Sweep & inspection
Caps & crowns
Flue relining
Masonry repair
Gas fireplace serviceLevel 1 sweep and inspection to the NFPA 211 annual standard - flue, crown, cap, and flashing checked and photographed
Chimney sweep logs do not sweep chimneys. They loosen some creosote - which then falls where a brush and vacuum still have to collect it.
Fast, Reliable Dryer Vent Cleaning Across Westwood
A dryer vent cleaning in Westwood typically runs $130 to $220 depending on vent length and access, and most jobs take under an hour once our tech is on site. We’re based in East Los Angeles but run regular routes up to Lassen County, so we know the drive and we know the homes. The real issue in Westwood isn’t just lint. It’s what decades of mountain living do to ductwork. If your dryer takes two cycles to dry a load, or the laundry room smells like hot dust when the machine runs, the vent is talking to you. Call us at (855) 554-2841 and we’ll get it handled.
Why Hickory Chimney Sweep Is Westwood’s Preferred Dryer Vent Cleaning Company
Most companies in this business start with chimneys and treat dryer vents like an afterthought. We don’t. Ruben Acosta built Hickory Chimney Sweep around a simple idea: the two most common appliance-related house fires in America both involve venting. One is the chimney. The other is the dryer exhaust. One call covers both, and that matters in Westwood, where wood stoves and dryers work overtime through the same long heating season.
We’ve cleaned enough Westwood dryers to know exactly what we’re walking into. A 1940s wood-frame house off Ash Street, a 3-inch vent run through a crawlspace, an exterior hood buried in snow for four months of the year. These aren’t surprises to us. They’re Tuesday. Our Dryer Vent Cleaning team carries the tools and parts to handle blocked, crushed, or outdated runs without a second appointment. Westwood homeowners call us because we show up prepared and we don’t recommend work the vent doesn’t need. If the camera shows a clean duct, we’ll tell you that and leave.
Styles & brands we work with
Our Dryer Vent Cleaning Services in Westwood
Dryer Vent Cleaning
We run rotary brushes and high-volume air through your entire vent run, from the dryer connection to the exterior termination. In Westwood, that usually means clearing pine needles, lint, and the occasional mouse nest. The high-elevation air is dry, and the lint comes out in dense felted wads rather than loose fluff. We clean it, we show you what we pulled out, and we confirm airflow at both ends before we pack up.
Dryer Vent Inspection
Not every Westwood home needs a full cleaning every year, but every home that’s gone two-plus years does. Our camera inspection tells you what’s really in there. We’ve found disconnected duct sections in crawlspaces where lint was blowing into the insulation for months. We’ve found foil duct that was never code-legal, crushed flat under a pier. The inspection gives you a photo report and a straight answer on whether cleaning is enough or the run needs replacing.
Lint Removal
Lint is the stubborn part. It packs into elbows, snags on screws at joints, and compresses into a mat that brushes alone won’t break loose. We use flexible rods and reverse-air methods to pull the packed material out, not just loosen it and leave it sitting in the run. For Westwood homes with the original 3-inch vents we talk more about below, this is the service that actually buys you time between cleanings.
Dryer Vent Duct Repair and Replacement
When the vent is crushed, rusted through, or simply the wrong size for a modern dryer, we replace the run with a smooth, rigid 4-inch transition duct. We’re not talking about a hardware-store flex hose that sags and traps lint at every rib. We mean correctly sized, properly sealed, and terminated with a vent hood that keeps birds and squirrels out. We’re comfortable doing this work under a house, through a crawlspace, or up a wall, which means Westwood’s older homes don’t force a workaround.
What happens when you call
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A real person answersNo phone trees — you reach a local pro.
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You get an upfront price rangeHonest numbers before anyone is dispatched.
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A background-checked tech heads outLicensed & insured, dispatched right away.
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You approve before work beginsNothing starts until you say go.
