Once a year is the standard recommendation for most Katy households. If you do laundry daily, have a long vent run (common in two-story homes and townhomes), or have noticed clothes taking longer to dry, every six to nine months is safer. Townhome HOAs in newer Katy developments often require yearly inspections — worth checking your bylaws.

Clothes that need more than one cycle to dry, the dryer feeling unusually hot to the touch on top or the front, a faint burning or warm-laundry smell after a cycle, the laundry room staying humid even after the load is done, or the exterior vent flap not opening fully when the dryer runs. Any one of those means it's time.

Lint is highly flammable, and a restricted vent traps both heat and lint inside the duct. The U.S. Fire Administration links roughly 2,900 home fires per year to dryers, and failure to clean the vent is the leading cause. In Katy specifically, attic-routed vents in two-story homes get extra hot in summer, which adds to the risk profile.

A typical single-family home cleaning takes 45 minutes to about an hour and a half, depending on the length and complexity of the vent run. Townhomes with longer routed vents and multiple elbows can run closer to two hours. We pull the dryer out, clean the vent line end-to-end, and clean the dryer cabinet itself.

A clogged vent can make your dryer run 30 to 50 percent longer per load. For an average Katy household running four to six loads a week, the savings on electricity (or gas) after a thorough cleaning are noticeable on the next billing cycle. It also extends the lifespan of the dryer itself.

You can clean the first few feet, and that's better than nothing. The problem is most of the lint builds up further down the run — in the elbows, in horizontal stretches, and at the exterior cap — where DIY kits can't reach effectively. For roof-vented or long-run setups especially, professional equipment makes a real difference.