A Board Should Not Have To Take This On Faith.
Community-wide dryer exhaust cleaning and camera inspection for condo towers and townhome associations. Airflow measured on every unit, findings written so an owner can read them, and a summary the board can attach to a meeting packet.
Scope agreed in writing before pricing · Certificates naming the association · Findings priced line by line.
A management office buys this as maintenance. A board buys it as a decision it has to defend to neighbors, at a meeting, with its name on the minutes. So the useful deliverable is different: not just clean ducts, but a readable account of what was found — how many homes were restricted, how many recovered after cleaning, how many have a duct problem that cleaning cannot solve, and which doors never opened.
One duct, four segments.
Nearly every association dispute about dryer vents is really a dispute about which of these four pieces is being discussed. Your governing documents decide who owns which one. We can at least make sure everyone is arguing about the same segment.
The hose behind the machine
The transition connector from the dryer to the wall. It is almost always the owner's appliance side, it is almost always the cheapest thing on the property to fix, and crushed or non-listed hose here is the single most common cause of a unit that dries badly.
The run inside the wall or ceiling
The concealed duct between the unit and the shaft. Nobody can see it, which is why arguments about it never resolve. A camera pass settles what it is made of, how long it really runs, and whether the joints are still connected.
The shared riser or chase
In stacked buildings this segment usually sits squarely in association territory, because it serves more than one home. It is also where lint from every unit above collects, and where a single blockage produces four complaints on four floors in the same week.
The termination on the exterior
The hood, the damper, and the roof jack. Exterior surfaces are commonly association-maintained, and a damper frozen shut by paint or nesting material can shut down a run that is otherwise clean end to end.
Four conversations you will have anyway.
An owner asks why the association is spending on this
A line item with a vendor name attached does not answer that. A community-wide readout showing how many units came in below acceptable airflow, and how many had a duct problem rather than a laundry habit, does. The spend gets easier to defend when the finding came before the invoice.
One owner refuses access
Boards have limited leverage here and it varies with your documents and your state. Practically, the way this gets handled is scheduling twice, documenting the attempts, and handing the board a short list — so the record shows the association tried, and the unresolved units are visible to whoever reads the minutes later.
The reserve conversation
If a portion of the community has ducts that cannot be cleaned back to spec, the board is not looking at a maintenance expense — it is looking at a capital item. Knowing that from a documented condition list, several years before it is urgent, is the difference between a planned assessment and a surprise one.
The insurer, after something happens
Following a laundry fire anywhere in the community, the questions arrive in writing and they are about dates and scope. Per-unit documentation is the only form of answer that holds up, and it has to already exist — it cannot be assembled afterward.
Scope in writing before anything is priced.
Board or manager sets the scope, not the technician
Before pricing, we agree in writing which segments are in the association's scope of work and which stay with the unit owner. We do not decide that — your declaration and bylaws do, and where the answer is unclear it belongs with counsel rather than with a contractor. We just need the line drawn so the invoice and the report match it.
Building survey and a run list
We walk the community and build the actual inventory: how many dryers, gas or electric, which stacks share a shaft, which terminations are on the roof, and which units have been remodeled into a route the original plans do not show. Townhome communities and towers get surveyed differently, because the failure patterns are not the same.
Owner notice the association can send
We supply the notice text and the appointment windows so a volunteer board is not writing resident communications on a weeknight. Notice goes out under the association's name and under your own governing-document requirements for entry. Two attempts are built into the schedule from the start.
Measured, cleaned, measured, photographed
Airflow at the termination on arrival, the full length rotary-brushed under HEPA vacuum, then airflow again on completion. Both numbers, the camera stills, and the exterior hood photo attach to that unit's row. Where a run breaks IRC M1502 — over the allowable developed length, foil flex inside a wall, screws into the airstream, a screened termination — it is recorded as a finding rather than absorbed into the cleaning.
A packet, not a pile
The board gets a community summary it can attach to a meeting packet, the per-unit detail behind it, the unentered-unit list, and any corrections priced individually. Written so an owner reading it in a lobby can follow it, because that is who ends up reading it.
Written for the owner who reads it later.
Community summary sheet
Units serviced, units below acceptable airflow on arrival, units that recovered after cleaning, units that did not, and units not entered. One page the board can read aloud at a meeting.
Per-unit detail behind the summary
Address or unit number, gas or electric, route and materials, arrival and completion airflow, and disposition. Every number on the summary traces to a row.
Photographs and camera stills
Interior duct images and exterior termination photos tied to the unit, so a finding can be shown to a skeptical owner without scheduling a second visit for the purpose of proving it.