Trusted Brands We Service in Westwood
We service and install dryer vent systems from brands built for real-world residential use, not big-box generics. If a Westwood home needs a new hood or termination cap, we’re pulling from our stock of Olympia Chimney and Famco venting, parts that hold up to snow load and high winds off the Sierra front. We’ve also used HeatShield and Gelco materials on chimney-related work for Westwood customers who later booked dryer vent service. The point is simple. When the temperature drops to single digits in February, you don’t want a flimsy plastic hood that cracks in the cold. You want parts that last, and that’s what we keep on the truck.
Common Dryer Vent Cleaning Problems We See in Westwood Homes
- Original 3-inch vents clogging every few months. Westwood’s lumber-town-era homes were built when dryers were smaller and vented differently. A 3-inch duct fills with lint far faster than a modern 4-inch run, especially when the dryer runs daily through winter. If you own one of these older homes and haven’t had the vent size checked, the math is working against you.
- Rodent and bird nesting in exterior vent hoods. Westwood sits against forest and open mountain land, and the critters don’t need much of an opening. We’ve pulled bird nests out of hoods that were still passing some air, just badly. The first sign is usually a dryer that overheats but doesn’t throw a code.
- Snow-buried or hard-to-reach terminations. A vent that exits through a roof or high sidewall is easy to forget about in Westwood, where it’s covered in snow half the year. But lint does not take a winter vacation. It builds all season, and by March the run is fully packed. Deferred cleaning in these setups is a leading cause of dryer fires in the area.
- Disconnected or crushed duct runs in crawlspaces. Older wood-frame homes settle. Piers shift. A rigid duct that once sat supported can end up pulled apart at a joint, blowing hot, lint-filled air into the crawlspace for months. The homeowner only notices when the dryer suddenly can’t dry anything and the nearby floor feels warm.
Pricing for Dryer Vent Cleaning in Westwood, CA
A standard dryer vent cleaning in Westwood costs $130 to $220, with the higher end applying to longer runs, roof terminations, or ducts that haven’t been touched in many years. If the inspection shows a crushed or separated section that needs replacement, that work runs an additional $90 to $240 depending on length and access. Full replacement of a short, accessible run in an older Westwood home typically falls in the same range as the upper-end cleaning: $200 to $300. We give a flat price before we start, and we don’t pad the job with fees for the camera inspection or the photo report. The estimate itself is free. Call (855) 554-2841 for an exact quote on your setup.
What actually moves the number? Three things: total vent length from dryer to exit, whether that exit is reachable from a ladder or only from the roof, and how badly the existing duct is blocked. A 6-foot sidewall run that’s had annual cleanings is a quick job. A 25-foot crawlspace run last cleaned during the George W. Bush administration is a different afternoon. We’ll tell you which one you’ve got before the brush goes in.
Why Westwood’s Older Vents Are a Different Kind of Problem
Here’s something you won’t find on a generic dryer vent page. Westwood’s housing stock was built for a company town, mostly between the 1920s and 1950s. Those homes were framed out and finished while dryer venting was an afterthought, and many still carry the original 3-inch vents. A modern dryer moves a lot more air than those early machines, and that air needs a 4-inch smooth duct to move properly. The 3-inch run creates back pressure. The lint can’t escape. It builds at the elbows, then at the hood, then fills the whole damn pipe. A newer suburban home might go two or three years between cleanings without issue. Plenty of Westwood homes should be on an every-six-month schedule just to stay ahead of the physics.
Add the fact that many Westwood households still heat with cordwood, and the dryer becomes a year-round appliance working in a home that’s already fighting dust and combustion byproducts. The laundry room is often off the kitchen, sometimes off the mudroom, and the vent run is old. The combination of small duct, high use, and limited access is exactly what we planned for when we set up routes up here.
See the difference
Before
After
Before
After
Before
AfterA Field Vignette From Westwood
We recently serviced a 1940s wood-frame home off Ash Street in Westwood where the original 3-inch dryer vent had not been cleaned in over a decade. The dryer was running two full cycles per load and the laundry room felt like a furnace. Our tech pulled out a dense plug of lint mixed with pine needles and rodent nesting material, then replaced the crushed section with a smooth 4-inch DuraFlex transition duct. The dryer’s airflow jumped from a weak trickle to full force, cutting the homeowner’s drying time in half and eliminating a serious fire risk before winter. That’s not a rare find up here. It’s the standard condition for homes that have never had the vent opened.
