Typical visit Half a day for most runs
Material Rigid galvanized or aluminum, sealed joints, no screws into the airway
Scheduling Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Service area Six counties across Southeast Michigan
When cleaning is not the answer
A vent that packs solid again within a few months is telling you something about the run rather than the household. The usual causes are length, turns and material, and no amount of brushing fixes any of the three. Past roughly thirty-five feet of equivalent length, with each elbow counting for several feet on its own, a domestic dryer cannot move air well enough to keep the duct clear.
The other failures are installation faults that have been sitting there since somebody finished a basement. Flexible foil buried inside a wall cavity. A run that terminates in an attic, a crawl space or a soffit instead of outdoors. Sheet metal screws driven through the joint, each one a hook that catches lint until the duct grows a plug around it.
Rebuilding solves what cleaning cannot. A shorter path to the nearest exterior wall, rigid metal with foil-taped joints, supported at proper intervals and pitched so condensate drains toward the hood rather than pooling in a low spot. Where the existing run is merely dirty, dryer vent cleaning is the cheaper answer and we will say so.
Signs the run needs rebuilding, not cleaning
It clogs again within months
A duct cleaned in October that is restricted again by February has a design problem. Either the path is too long for the machine or there is a low spot collecting condensate, and both keep happening until the run changes. Paying for cleaning twice a year is usually more expensive over five years than rebuilding the run once.
It vents into the house
An exhaust that terminates in an attic, a crawl space or under a porch dumps several gallons of water a week into the building. Owners find it as frost on attic sheathing in January, or as a musty crawl space in July, and by then the insulation in that bay has usually been wet for years.
Foil duct inside a wall
Flexible foil has no business inside a cavity where nobody can reach it. It sags, it tears, and when it fails there is no sign until lint appears at a register or the dryer stops drying altogether. Opening one wall to find out is cheaper than opening the whole run later, and we can usually tell from the hood end what is behind the drywall.
Rebuilding is easier while something else is open
The cheapest time to move a vent run is when a wall or ceiling is already open for other work. A basement finish, a laundry relocation or a ceiling repair all create the access this job otherwise has to make for itself.
If you are planning a laundry room addition or moving the machines, the vent path deserves a decision at the same time as the plumbing and the electrical rather than after the drywall is up. Working it out on paper first is free, and it is the difference between a straight eight-foot run and a twisted twenty-foot one that somebody pays to clean twice a year forever.
What the visit covers
The same approach on every rebuild. Anything found outside this list gets written down and quoted separately rather than decided while the ceiling is open.
- Measure the equivalent length of the existing run and pick the shortest workable path to an exterior wall
- Remove the old duct, including anything left inside a cavity
- Run rigid metal, joints foil-taped and supported, with no screws in the airway
- Fit or rebuild the exterior hood with a working damper and no screen behind it
- Seal the wall penetration, run a full cycle and confirm airflow and drainage at the hood
Drywall opened for access is closed properly rather than left behind a plate, handled as drywall patch repair with the surface ready for paint.
Where our work stops
Wright’s Repairs is a renovation and repair crew, and there are parts of this job that belong to other trades.
Work we take on
- Full duct replacement in rigid metal, interior and through-wall
- Exterior hood replacement, damper repair and penetration sealing
- Drywall and trim repair where access was cut
Work we do not take on
- Dryer repair, including elements, fuses and controls
- Gas dryer connections and any gas piping alteration
- Roof penetrations, which we route to a roofing contractor
Where a run has to cross a bearing member or the only sensible path goes through the roof, we document it and hand that part off rather than cut something we should not. Structural openings follow the same rule as any Wright’s job, described in how a project runs.
Questions homeowners ask
Related repair and maintenance work
A vent rebuild usually turns up next to other work. These are the services homeowners most often schedule alongside it.
Owners doing this during a basement project pair it with basement laundry room work, and those moving machines entirely look at the laundry room layout first. Exterior penetrations and hoods sit with exterior repair, air leaks around them with draft sealing, and households buying a house often start with the new homeowner package.
The full catalog sits under Wright’s Repairs. View our Portfolio or contact us now for a free quote.
