If you’re a pest control professional, you know that de-webbing — the removal of spider webs from a client’s home — is an important part of the job. You may not put much thought into your cobweb duster, though; in fact, it’s possible that you’ve been using the same company-assigned spider web removal brush for years at a time without even realizing that there are different options available.

One such option is SpinAway, a drill-powered extendable brush that HY-C manufactures. SpinAway is good for all kinds of cleaning jobs, and, as we’ve used it and tested it ourselves, we’ve been particularly impressed with its de-webbing capabilities.

But is it the right tool to add to your pest control toolkit?

In this article, we’ll compare SpinAway to the classic, tried-and-true cobweb duster. After you’re done reading, you’ll know the pros and cons of each kind of de-webbing tool, and you’ll be ready to decide whether you want to keep using your traditional brush or if you’re the right kind of person to give SpinAway a try.

SpinAway: 3 Cobweb Removal Pros

1. Automated Spinning Brush Head

When removing spider webs from a home, pest control professionals are taught to rotate their brush to sweep cobwebs away effectively and efficiently. With traditional brushes, this is a labor-intensive process. But SpinAway is designed to do the job for you.

SpinAway is made with a drill bit built into the end of its handle. All you have to do is attach the bit to a drill, extend the brush head to the appropriate length, and pull the drill’s trigger. The brush head will spin, utilizing centripetal force to sweep cobwebs from gutters, downspouts, and eaves — no arm or wrist twisting required.

2. Pain-Free De-Webbing

Pest control professionals know that as the day wears on, cobweb dusting can take its toll. Pushing and spinning that brush head back and forth across multiple houses for hours at a time is demanding on back and arm muscles.

SpinAway takes the torque out of your muscles and transfers it into the drill. All an operator has to do is hold the brush head in place and maintain proper posture. The rotation from the drill provides the cleaning force, giving your muscles a reprieve.

3. Faster Cobweb Removal

Cleaning spider webs from a house with a cobweb duster is a lot like mopping a floor: you have to push back and forth, ensuring you sweep up every web from every surface. De-webbing this way necessitates some overlap in the sections you’re scrubbing, which can add to the time it takes to get the job done.

With SpinAway, there’s no need for the “mop method” of de-webbing; just touch the brush head to the surface of the house, pull the drill’s trigger, and walk a straight line from one corner of the house to the next. The rotating head will catch the webs from all the cracks and crevices of the home with little to no need to go over the same surface twice.

SpinAway: 3 Cobweb Removal Cons

1. Requires a Cordless Drill

One of SpinAway’s biggest strengths as a de-webbing tool may also be its biggest weakness to some: to use it to its potential, you’ll need a battery-powered drill. This can mean additional upfront costs ($40 to $100 or more for a drill and $30 to $50 or more for batteries), and if the batteries die or the drill breaks, it goes back to being just like any old cobweb duster.

The saving grace here is that most pest control professionals already have a cordless drill for removing downspouts, drilling holes to add and bait, etc. Even if you do already carry a drill with you on the job, be sure to note that SpinAway is very demanding on the life of your batteries, and it may be necessary to purchase a few extras. Also, keeping all those batteries fully charged will be its own battle.

2. Shorter than Traditional Cobweb Dusters

Classic extendable de-webbing tools clock in at anywhere from 12 to 20 feet long — plenty long enough to remove cobwebs from the exterior of just about any home. SpinAway, on the other hand, extends only to 5 feet in length, falling well short of even average-length cobweb dusters.

If you’re a pest control professional who works mostly on single-story buildings, SpinAway’s length shouldn’t be a problem. In terms of total reach (i.e., the length of the tool itself plus the amount of distance an average user can reach), SpinAway is good for about 10 feet. If you’re de-webbing two-story houses or other taller structures, though, the extra length of a traditional cobweb duster may be better for you.

3. Price

SpinAway retails for about $60. Other comparable cobweb dusters typically cost somewhere from $30 to $45, and that’s without even factoring in the cost for a drill and batteries, which can easily add at least another $50.

Is SpinAway the Right Web Removal Tool for You?

Before now, you may not have given much thought to your cobweb duster. Now that you’re aware of SpinAway and its de-webbing capabilities, you may be wondering whether or not it’s the right tool for you.

If you’re looking to keep a low budget, you don’t already have a cordless drill, or you need to de-web two-story houses on a frequent basis, SpinAway may not be the right cobweb duster for you.

