Meet the Team

A job starts at the dryer, not the roof. We pull the machine out, disconnect the transition hose, and look at what is behind it before anything else happens. Then we set up at the exterior hood and run a rotary brush on a flexible line through the duct, feeding it the length of the run while a vacuum pulls at the open end and catches what breaks loose. We take an airflow reading at the hood before we start and another when we are done, so there is a number to compare instead of a guess. The dryer goes back on a tight connection, we run a cycle, and we check that the damper at the hood is actually opening. If the transition hose behind the machine is crushed foil or white vinyl, we say so and replace it, because clearing a duct and then reconnecting it to a kinked hose accomplishes nothing.

Most of Anthem went up between the mid-1990s and the 2008 downturn, and the two-story tract layout here is the one we see most: laundry upstairs, duct running vertically through the wall cavity and out the tile roof, often 20 to 30 feet with multiple elbows. Those runs hold material in the bends and are slow to show symptoms. The older pattern still comes up in the north Phoenix, Glendale and Sun City cores from the 1950s through the 70s, where a postwar single-story has a short run straight through a block or stucco wall at the back of a garage or hall closet. Dry desert air dries clothes fast, which masks a clogging vent until cycle times double. The real load here is dust, not moisture. Fine caliche silt and construction dirt get into the duct and bind with lint into a dense mat, and monsoon humidity in late summer plus cold overnight air in the short heating season add enough condensation inside roof runs to pack that mix tight. We work behind gas and electric dryers, stacked units, and the narrow closet installs where the machine barely clears the door.

Sometimes we open a vent and it is fine. A two-year-old short run on a single-story house with one person doing laundry may not need clearing yet, and we will tell you that and not charge you for a cleaning you do not need. What moves the cost on this job is the run itself: a short wall exit at ground level is quick, while a roof-terminated two-story run means ladder work on tile, more line, and more passes to clear packed bends. Whether the transition hose needs replacing, and whether the hood damper is stuck or broken, also changes what the visit involves. If the duct turns out to be disconnected in the wall, crushed, or terminating somewhere it should not, that moves into dryer vent repair or a rerouted dryer vent installation, and we will walk you through what we found first. If you are buying or selling and just want the condition documented, a dryer vent inspection is the shorter visit.