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Michael Wienecke
Hey so today on the podcast we want to talk about dryer vent cleaning and I have my good friend Matt Parker with job town dryer vent cleaning Matt how you doing?
Matt Parker
Good man how are you?
Michael Wienecke
Doing great man doing great. So um let’s dive right into it. Tell me a little bit about your story your business how you got started all that
Matt Parker
Awesome yeah so been a fireman for 15 years and were originally started out pressure washing so we I was pressure washing me and another guy at the current fire department and he had a pressure washing business as well and one night he ran across a basically it was a tick tock video I think he’s like hey, what do you think about this and it was dryer minute Cleaning Guy was just you know running a run into air compressor with a hose into somebody’s retirement sling and went all over the place he’s like I think there might be something there so that that piqued our interest so when we were going to houses both he and I both we get houses pressure wash we start looking at dryer mats and seeing are the vent caps and see and lots of just clogged stuff like we could we saw something that we could actually help band firemen we’ve both of us had been on actual dryer fires. So we kind of saw a need as well. And so we basically can just started doing research. We reached out to companies in Tennessee reached out to coffees in Arizona companies in Texas, there’s some there’s Texas as a lot bigger than it is here. There are several guys that are actually farming as well. So had a you know, we reached out to guys in Atlanta, we’re just, you know, doing our research, doing our due diligence, trying to figure out if this is something that we feel like, you know, we could sustain and, you know, everything just kind of kind of fell into our lap. Honestly, we we found out about certifications that we want you guys to see that certification that allows us to you know, we we know exactly what we’re doing now with driving and cleaning. So that was a huge get getting that see that stuff. And, you know, so it’s just been slowly and surely grow. And it’s been amazing. That’s basically where it started. And you know, we just like we saw a need. And you know, being being firemen, we can we know the dangers of not cleaning out your dryer, but what it can lead to, and we just wanted to you know, make a difference.
Michael Wienecke
Yeah, man. That’s awesome. It’s funny, because, you know, that’s how I started Peskies I mean, I took a part time job. I was firefighters. Well, you know, we work together. Yeah. And it fell into my lap started a company and here we are. So, yes. And I’ve I’ve also been on driving fires, it’s it’s very, very common. I think people just kind of don’t know how common it really is. So
Matt Parker
Right. Yeah. The NFPA the last, the last numbers that I’ve seen, you know, obviously this is, you know, in our research, we found this out last numbers I think were from, I want to say 15. So they haven’t done a survey, but there was like I want to say close to 15,000 structural fires that were due to dry vents.
Michael Wienecke
Wow. Wow.
Matt Parker
Yeah, it’s it’s a lot more common than you think.
Michael Wienecke
Well, and that lint is so I mean, it just it lights on fire so quickly. I mean, it’s the best kindling for really any fire. And hopefully, it’ll burn your house down quick. So
Matt Parker
Yeah, yeah. And you have an appliance. It’s pretty good. It’s providing heat to it. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So
Michael Wienecke
Well, so how’d you come up with a name?
Matt Parker
So the name is you know, just going back to the our firefighter route. So when you when around the station, if we get a fire we get a wreck or any anything that is going on that we get toned out on? We it’s called a job, you know, we’re going to a job. So we just kind of just some slang, honestly, that came about at the fire station. It’s just job town. We’re going to Job town. So me and the guy that started this company with both Vironment and hey, what do you think about Georgetown? And it was kind of, you know, kind of tongue in cheek just something different. Honestly, some of this kind of sets us apart what you know what is job town so we can tell our story, but anyway, so just being a fireman, Fireman run and operated business. It just fit job sounds just kinda like okay, yeah, I like it. So we just ran with it. So that’s where it came from.
Michael Wienecke
I love it. Love the logo, love the name. I love the story. So it’s great. I mean, come from the firefighter background, you know, of course. So why why should we clean our dryer vents? Obviously we talked about the potential structure fire, but what are some other issues that you know, like we talked about before? Not a lot of people think about drive ins is something that needs to be maintained clean. I know I certainly didn’t until I got in the fire service and started seeing, you know, the repercussion to that.
