Dryer duct cleaning

This is the one piece of appliance maintenance that’s genuinely a safety job. Lint is highly combustible, a restricted duct traps heat against it, and the whole thing sits out of sight where nobody thinks to look. It applies to any dryer, any brand. And it is not only the duct: lint packs inside the machine on the same clock and from the same source, so the run and the dryer are cleaned together, in one annual visit.

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The lint screen catches a good portion of what comes off your clothes. The rest goes into the duct — and unlike the screen, nobody empties the duct. Over years it accumulates, particularly at bends, at the transition hose behind the machine, and at the exterior hood where the flap restricts flow.

The consequences arrive gradually. Drying takes a little longer, then noticeably longer, then the dryer starts cutting its own heat because its safety devices are doing their job. By the time you have a “broken” dryer, the duct has usually been restricted for a long time. Cleaning it isn’t just maintenance — it’s often the actual repair.

The six we see most

1. Clothes taking longer to dry

The earliest and most reliable warning sign. If a load that used to finish in one cycle now needs two, airflow has dropped. Nothing is broken yet — this is the point where cleaning is cheapest and most effective.

2. The dryer or laundry room feels hot

Heat that should be leaving the house is staying in it. That’s restricted airflow, and it’s also energy you’re paying for twice.

3. A burning or musty smell

Burning smell means lint is being heated where it shouldn’t be, and that needs attention promptly. A musty smell usually means moist air isn’t leaving and is condensing in the duct.

4. Lint around the door seal or behind the machine

Lint escaping where it shouldn’t is a sign that it can’t get out the way it should.

5. Frozen or blocked exterior hood

Genuinely a cold-climate problem. Moist exhaust meets cold metal, ice forms on the flap, and the duct restricts from the outside in. Snow drifts and bird nests do the same thing.

6. Repeated thermal fuse failures

If a dryer has blown the same safety component more than once, the duct is the cause and replacing the part again will not fix it.

A proper cleaning means the whole run — the transition hose behind the machine, the duct through the wall or ceiling, and the exterior hood, which is where a surprising amount of the blockage sits. Cleaning only what’s reachable from inside leaves the worst of it in place.

There’s no repair-or-replace question here — it’s maintenance, and it applies to every dryer regardless of brand or age. Because there are no parts involved, it’s also one of the more predictable jobs to price.

Labour is flat-rate — typically in the $220–$350 range — and it tracks the length of the run and how easy it is to reach. You know the number before the work starts, and the technician isn’t penalised for being quick. The inspection is free when we’re already on site for another call. A trip made specifically to look at a vent carries the $119 service call. There are no parts in this job, so nothing is quoted separately and nothing is ordered.

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Kodiak works on sixteen brands: Whirlpool, Maytag, Amana, Kenmore, Inglis, LG, Samsung, GE, Frigidaire, Electrolux, Bosch, Blomberg, KitchenAid, JennAir, Dacor and Speed Queen. That list is deliberate rather than exhaustive — it’s the equipment we know platform-deep, which is what makes a diagnosis fast instead of exploratory. That matters more here than it looks: half of this job is inside the machine, and getting into a Whirlpool is not getting into an LG. Where the lint packs differs by platform too.

Detailed walk-throughs, including what to check yourself first.

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Kodiak covers Edmonton and Calgary. Send us the details and we’ll ring you back to agree a day.