But if you have some money to spare, you already have a drill and some batteries, or especially if other de-webbing tools have been causing you pain in your back, hips, or arms, you may want to give SpinAway a try. It’s light, it’s quick, and its rotating brush head does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, keeping you fresh for the next job.

You’ve almost certainly cleaned your dryer’s lint trap. But have you ever cleaned the vent hose? It’s a harder task, but it’s vital to perform — lint buildup in a dryer vent can lead to a fire in your laundry room that can quickly spread out of control.

Many people hire a professional cleaner, but DIY dryer vent cleaning is becoming a popular alternative. We should know — we own LintEater, the first retail dryer vent cleaning kit designed specifically for homeowners. And though we were the first, we’re not the only ones on the market anymore; plenty of other impressive dryer vent cleaning kits have hit the shelves since LintEater. But, with so many options available, which kit is right for you?

Let’s take a look at three rotary dryer vent cleaning kits: LintEater, Lint Wizard, and — far and away the most popular manufacturer on the market — Holikme. We’ll compare them along five different attributes:

1. Rod length
2. Rod material
3. Rod attachment style
4. Accessories
5. Price

By the time you’re done, you’ll understand the ins and outs of what makes a rotary dryer vent cleaning kit work. You’ll also have a sense of the similarities and differences between three of the top kits on the market so you can find the right kit for your cleaning needs.

What Is a Rotary Dryer Vent Cleaning Kit?

Residential dryers have a vent hose attached that runs from the back of the dryer to the exterior of the home. Think of the dryer vent hose as the “exhaust pipe” of a dryer. Clothes can’t dry unless the moisture has some place to escape through, and that place is the dryer vent hose.

Over time, clothing lint inevitably gets sucked into the dryer vent hose and accumulates. The lint trap is supposed to help prevent this buildup, but lint traps can’t catch everything. Lint buildup in a dryer vent hose is very dangerous. Dryers get hot, and if lint gets near the dryer’s heating elements, that’s a house fire waiting to happen. In fact, there are nearly 16,000 dryer-related fires per year in the United States that result in hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

A rotary dryer vent cleaning kit is designed to help you clean the lint out of your dryer’s vent hose. These function primarily by way of three components:

1. Extension rods
2. A brush head
3. A drill (not sold with the kits)

To operate the kit, just attach as many extension rods as necessary to your drill (enough to reach through the entire length of your vent hose), connect the brush head to the extension rods, insert the rods and brush into your dryer vent, and power on your drill. The rotating brush head will scrape lint out of the dryer vent as you push it in and out.

Comparing the Top 3 Rotary Dryer Vent Cleaning Kits

So, it’s clear that you should clean your dryer vent. Hiring a professional is always a viable option, but it also tends to be more expensive than if you were to do it yourself. And if you want to do it yourself, you need a dryer vent cleaning kit.

But which kit should you buy? One of the three top dryer vent cleaning kits on the market — LintEater, Lint Wizard, and Holikme — is a good place to start.

Let’s compare and contrast these three kits, taking a look at the length of their connector rods, the material of those rods, the method by which the rods attach to each other, the accessories included in each kit, and, finally, the price of each kit.

Rod Length

In the world of rotary dryer vent cleaning kits, a good rule of thumb is, “The longer the rod length, the better.” Shorter rods mean more connection points, and more connection points make the column of rods less stable as they spin. Longer rods are gentler on dryer vents, easier to operate, and offer superior cleaning results.

The Lint Wizard and Holikme kits offer 24” rods, while LintEater is the only dryer vent cleaning kit that offers 36” rods. And while the “Longer is better” rule of thumb is true, shorter extension rods are viable options for cleaning short, straight dryer vent hoses. So be sure to choose a kit with rods appropriate to the length of your dryer vent hose.

Rod Material

There are two materials that dryer vent cleaning kit rods are made from: plastic or nylon. Nylon is very flexible, which is advantageous — dryer vent hoses tend to twist and bend at all angles to extend from the dryer to the dryer exhaust vent. Flexible nylon rods have no trouble bending to follow the path of the dryer vent hose.

Plastic rods, while somewhat flexible, are a bit more rigid, and can break off and become stuck deep in the vent hose as a result. This could damage the vent hose, and the process of retrieving a broken extension rod can be frustrating.

Holikme kits and Lint Wizard kits come with plastic extension rods, while LintEater kits feature nylon rods. Despite their versatility, nylon rods do come with a glaring downside: they’re more expensive than their plastic counterparts (sometimes twice as expensive as kits with comparable lengths).