Matt Parker
Right! Yeah, well, I mean, honestly, I, it’s something that I never really thought about either, you know, most of my dryers were on exterior walls and in that I’ve had personally and never really had an issue myself. But like you said, we’ve run it, we’ve seen it, we know the dangers of it, we’ll see there’s numbers that are out there. And, you know, the main things that there’s, well, there’s a ton of things that have happened, I’ve been to somebody’s house that had several bands, and they had a break in their dryer vent, and it started creating a water issue. So this link gets in there. And the if it’s not able to get out, you know, all it is, is moist air that is this getting pushed to this dryer, and eventually it becomes dry over time, you know, over that 60 minutes of dryers running, it becomes dried, it dries out. And if you’ve been so just rolls out of your mint. If it’s not, if it’s not venting properly, all that motion just sits in there, and it finds a low spotlight waterwheel and then it’ll just start leaking. So they had they thought they had a plumbing leak, they didn’t know what was going on. Like I think I got like two gallons of water out of this diagram. Wow, dryer vent. Yeah, lint wetland just sitting there, it’s just soaking that stuff up. It was disgusting. So it’s not just fires, you can have water issues, you can have just, you know, if you’re in a crawlspace, and you’ve got a broken lint, a broken pipe, you just got lint, and just moisture and mold can start building up, you know, it’s just, it’s just a giant mess. So one, it’s can just be messy and an irritant to its, it can create mold issues in your house, I’ve seen several, there’s another one that I went to, I don’t know how they didn’t have that standing water, when I got in and cleaning it still that there’s just really nothing that I could do about it. Yeah, I can’t run a sponge up in there, you know, it’s just the one of these things were used. There was no airflow at the end, they had a huge clot at the beginning. And it was just sitting in there, there was no air movement. So it’s just water and moisture is building up over time. And it just hasn’t worked yet. So once we get that cleaned out or moving over it, eventually it’s going to dry out and it’s going to do what it needs to do. But there’s a lot more problems. So you know, you start you can burn dryers, several several dryers is burnt up, you know, that’s an expensive appliance that if you just do some proper maintenance on it, you can the thing, last thing, you know, they’re supposed to last a long time, you can get it last 10 years, just by taking care of this, like, the only thing it wants to do is also pull air in and most heat it and it wants to move it out like it is as long as it can do that it’ll last for a very long time. So that’s, you know, it’s cutting down on energy, you know, it’s more energy efficient if the driver can run like it’s supposed to. There’s, there’s several benefits to not tell people, it’s probably one of the most neglected areas in our homes that require normal maintenance. You know, it’s kind of like the old in all change for your house is basically where we’re what we’re talking about,
Michael Wienecke
Well, that there’s nothing worse than you’re going to, you know, take out the wet clothes, because I’ve had this happen to me. So you’re going to take out the wet clothes from your washer, throw them in the dryer, and then it doesn’t work or it doesn’t heat your clothes. And now you get you know, sopping wet mess. So
Matt Parker
Absolutely.
Michael Wienecke
So just for the typical homeowner, you know, what are some signs before they would call you what are some signs that they would see their dryer, you know, that knowing that it needed to get cleaning, you know, what,
Matt Parker
Right so there’s, there’s three major ones and the like the one you were just talking about, you take wet clothes to your dryer, and they don’t get dry, you’re running, you’re running several loads, just to get some sheets dry, you know, I had to run it three times. First time. second sign is. So when we get a clog in our system, we get a clog in our vent that dryer, that hot air can’t move out. So if you go and touch your dryer and it’s hot to touch, it should like it should be warm. It’s not like you know, you go put your hand on and not a big deal. You know your drivers work and it’s good. Hot, like this thing is really hot. This is normal. That’s another sign that you’ve got to drive in this year. And your third like your room will just heat up like the I had a lady who’s been president was broke. It’s just like he just gets so hot in here. I’ve even heard of people having their wall sweating just because there’s so much moisture in there. So if you have any of that stuff going on you really have a you have a real problem so hot you dry hot to touch dry multiple loads room is warm. If your wall start sweating, those are all those are all signs that you got to issue with your dryer vent. So it’s not you know, most people are gonna it’s gonna say I got a dryer problem. No, you don’t have a problem dryers do what it needs to do. It just can’t breathe the vent problem yet you’re not allowing the dryer to do what it wants to do. So
Michael Wienecke
Well like I said with the analogy of a car I mean, you cover the exhaust it’s the same exact thing you’re not gonna, it’s gotta breathe somehow.
