Home Improvement Weekend

[csberry]

The project this weekend was a replacement of the vent for the dryer that runs up the wall, into the attic, and 20ish feet to the side of the house. A week or so ago I noticed the sound of slushing water in a portion while in the attic. I lifted the pipe to determine if it was the source of the sound, I felt and heard a rush of water exit the vent to the outside and the rest to flow up the pipe toward the dryer. Apparently (as I theorize now), my lifting of the pipe caused a crack in the pipe. A few days later while doing all-day laundry, I notice a wet spot forming on the ceiling in the kitchen. There wasn't much water that leaked, but with the cold days of winter + tons of laundry = oceans of condensation undoubtedly collecting in the pipe.

This weekend, my Dads (mine and the fil) came over. Fil had recently done similar work in his house and brought over some of his leftover sealant and tape. Calvin and Nigel came to Lowe's with me to use my Xmas gift card to buy the pipe, transition, and other supplies.

We cut the vent open to remove and discovered that the four-inch pipe had two inches of lint coating the inside. You would barely get a golf ball to fall through it. Now, imagine all that collected lint SOAKED. The five foot section we cut from the transition to the exterior vent probably weighed a little over 30 pounds. It made the most pitiful "thud" when I dropped it from the attic into the garage.

The existing pipe was flexpipe that wriggled like a worm along the top of the blown-in insulation and over struts. Even without the lint buildup, the curves of the pipe would drastically decrease the flow of air from the dryer to the outdoors. This is yet another example of the shoddy work the previous owner inflicted upon this house. It makes each improvement I make to the place all the more impressive, but it's insane the amount of miserly neglect they directed on this structure.

Now I have the wallstack flowing into a bit of flexpipe to get around and above the main A/C duct. From the point where it gets above the A/C duct, the flexpipe transitions to straight, smooth, rigid pipe that goes downhill, directly to the exterior of the attic.

It goes without saying that the difference in my dryer performance is extreme. Drying time has been cut from a couple of hours down to around 50 minutes on the loads I've done so far. I haven't done any heavy duty loads like towels or jeans yet. This change in drying time has completely messed with my laundry routine; the time I start a load of laundry in the washer to synchronize with the conclusion of a load in the dryer is fucked.

I'm sorry, I can't be the only person that is anal about that...am I?

Comments

[chris21718.livejournal.com]

It takes about 40-45 minutes to dry most of my clothes loads, but only 25 minutes for the washer to do it's thing, which is annoying, since it'd be nice to have them both take the same amount of time for pipelining purposes.