Rod Attachment Style

Dryer vent cleaning rods attach to each other in one of two ways: they can screw into each other, or they feature a spring-loaded, button-style locking mechanism. The button-style attachment (pictured above) is much more secure. It ensures the rods stay solidly locked in place during the cleaning process.

The threaded, screw-style method, on the other hand, is a bit more limiting. Because of the way the screw rods are threaded, you can only set your drill to spin clockwise. Counter-clockwise cleaning may cause the rods to become unscrewed from each other, resulting in wobbly rotation or even causing the rods to become disconnected from each other entirely, getting stuck in the dryer vent.

Holikme dryer vent cleaning kits are made only with screw-style extension rods. The Lint Wizard kits use only button-style extension rods. LintEater uses a mix of button and screw-style rods — the original LintEater and the LintEater extension kit use screw-style connections, and the LintEater Pro uses button-based connections.

Accessories

Dryer vent cleaning kits can come with a slew of accessories, some of which you may want, and some of which may just pad the price of the kit. Aside from the extension rods and the brush head, common accessories include:

• A narrow lint brush attachment for cleaning lint traps
• A vacuum adapter to vacuum out your dryer vent
• A claw-like blockage removal attachment to help extract large clumps of lint
• A lint-catching bag to attach to your home’s exterior vent to collect extracted lint

Holikme makes 14 different dryer vent cleaning kits, some of which come with just the bare-bones essentials while others come loaded with additional accessories.

LintEater and Lint Wizard kits come with vacuum adapters, lint trap brushes, and blockage removal tools. If you’re looking for a single, all-encompassing option, LintEater and Lint Wizard have you covered. Holikme, on the other hand, offers a great balance of accessory-heavy kits and cost-effective choices with just the essentials.

Pricing

The four features above (rod length, rod material, rod attachment style, and accessories) are the factors that determine the price of a dryer vent cleaning kit. Kits can cost as little as $17 to as much as $45, and their prices vary between the big three manufacturers.

Holikme is both the most cost-effective and most expensive manufacturer of dryer vent cleaning kits. They make their kits in 15-feet, 25-feet, 30-feet, 40-feet, and 50-feet options. You can buy their rod-and-brush-only kits from $17 to $36 (depending on the length you need), or you can buy a 30-feet, 40-feet, or 50-feet kit with additional accessories for $30 to $44 (again, depending on length).

Lint Wizard’s options are a bit more straightforward: they sell a small duct cleaning kit for $15 and a large duct cleaning kit for $27. These kits are a great middle-of-the-road option from a price perspective, and they both come with the same number of accessories.

LintEater offers both the original LintEater and the LintEater pro for $33 and $41, respectively. Both kits come with identical accessories. We also offer a smaller, more streamlined LintEater Junior with just two, 18-inch extension rods for $19, and the LintEater Pro Jr. (with button-style connection points) for around $21.

Which Dryer Vent Cleaning Kit Is Best for You?

So much of the answer depends on how your dryer is situated, how long its vent hose is, and how often you use the dryer. Your conditions may require a high-end, heavy-duty kit, or you may just need a bare-bones kit with few to little accessories.

The good news is that by now, you should have a great idea of which kit you need and what kind of features it should come with. After you decide, you’ll be ready to keep your dryer vent hose clean, lint-free, and safe from catching fire.

“If you own anything, you’ve got to clean it.” Those are words that Paul Manning, the inventor of SpinAway, lives by. He and his wife Connie, both Louisianans, had been passionately developing, tweaking, and championing SpinAway for over 10 years before they decided to partner with HY-C.

Paul has run his own janitorial service for decades — he knows how to clean. But one day, a heart attack limited his ability to (quite literally) do the dirty work. Paul hated not being able to operate at full capacity; he believes that you should never ask anyone to do something you wouldn’t do, and his condition was causing him to have to do just that. Determined not to sit on the sidelines, Paul — with the help and support of Connie — began developing SpinAway.

But what is SpinAway? How is it different from other cleaning tools? What is it good at — and what isn’t it good at? In this guide, we’ll answer those questions (and more) to prepare you to jump into the world of rotary cleaning. By the end of this article, you’ll know exactly how tools like SpinAway work, and you’ll be ready to decide whether or not it’s the right tool for you.

What is SpinAway and How Does it Work?