Matt Parker
And the beauty of these newer ones now like they’ll they’ll give you code Yeah or older dryers they’ll just keep rocking until they buy Turn up, the appliance burns up or your house catches on fire or, you know, whatever. So these new ones, they’ll they’ll throw a D 80, which are, do you know, that’s just one of the hear about a lot. So it’s like 80% block. Okay, they know that they have a problem, you know, D 90 D 95. I mean, it gets, they’ll get hot. So,
Michael Wienecke
So it actually tells you the blockage in the unit itself?
Matt Parker
I think, right, I think they have a pressure, they have a pressure reader, I think built into the dryer. So once it stepped back pressure starts hitting it. And it just it, I guess it can register. That’s another thing I can think of, that’s the only way I know that it’s just, it’s recognizing that there’s an issue in the event.
Michael Wienecke
Well, that’s pretty cool. Right there. So walk me through your process of how you do it, you know, you get on scene and you start, you know, working what is your process?
Matt Parker
Sure. So we think another thing that separates us too, is, you know, we’re we want to provide customer service like that is that is first and foremost, what we want to do. So we were going to show up, we’re going to introduce ourselves, and we’re going to get you to take us to the jar, once we get there, we’re going to cut it on, and we’re working our way outside. So we’re gonna go outside and the thing that we’re looking for the most, and that tells us, you know, it points us in the direction of where we need to go. So we’re getting an airflow reading. So, you know, there’s a standard that a dryer has. And we know real quick, if your dryer is not performing to that standard, you know, just by therefore reading what’s coming out, we’re looking at your Vent Cap as well while we’re up there. So those things clog up and can create a huge problem. I’ve seen several that just have a mint cap issue, like there’s nothing wrong with the dryer Mint is fine. But the mint cat is completely blocked, and you start getting that blockage and you start getting those problems like we talked about earlier. So while we’re up there at your at your termination, we’re going to get an airflow reading, and we’re going to clean everything from there. So that’s, that’s the first thing we’re going to do, then we’re going to come down most of them honestly, to err on roofs. And that’s another thing. If you have a dryer and an area of convenience, this is a necessity that you get your job and cleaned out. If you’re on an exterior wall, and it’s just blowing right out, your biggest problem is changing your transition hose and making sure that it’s good. I kind of went off on a tangent there. But like we have most of our homes now that are being built, they put an area there dryers in areas of convenience. And that’s where you start getting these problems. So like so most of them are on roofs, that’s where I was going with that. So we’ll go up on the roof, clean that thing out, come back inside. Once we come back inside, we pull the dryer away from the wall, we clean up anything behind the dryer, we’re vacuum and we’re walking down microfiber cloth we’re doing, you know, we’re just taking care of taking care of that, that area that just once again is just neglected, nobody’s pulling the dryer away from the wall and cleaning it. So we go ahead while we’re back there, but we’ll vacuum baseboards, we wipe everything, wipe all the walls down all the witnesses collected back there over the years or years, how long has it been since has been moved. And then we pulled the transmission hose off and we inspect that well make sure that it’s good. You know, check it out, make sure that the code no major holes or anything like that, that can be causing problems. And once we do that, if it’s in good shape, we’ll clean that and set it aside, then we’ll go to the back of the dryer with a dryer, actually the bit is on the dryer where the air actually exits. And we will clean that as well put a vacuum on that. And that’s another thing too, we have a vacuum system that we’re backing everything up. So there’s no lint or anything’s getting blown throughout your house, everything’s getting pulled to a vacuum system that has filters and bags. So it’s it’s super clean. So we’ll clean the back of your dryer out. And then we have an inspection camera that will run the entire length of your event. So your event you know depending on how long it is we’ll we’ll go through checking out all making sure all your terms are in safe and intact, making sure that there’s no real, nothing intruding into your dryer man, that’s a big code violation. And it just creates a you know, it’s just it just grabs lint and creates problems. So we’ll look for that. And then we’ll just make sure that it’s you know, it also allows us to know the length. So you can only have a dryer, man, if it’s a straight around from the back of your dryer all the way out of your house, it’s 35 feet, that’s code. That’s all you can have 35 feet, so in every bend and every 45 it cuts down on that just because it creates so much friction. So we get an idea of how long your vision is. And we can tell you stuff like that too. So it’s an we get