Drafting and the Wood Stove Connection
Westwood isn’t a suburb where the fireplace is decorative. At roughly 5,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada, wood heat is how a lot of homes survive from October through April. That long burn season loads chimneys with creosote faster than coastal homes see in five years. But most Westwood homes don’t stop burning when the dryer is running. The two systems pull air from the same house. A severely clogged dryer vent can unbalance interior air pressure, which in a tight mountain home can cause the wood stove to draft poorly. You’ll see smoke backup when the stove is reloaded, or a window left cracked to feed the fire. It’s subtle, but it’s real. Keeping both systems clean means both systems work. Dryer Vent Cleaning in Westwood is one half of a two-part fire-safety job that includes the chimney. One call, both halves.
We Also Serve Cities Near Westwood
Our routes out of East Los Angeles take us through Westwood and the surrounding Sierra foothill communities. If you’re outside town, we also run trucks to Tujunga, La Crescenta-Montrose, North Hollywood, and Sherman Oaks. Same flat pricing, same camera inspection included, same equipment. The drive is our problem, not our schedule’s.
Serving Westwood, CA — Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the Westwood area and know this community well. Use the map below to see our service coverage — if you’re nearby, we can almost certainly help.
FAQs – Dryer Vent Cleaning in Westwood
Every 12 months minimum, and every 6 months if your home still has the original 3-inch vent or the dryer runs daily through the winter. Westwood’s older lumber-town homes frequently fall into both categories, which means the lint builds on a shorter cycle than most national guidelines assume. Annual cleaning is the floor for safety. Semi-annual is the honest recommendation for much of this town. Call (855) 554-2841 and we’ll put you on a schedule that matches your specific vent, not a national average.
Because many of those homes were built with 3-inch vents that are undersized for today’s dryers, and they’ve been collecting lint in a high-use, cold-climate environment for decades. The original vent runs were installed when the town was a forest-products center, and they were never upgraded. A crusty, packed 3-inch vent in a Westwood crawlspace isn’t a nuisance, it’s a fire waiting on the wrong evening. The fix is either more frequent cleaning or upgrading to a 4-inch run. We’ll show you which is right for your house.
Yes, indirectly. Westwood homes often run both a wood stove and a dryer for months at a time, and both systems pull air from the same interior space. When the dryer vent is heavily clogged, the dryer still tries to move air, and the house’s overall air balance can shift enough to weaken the wood stove’s draft. You’ll usually notice smoke spilling when you reload the stove or a fire that won’t hold. Clean both vents and the problem often clears. Hickory Chimney Sweep handles both ends of that equation, so one service appointment can address both systems.
A dryer that takes two cycles to dry one load, a laundry room that feels unusually warm or smells like scorched dust, and a vent hood outside that has visible lint hanging off it or doesn’t open when the dryer runs. In Westwood, also watch for snow melting unevenly near a roof termination, which can mean hot, restricted air is backing up at the exit. Any of these signs means the vent is already blocked enough to matter. Call us at (855) 554-2841 before the next load goes in.
Yes. Our routes into Lassen County cover the town proper and the outlying homes off Highway 36, including the spread-out parcels that don’t show up cleanly on maps. We schedule those jobs in a block, which keeps the trip fee out of the equation and the service window short. If your driveway is rough or your vent exit is buried behind a snowbank, tell us when you call. We’ll bring what we need and won’t ask you to do prep work with a ladder.
Schedule Your Dryer Vent Cleaning in Westwood
If your Westwood dryer is taking longer to dry, the laundry room smells warm, or you genuinely don’t remember the last time the vent was cleaned, book the service. We do chimney sweeps, chimney repair, and dryer vent cleaning, and we do all three with the same standard: clean it, repair it, protect it. Ruben Acosta and the team at Hickory Chimney Sweep serve Westwood year-round, not just when the roads are clear. Call (855) 554-2841 for a free estimate over the phone, and we’ll get you a flat price before the first brush goes into the vent.
Written by Ruben Acosta, owner at Hickory Chimney Sweep, serving Westwood and Lassen County.