Findings priced separately
Each code exception or structural duct problem named, photographed, and quoted individually — which is what lets a board fund part of the list, defer the rest, and show the reasoning behind the order.
Unentered unit list
Every unit with the notice date and each attempt. It exists so the association's effort is documented, and so the gap does not vanish into a completion percentage.
Certificates for the association file
General liability, workers' compensation, and commercial auto, naming the association and the management company as your documents require, re-issued at renewal.
The limits of a vendor's opinion.
We are a dryer vent contractor. We do not interpret declarations or bylaws, we do not advise a board on assessments or enforcement, and we do not produce reserve studies. When a question turns on what your documents require, the honest answer from us is that you need your association attorney or your reserve specialist, and we will happily hand them the physical facts we measured.
We also cannot promise a community pass finishes in a single mobilization. Access is the variable nobody controls, roof work waits on weather, and a building where half the runs turn out to need correction becomes a longer conversation than a cleaning schedule. We would rather tell a board that at the survey than discover it in week three.
Surveyed first, then a fixed community rate.
Unit count alone does not set the number — a townhome row and a fourteen-story stack with roof terminations are different jobs at the same door count. The community is surveyed, the scope line is agreed with the board, and then the rate is fixed for the pass so the budget figure the board approves is the figure it pays.
Prices shown are starting estimates and may change with the condition, access, and scope we find on site. Only a written quote from an on-site visit is a price we commit to.
Corrections are quoted individually against the photograph that found them, so the board can approve, defer, or split them across budget years. The underlying rates are published on the pricing page.
Where this connects
The same work bought by a management office instead of a volunteer board.
Commercial divisionBuilding-scale programs across apartments, hospitality and senior living.
Lint fire risk assessmentWhat a single unit's risk write-up contains before it becomes a board finding.
Questions & answersThe general questions owners ask us, in the words they ask them.
Send the community, and we will send back something you can vote on.
Tell us the number of homes, whether it is a tower or townhomes, whether the association is self-managed, and where the scope line sits in your documents. You get a survey date and a written scope the board can put in front of owners before anyone spends anything.
Request a compliance quote
Single-site, multifamily, or national portfolio — tell us the system and the sites.
Associations — FAQ
Our documents are ambiguous about who owns the duct. Can you tell us?
No, and you should be wary of a contractor who says otherwise. Which segment is common element, limited common element, or unit-owner property is decided by your declaration, your bylaws, and state law — put that in front of the association's counsel or your community manager. What we can do is describe the physical run precisely, segment by segment, so whoever does make the call is looking at facts instead of assumptions.
Can the association require owners to let us in?
That depends on your governing documents and your state's access provisions, and it is not our call to make. What we do is give you a schedule with two attempts per unit, notice text you can send under the association's name, and a documented list of who was not reachable. Boards generally find that the list, not an argument, is what finally moves the last few units.
Is it cheaper to do the whole community at once?
Usually, yes — mobilization is a real cost and doing sixty units in sequence spreads it thin, where returning for six units at a time does not. That said, if the association's budget only supports part of the community this year, we would rather do a defined portion properly and document it than stretch a thin pass across every building.
What if a unit still dries poorly after the cleaning?
Then the readings tell you why, which is the point of taking two of them. If completion airflow barely improved, the duct itself is the constraint — usually a run longer than IRC M1502 allows, a crushed section inside a chase, or flex duct where rigid metal belongs. That goes to the board as a finding with a photo and a separate price, not as a second cleaning.
Will you attend a board meeting to present the findings?
We can walk a board or a manager through the packet, in person or on a call, and answer questions about what was measured and what it means. We will not tell a board what its documents require, what to assess owners for, or how to vote — that is the board's job and, where it gets complicated, the association attorney's.
How does this work in a townhome community versus a tower?
Townhomes usually mean short individual runs terminating through a wall or a low roof, so the pass moves quickly and the common problems are terminations and transition hose. Towers mean shared shafts, long developed lengths, and roof terminations — slower per unit, more likely to turn up a structural finding, and far more likely to need roof access coordinated with the association in advance.
Can you help the board plan for this in the reserve?
We can give you a documented condition list — which runs are sound, which are marginal, and which will need rebuilding rather than cleaning — with each item priced today. That is useful input for a reserve study. It is not a reserve study, and we do not produce one; your reserve specialist does that work.
Get it inspected. Get it in writing.
Flat fee confirmed when you book. Same-week scheduling. A pass/fail verdict within 48 hours.
24/7 Response
No airflow, overheating dryer, burning smell, or a vent you're not sure about? We answer 7 AM to midnight and the assessment ends in a written safe-to-use verdict — including a do-not-use notice when the evidence supports one. After-hours dispatch runs subject to crew availability.
Emergency line