some good before pictures so we can share with everybody everybody likes to see we like to show our work too. So you can call us for a fact what you’re getting. So it’s just another it’s another thing that we know just providing that that service for those customers. So we’ll get that. We’ll get all this before and after pictures, make sure everything’s good with the bin. Bring everything out and we have a brush we agitate you know you see all these YouTube videos and all this stuff or these guys put blowers or backings on their vents and they just blow a bunch of lint out. It works great but there’s they’re not agitating that stuff that stuff will stick especially if you have dogs, dogs and cats. I’ve got two. So I mean, like, I understand their hair and lint becomes like concrete, like you can blow all that loose stuff that’s just in there, yeah, it’s gonna come out, it’s still stuck to your walls, if you don’t have a way to agitate that. And to get that and scrub that off the walls, it’s just gonna stay in there, especially if it’s wet. exists. Exactly right, exactly right, yeah, it’s not gonna get blown out with a blower up. So we take a brush system and a drill and we agitate, it’s a four inch brush that hits all the way up the on all sides of your race round. So it hits the hits everything and your job, then we pull everything to it, if it’s a vertical, we kind of let gravity help us out, it falls down, we vacuum everything up. If it’s a horizontal drive, if it goes up and kind of out the side of your house will actually get to the outside of the house, put the vacuum on and we push everything in to the backing system. So it’s cleaned. Once we’ve done that, we rerun the camera, make sure that it’s good shade to get after pictures, and then put everything back together for you. So that is what you know, that’s what you get. When we come out to your house and give you a drive and cleaning. That’s what you’re getting. We’re not cutting any corners, and everyone gets that same service.
Michael Wienecke
I love how you run the camera, I love that you’re showing your customer. Exactly, you know what you’re seeing before and after. So, you know, and I love your I mean, you’re offering a free inspection to make sure that there is no, you know, code violation, because you talked about with me there, you run into a lot of code violations.
Matt Parker
Absolutely, yes, huge code violations, which create lots of lots of problems, you know, I mean, that’s where your fires typically come from. So good to know that, if you have if you if your event is up to code, and everything’s good, it needs to be cleaned. If your event is added code, and you’re running transition hose through walls, you know, just as well as I do how friction builds up, and you’ve got, let’s just, you know, my, my old partner called it Slinky Dog House is that, you know, it’s aluminum foil rat, you know, it’s just wire wrap aluminum foil, essentially, I mean, everything that we put on is UL certified. So, you know, it’s, it’s been tested, but that does, but it’s for, you know, it’s a transition it is to transition your dryer to your mitt, it is not a dryer meant transition hose, you know, it says that it’s in the name. So when you run transition hose into a wall, in, down and out, and it’s got all these terms, and it’s not, we like to pull it as tight as we can, and then make it as short as possible. So like when it’s super tight, we connect it with warm drives, and then as we push the dryer together, it’s super short, there’s not a lot of friction in there. And it it does well, you know, it’s serves its purpose, but when you run it into a wall, and run, it’s extremely long runs, you know, these things are 30 foot long, and you’re doing that and now you have all these all these ridges that are creating friction, not allowing that man to flow like it needs to, you’ve got lint built up in there, and it’s super thin. So we’re going back to now if we get a hole in this, you’re gonna create, you’re gonna be blowing lint everywhere. Best case scenario, worst case scenario is is correct is capturing moisture. And now you have you have water in your home, wherever this man is, you’re getting a moisture issue. And honestly, that’s where your fire is coming from. So they start in the dryer, now you have all this lint built up in a super thin, you know, aluminum foil wrapped vent. So it’s just going to burn, it’s got air coming from the outside, it’s got air, which is you know, it needs fire needs a couple of things it needs steel in it needs oxygen, and it needs air, I mean, it’s an ignition source, basically. And heat, you’re given, it’s got all of it, it’s got everything that it needs. So once it starts, it’s got everything it needs to grow, it’s got fuel in there, it’s got air, and it’s got a heat source that has been provided by your dryer. So all those things are just a really bad combination. And that’s why this transition hose is a huge Kabbalist because that’s where your fires are going to come from is collecting that when it’s getting you know, if it starts in the dryer, it makes his way out, makes his way out of that dryer and starts collecting this lint. And now it just has this basically like a fuse that it can just run all the way through your house.
