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Original Sin
My war against the dryer and its vent continues. And I have now come to understand where the original sin lies. Unsurprisingly, that's with the folks that built our house 25 years ago.
But let's start this story yesterday. The fellows we had engaged to clean our dryer vent showed up yesterday and removed a noticeable amount of lint from the vent. I explained to them the unusual configuration of the vent, but they just rammed the cleaning rod down the pipe from the outside, cleaned up the lint, and then left.
Today, I fired up a load of laundry, moved it from the washer to the dryer, and not too much later, the dryer was flashing the dreaded d90 signal, indicating that the vent was clogged. That was a pretty sad thing for a vent that was cleaned yesterday.
Late this afternoon, I set out to commit mayhem. See, the problem is that the dryer vent has a straight run of about 9 to 10 feet from the outside wall, then it makes a right angle turn, travels about five feet over, and then drops about eight feet to the bottom of the basement where it connects with the dryer. You may observe that this is not really a sane setup. And that is the fault of our builder.
The original plans for this house called for a first floor laundry. In order to accommodate Gretchen's mom, we had the laundry moved to the basement, the half bath converted to a full bath, and a closet added to the den to convert it into a bedroom. So far, so good. Everything got moved.
Well, everything got moved *except* for the dryer vent, which still exited the house where it would have gone if the laundry had remained on the first floor. Thus, the crazy five foot jog from where the dryer had been in the original plans to where it had ended up. A more competent builder would have moved the vent.
Having paid someone earlier in the year to clean the dryer vent, having paid someone earlier in the week to clean out the dryer, and having paid someone yesterday to clean the dryer vent *again*, it was now time to give up and do it myself. I started by disconnecting the flexible vent from the dryer which the guy who cleaned out the dryer had supposedly cleaned out, leaving a big pile of lint on the floor, because I guess he doesn't clean up after himself. It had a goodly amount of lint in it. It was short, so I could clean that out with the pipe cleaner lint brush.
But when I stuck the pipe cleaner brush up the vertical pipe, a bunch of lint came out. And there were limits to how far the pipe cleaner brush would go, because it only had so much handle. That limit was a lot shorter than the vertical pipe.
Also, I had untaped the flexible adapter from the vertical pipe. It was taped on with aluminized duct tape of which I had none, so I was going to need to obtain some more. I established that it was available at Home Depot and headed off in that direction with Gretchen riding shotgun.
At Home Depot, I found the aluminized duct tape. I also found a very long duct cleaning brush of the right diameter and decided that a bird in the hand right now was better than waiting for the already-ordered bird to arrive from Amazon tomorrow. It was too late to cancel the Amazon bird, but I will probably find a use for it in the future.
Back at home, I tried ramming the duct cleaning brush up the vertical pipe and finally concluded that I just needed to remove it. Had this been done by a better builder, I would have had to unscrew a mounting bracket, but our fine builder had attached the pipe to the studs with duct tape, so I just unwound the 25-year-old duct tape (25 year old things are better when they are Scotch) and unmounted the vent pipe.
With both ends available, the brush made short work of the lint. There was a lot of lint flying around by this point, but I had brought the shop vac over and was able to police the worst of it.
The problem was that the horizontal five foot run of pipe had been held up by the vertical eight foot run of pipe that I was now holding and it was sagging alarmingly. It was also, most likely, full of lint.
I pulled off the corner adapter which was (chorus) full of lint and cleaned it out. I desperately didn't want to remove the horizontal five feet of pipe, because it connected to the vent to the outside behind a ginormous pile that I didn't want to move. But I could reach it with the brush and I brushed it out well, possibly even well enough.
I realized that I was going to need another pair of hands to put this mess back together, so I summoned K who wanted to know why I hadn't summoned her sister who was already in the basement. I suggested that it was because K was better at following instructions. K was skeptical.
Anyway, after a good bit of swearing, everything was reconnected, although there are still a few junction points that will benefit from being taped at some point. I fired up the dryer and everything appeared to be working correctly.
The dryer terminated the cycle normally. When I went to check, the clothes were still a bit damp, so I sent them for another cycle, because this had been a large load of heavy fabric and the sensor dry occasionally gives up too early on these.
On the other hand, a bit damp beats the heck out of not dry at all.
This was more fun than I should have on a Sunday.
