Wednesday, September 25, 2013

So should I charge rent?

Last year around this time, I had a problem with my clothes dryer. The clothes weren't drying. Thinking that the vent hose was clogged, I pulled out the dryer to clean it. Now that is a simple sentence which in no way conveys the fact that there is no space to do this simple task.

I then became a contortionist using a small step ladder to climb over the washer, also pulled out, to get to the rear of the dryer to connect a new vent hose. Problem solved.

This week I did 2 loads of laundry and neither were dry on just one cycle. Hmmmmm. Do I really want to go through all of that again, or approach the problem from a different angle? For, you see, the man (and it had to be a man because a woman would have said this was NOT going to work) who designed the dryer vent didn't realize or didn't care that a long run of pipe was an invitation for problems.

The hole in the wall where I connect the vent hose does an immediate turn skyward, and goes up to the attic. It then turns again to run across the attic and exit on the north side of the house, about 10 feet high. So the vent basically runs from the middle of the house to the exterior, a good 25 feet in all.

I asked my friend Melissa, who is tall and only 39, to come hold the extension ladder while I climbed up to clean out the vent from the exterior wall. I could not remove the vent cover, so Melissa went up and being strong and 39, popped it right off. "Oh, you have a bird's nest alright". We had seen grass and straw sticking out the louvered vent flaps. Melissa pulled the nest out, looked in the pipe and said "Oh, shit". It is never good when a friend looks at something in or on your house and says those words. She then proceeded to pull out enough lint mixed with grass, sticks and straw to build a nest that would have made a Bald Eagle proud.

The damn birds had been pushing old nests back and building new ones. The debris was about 6 feet into the vent pipe. It is a wonder my house didn't catch on fire. Truly.

Life is always an adventure, isn't it?
Linda

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