Michael Wienecke
Well, and that’s it, you know, once it gets in the attic, you know, as well as I do. It’s a it’s a loss. Absolutely. Sign it off. Yeah. Well, and that’s it’s funny you say that because we do a lot of termite work. So we’ll crawl crawl spaces, and I see it all the time where you’re you’re talking about you know, that hose is broken apart or it wasn’t it wasn’t meant to be there in the first place. It wasn’t done right. And they’ve just got dryer lint throughout their entire crawlspace Oh, absolutely.
Matt Parker
I mean, if you go especially if you go to a nicer home that that hasn’t that hasn’t been addressed and never had an issue with it. And it’s encapsulated here like I just wanted to ask crawled one crawlspace man, you could go down there and I like it again. They’re super nice, but the vendors are nice. Yeah, it was super nice. I was like, Man, this is fantastic. But I mean, let’s bro the dryer vent was broke off and I just got lint and some like said moistures in there and like you spent all this money, you’ve done all this to do, you know, to do your preventative maintenance on your home and to keep it nice and clean and fresh air and all that stuff. And now you’re just pumping crap in it. So it’s just, you know, it’s a problem.
Michael Wienecke
Well, we preach preventative maintenance on everything with pest control termite I mean, it like we talked about anything you do, you have to keep it, you know, maintained or it’s gonna fall apart.
Matt Parker
Exactly.
Michael Wienecke
So, alright, so what’s what’s something? What’s the most interesting thing you found in a dryer van? I know, you know, in my business, we find all kinds of things. bird nest, rats, dead things. So since you’re getting a camera up in there, you get to see a lot more not do.
Matt Parker
So, you know, we’ve seen some very interesting things. Lots of birds nest lots what we’ve found we’ve actually found we rescued three birds and took them to the the lady was awesome. We got those out. And she took them to I want to say she took them to a mountain. And like, you know, they say, yeah, yeah. So the birds could go and in live so we found several birds nests. We, we run in a camera after we clean this one out and pull the camera back down. And we’d been back there working on this jar for a while and there was a frog. I think he I think we put the camera out it was at the big gap. And maybe he just crawled onto it and rode that camera off my back down to that Jarvinen so we found a frog. I guess I don’t know how frog got back there. But birds, nests frogs. And one of the most interesting things that we used to clean out the were the lint trap goes into your dryer, we used to clean those out. We had a bad experience with that. So we don’t do that anymore. But I found a toothbrush in one of those. So that was pretty interesting. Pull on toothbrush and somebody’s dryer.
Michael Wienecke
I guess I got left in a pocket or something like that. I bet you find a lot of coins.
Matt Parker
Yeah, yeah.
Michael Wienecke
So where can people find you? So you know, listen to this. What’s your phone number? You know, email address, all that kind of stuff?
Matt Parker
Yeah, so this phone number is 205-881-9115. And we have website. It’s a job town cleaning at. I’m sorry, that’s the email the email is gonna be jobtowncleaningcompany@gmail.com If you want to shoot us an email, and the website says jobtowndryerventcleaning.com. So we’re on Google as well. So this is probably the easiest way to find us honestly. So you can just Google you know job town driving cleaning or just Google Drive and cleaning. We’re, we’re on the Google’s as well.
Michael Wienecke
Perfect. What are yours do you service?
Matt Parker
Man? Well, we will go anywhere we try to stick within the 30 minutes of Birmingham right now just because we’re limited on manpower, but if you’re having an emergency and we have to, we’ll charge slightly but we’ll go outside. We’ll go pretty much anywhere if somebody’s having a problem we can get to him with you know, I’ve been called I had to tell lady no that was in Gordo, which I mean that was like an hour away. So it was a little outside of it. But you know, I don’t we don’t like say no a lot. So we’ll go just about anywhere. Well, good
Michael Wienecke
deal why Georgetown love the name. Again, Matt. I appreciate you coming on and hopefully, you know, some might give you a call and get that dryer vent cleaned.
Matt Parker
Heck yeah man they awesome. We love helping people out reducing risk and people’s homes. And that’s that’s the name of the game.