And very little mixing got done.
But perhaps we now have a working dryer again.
But let's start this story yesterday. The fellows we had engaged to clean our dryer vent showed up yesterday and removed a noticeable amount of lint from the vent. I explained to them the unusual configuration of the vent, but they just rammed the cleaning rod down the pipe from the outside, cleaned up the lint, and then left.
Today, I fired up a load of laundry, moved it from the washer to the dryer, and not too much later, the dryer was flashing the dreaded d90 signal, indicating that the vent was clogged. That was a pretty sad thing for a vent that was cleaned yesterday.
Late this afternoon, I set out to commit mayhem. See, the problem is that the dryer vent has a straight run of about 9 to 10 feet from the outside wall, then it makes a right angle turn, travels about five feet over, and then drops about eight feet to the bottom of the basement where it connects with the dryer. You may observe that this is not really a sane setup. And that is the fault of our builder.
The original plans for this house called for a first floor laundry. In order to accommodate Gretchen's mom, we had the laundry moved to the basement, the half bath converted to a full bath, and a closet added to the den to convert it into a bedroom. So far, so good. Everything got moved.
Well, everything got moved *except* for the dryer vent, which still exited the house where it would have gone if the laundry had remained on the first floor. Thus, the crazy five foot jog from where the dryer had been in the original plans to where it had ended up. A more competent builder would have moved the vent.
Having paid someone earlier in the year to clean the dryer vent, having paid someone earlier in the week to clean out the dryer, and having paid someone yesterday to clean the dryer vent *again*, it was now time to give up and do it myself. I started by disconnecting the flexible vent from the dryer which the guy who cleaned out the dryer had supposedly cleaned out, leaving a big pile of lint on the floor, because I guess he doesn't clean up after himself. It had a goodly amount of lint in it. It was short, so I could clean that out with the pipe cleaner lint brush.
But when I stuck the pipe cleaner brush up the vertical pipe, a bunch of lint came out. And there were limits to how far the pipe cleaner brush would go, because it only had so much handle. That limit was a lot shorter than the vertical pipe.
Also, I had untaped the flexible adapter from the vertical pipe. It was taped on with aluminized duct tape of which I had none, so I was going to need to obtain some more. I established that it was available at Home Depot and headed off in that direction with Gretchen riding shotgun.
At Home Depot, I found the aluminized duct tape. I also found a very long duct cleaning brush of the right diameter and decided that a bird in the hand right now was better than waiting for the already-ordered bird to arrive from Amazon tomorrow. It was too late to cancel the Amazon bird, but I will probably find a use for it in the future.
Back at home, I tried ramming the duct cleaning brush up the vertical pipe and finally concluded that I just needed to remove it. Had this been done by a better builder, I would have had to unscrew a mounting bracket, but our fine builder had attached the pipe to the studs with duct tape, so I just unwound the 25-year-old duct tape (25 year old things are better when they are Scotch) and unmounted the vent pipe.
With both ends available, the brush made short work of the lint. There was a lot of lint flying around by this point, but I had brought the shop vac over and was able to police the worst of it.
The problem was that the horizontal five foot run of pipe had been held up by the vertical eight foot run of pipe that I was now holding and it was sagging alarmingly. It was also, most likely, full of lint.
I pulled off the corner adapter which was (chorus) full of lint and cleaned it out. I desperately didn't want to remove the horizontal five feet of pipe, because it connected to the vent to the outside behind a ginormous pile that I didn't want to move. But I could reach it with the brush and I brushed it out well, possibly even well enough.
I realized that I was going to need another pair of hands to put this mess back together, so I summoned K who wanted to know why I hadn't summoned her sister who was already in the basement. I suggested that it was because K was better at following instructions. K was skeptical.
Anyway, after a good bit of swearing, everything was reconnected, although there are still a few junction points that will benefit from being taped at some point. I fired up the dryer and everything appeared to be working correctly.
The dryer terminated the cycle normally. When I went to check, the clothes were still a bit damp, so I sent them for another cycle, because this had been a large load of heavy fabric and the sensor dry occasionally gives up too early on these.
On the other hand, a bit damp beats the heck out of not dry at all.
This was more fun than I should have on a Sunday.
And very little mixing got done.
But perhaps we now have a working dryer again.