Anybody have their dryer vents cleaned?

I want to have our dryer vent cleaned out. Who does this? A chimney sweeper? If you've had it done, how much did it cost?

Re: Anybody have their dryer vents cleaned?

We've done it ourselves. It's pretty easy and cheap. Just disconnect the tubing, clean it out and replace. We replace the tubing every two years and clean it every six months.

DH's uncle was in insurance and he said blocked dryer vents are the #1 cause of home fires.

Re: Anybody have their dryer vents cleaned?

My DH just cleaned ours out with the shop vac last week. And he replaces the coil tubing like pp said. Its very important to do this. I would think its a job you could do yourself with a good long wire brush, vacuum and maybe some new tubing if necessary.

Re: Anybody have their dryer vents cleaned?

I have a suggestion with the tubing- get it from Lowes. They don't make them plastic anymore because of fire hazards. The stuff that you get at Home Depot, aluminum, is very hard to work with. It unravels and dents easily. I went through two of those damn things. I bought this stuff at Lowes called Lamaflex which is much easier to work with.

Re: Anybody have their dryer vents cleaned?

This is a great post. I wonder if my not-so-handy (but oh-so-lovable) DH can handle this.

Re: Anybody have their dryer vents cleaned?

we just got a new dryer a few weeks ago so the tubing is brand new and shouldn't need to be cleaned for a while. That we can do easily. But, I thought you were supposed to clean the ducts that go from the wall to the outside of the house. Our dryer is in the middle of the house and the tubing doesn't go right outside.

Re: Anybody have their dryer vents cleaned?

Also I want to say not only clean the vents but remove the cover and clean around the machinery-like the heating element. We had a fire 2 weeks ago caused by this and it destroyed our laundry room and garage. PLEASE PLEASE do this! It was very scary!