lint using high pressure air until the vent is clean.
If we clean the dryer vent from outside the suite, we insert the equipment with a different nozzle on the end which blows the air backward, out the vent and away from your dryer. We feed the tube forward to the end, and the high pressure air blows out the dryer lint, cleaning the tube.
Since we are cleaning the lint out of the vent from one end to the other using high pressure air, I’m going to compare it to the eight year old again trying to blow a spit ball at his friend: we don’t really care which end of the tube we pick to blow from, just like a kid could choose either end of the straw to stick in his mouth and then blow: the end result is that the gunk is going to come flying out and the tube and it will be empty and clear again.
The difference is often in regards to convenience to the residents of the stratas we are servicing. If we can access the vents from outside of the suites, there is less coordination needed for residents to be home to allow us in and access the dryer vent tube from the spot near their dryer. It is much easier to feed in the equipment from outside so that no one is bothered.
I hope this helps demonstrate and further your understanding of the process. If you have any questions or need any further clarification, please visit our website, blog, or call us.