SpinAway is an extendable rotary cleaning brush. Other extendable cleaning brushes get the job done just fine, but SpinAway comes with a drill bit on the end of its handle to attach to any cordless drill. That’s where the “rotary” component comes in: attach a SpinAway to your drill, extend or collapse it to the length you need, and pull the trigger. The removable brush head will spin as you hold onto the guide grip built into the handle and pull dirt and debris off surfaces (rather than rubbing it in).

SpinAway features no rustable components — the telescopic handle is made from aluminum and fiberglass. Its brush heads wear evenly as they rotate, ensuring consistent contact with surfaces as you use it.

Need to clean the brush head after a heavy-duty job? Just throw it in the washer and let it air-dry, or replace it entirely after it wears out. SpinAway can be used in wet or dry conditions. As far as using it with cleaning agents goes, wash & wax, neutralizing agents, Pledge, Windex, and soap all work very well.

Who Is SpinAway a Good Fit For?

One of the toughest things about using SpinAway is putting old cleaning habits out of your head. There’s no need to push or scrub; in fact, the brush works best if you simply rest it on a surface, pull the trigger on your drill, and let the bristles do their work with minimal pressure applied. Anyone from a custodian who cleans professionally all day long to a homeowner just looking to tidy up their house or car can make good use of the versatile brush head.

Paul developed it during his convalescence, and it’s still a powerful, effective cleaning tool for anyone who may be temporarily or permanently disabled. It’s adjustable between about three and five feet in length, and offers at least ten feet of total reach. It’s very light, too — weighing in at just 1.9 pounds, it takes minimal effort to maneuver.

Who Is SpinAway Not a Good Fit For?

SpinAway has some trouble with thick, sticky debris. Mechanics, septic tank cleaners, or any other roles which may encounter grease or coated residues may have better luck with more robust tools.

While SpinAway has many versatile uses, some cleaning tools are tailor-made for specialized jobs (and are hard to replace). Crime scene cleaners, for example, utilize specific, irreplaceable tools in their jobs. SpinAway isn’t a great fit for cleaning the inside of a barbecue pit, a surface that becomes greasy and oily after many uses. It’s also not best for cleaning grass off of a lawnmower — a job better left to a battery or gas-powered blower.

Advantages of SpinAway

We’ve tried out SpinAway on quite a few cleaning tasks. And despite its superb flexibility, there are three applications it serves particularly well: pest control, homes and businesses, and vehicles.

1. Pest Control

SpinAway can clean out bird nests and other animal-related debris, but we’ve found that it works especially well on spider webs. Spiders tend to make their webs in hard-to-reach-places like ceiling corners or soffits and fascias. SpinAway’s extendibility not only allows you to reach up high to these spots, but also to spin webs away to eliminate every last thread.

2. Homes and Businesses

Walls, windows, crowns, baseboards, ledges, edges, cracks, crevices — if you own a home or a business, it has these. And SpinAway can clean them. Use it wet or dry and polish up every square inch of your property. Outdoor furniture, bird baths, and swimming pools are also perfect targets for SpinAway’s rotating brush head.

3. Vehicles

Own a car or truck (or a fleet of cars or trucks)? Use spinaway to buff up your fenders, clean off your windshield, and remove debris from your doors — inside and out. It works well on ATVs and motor homes, too.

If you have more of a nautical bent, SpinAway is great for boats. Whether you need to clean algae off the hull or slime out of the live well, SpinAway can tackle it, wet or dry.

Disadvantages of SpinAway

While SpinAway’s cleaning functions are pretty far reaching, we’ve found that it has a lot of trouble with axle grease on vehicles. We would recommend sticking to a more traditional degreaser-and-rag-style solution in this case.

This isn’t necessarily a cleaning limitation, but something to look out for when using SpinAway: be careful near dangling strings, like those attached to your blinds. Like a vacuum, SpinAway’s spin doesn’t pair well with small components that may get caught in it.

Unlike a vacuum, though, SpinAway doesn’t always need to be used with the drill running. If you want to avoid getting things tangled up in the bristles, just run it without the drill — you can still use it effectively, wet or dry.

Is a SpinAway Right for You?

If you have a trusty extendable cleaning brush that works well for you already, no problem. But if SpinAway has piqued your interest, you can find one on HomeDepot.com or on Amazon. We’ve outlined what we know it can do, but try one out for yourself. Get creative with it. Push it to its limits. We want to know where it succeeds and, more importantly, where it fails, so we can continue to take Paul Manning’s ingenious tool to the next level.