My name is Aaron Cotton, and I am the owner
and operator of Dryer Vent Superheroes of New Orleans.
My name is Sophia Giordano-Scott.
I am the co-owner and business manager
of Dryer Vent Superheroes of New Orleans.
Aaron: Today, we're going to look at
how to clean out a dusty dryer vent.
The main thing that gets basically conglomerated
in the vent pipes is a lot of dead skin cells,
pet hair, children's glitter, regular hair,
just dust, dryer detergent.
Anything that can stay and stick on our clothes,
that can come off in the wash.
Sophia: The worst is always going to be any pet clinics.
You're cleaning towels daily,
and you're not just cleaning towels,
but you're cleaning towels full of pet hair,
which is usually thicker and coarser
and sometimes more oily than human hair.
Aaron: The metal brush not only breaks it up,
but it kind of catches as well.
So it caught all that hair,
and you can see as I pull it out,
it's just almost a whole dog that it seems like I pull out.
Sophia: It was literally just mounds of hardened pet hair
and lint inside all the way to the exit.
And then that exit had about 4 feet of bird's nest
just compacted at that end
because there was no vent cover on the end.
It was just an open tube.
So it took us about two hours to clean the vent
in entirety, get everything out.
We scoped it with our little camera about six times
trying to make sure we got every little piece out of there.
Aaron: As the lint just gets stuck in there
and it builds, over time, the heat can't get out,
so the heat just stays there,
and it accumulates right there, and it condenses,
and that's actually how a fire will start.
Sophia: Part of our inspection when we first go in
is to make sure, is this vent connected within the wall?
We only use these types of vents.
They are metal but also flexible,
but they're the only type of connection hose vents
that can actually contain a fire,
as opposed to the foil vents.
If you look on the back of your dryer,
most dryers will say don't use a foil vent.
And most people just don't read that warning.
Aaron: We get behind the dryer,
and we take the metal tube that's behind the dryer,
and we take it off, and we inspect to make sure
that the inside is either dirty or clean,
because you either want to clean it out or replace it.
The second step would be to put our rods
with the brushes into the wall with the camera.
We can see inside the wall of what's going on,
and the customer can see as well
of either how dirty or how clean it is.
You can definitely tell almost how long it's been,
because if it's only been, like, a year or two,
maybe a little or nothing at all.
But when we're getting to the three to five years or plus,
you're getting literal mounds of stuff that's coming out.
You know, it's almost like from a molehill to a mountain
of stuff that you're getting out, and you're like, wow.
Sophia: It's really gross if it's 10-plus years.
Aaron: So, after we inspect it and see how dirty it is,
then we take our brushes with our rods,
so that goes inside the wall,
and our drill basically just cleans everything out.
Sophia: We call this the vent-polisher brush.
It has these metal teeth at the end,
so when that goes through your vent,
that's going to polish your vents as well as clean it.
So it's going to make it even harder
for lint to stick in the future.
Aaron: When we take our HEPA-filter vacuum cleaner,
we make sure that no dust gets in the air
for either us or the customer to breathe in.
No cleaning solutions or chemicals.
Just the brushes and the HEPA-filter vacuum cleaner
really does the job.
And then once all that's done and clean,
we turn towards the inside of the dryers.
We get all the lint that might have been stuck in there.
We go back and we take our aluminum tube here,
and we put everything back from the wall to the dryer.
Sophia: We do use heat-safe tape on all of our repairs
or connection hoses, and we do also use clamps.
The reason why we use both
is because you want your dryer vent
to be able to be unhooked every year and cleaned.
Aaron: And we push the dryer back,
and then we check under the lint trap.
We've definitely found a lot of weird stuff
coming from the dryers, especially under the lint trap.
I've had one employee, as we were cleaning,
he pulled out a whole silver chain.
I've found money, like, $5 and a couple $1 bills.
Sophia: And then of course we get the not-so-fun stuff,
bird eggs and wasp nests.
Aaron: That's usually towards the outside of the house,
not in the dryer itself.
Sophia: Also storm damage.
Whenever we have a bad storm, hurricane,
and something gets impacted in the vent
or the roof comes off or something,
you're probably going to get water in your vent,
in which case you need a professional
to come and take that out,
because it's going to be really nasty water
mixed in with all that lint.
Aaron: So we've had multiple customers tell us,
"I've been in this house for over 10 years,
and I haven't even thought about cleaning it out."
And they're like, "Why are my clothes still wet?"
A lot of the times it's not your dryer,
it's, in fact, that the line is just clogged up
with all the lint and hair and everything.
Sophia: The most important thing to do
with keeping up your dryer vent is definitely
to get that annual professional cleaning,
but in addition to that,
cleaning your lint trap with every use is the biggest one.
Aaron: I would say the most satisfying
is leaving with the customers all happy and smiling
and knowing that they're safe, that their house is safe,
and that their product is going to work as they want it to.