Fenris's Adventures with the Dryer

The BBQ Pit
1

<bad Irish accent>
‘twas a foine, foine marnin’ in th’ luvvley state o’ Colorado. Birds were singin’, bees would o’ been buzzin’, had it not been March, and that foine lad with th’ blarney tongue, Fenris was planin’ an adventure.
</in the name of all that is good and holy, kill me if I ever try an Irish accent again. Please?>

Anyway, the tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like thing that connects my clothes dryer to the outside vent had broken. I decided to fix it myself. I measured the pipe’s diameter and circumference, I measured the length of the pipe, I stretched out the tape measure as far as it would go and let the cats chase it as it retracted. There was much happiness.

I go to the hardware store. I find the contemptuous, sneering grizzled middle-aged hardware store guy who invariably is the only person available in a hardware store when you need to ask a question. I’m also convinced that there’s only one of this character, but he has the power to appear in every single hardware store in the entire universe at once.

Somewhere in the Methane Seas of Neptune, in a hardware store, a Neptunian asks “Pardon me. I have to fix the vjwpo#yy’llt on my clutch-mate’s ff’n’tt%tck. Should I use a 3/4ths or 2/3ds Gripley?”

And the contemptuous, sneering, grizzled, middle-aged hardware store Neptunian will, with a dismissive wave of his tentacles drawl “Weeeelll, you could use a Gripley if you wanted your clutch-mate die in the giant, explosive fireball that’ll occur the first time the ff’n’tt%tck’s used, but if’n that’s not the effect you were looking for, I’d go with a 7/16ths Fivvit. It’s what the professionals use. But of course you can do whatever you want.”

Anyway, suffice it to say that I didn’t get a warm, friendly reception when I asked the C.S.G.M-A.H.S guy where they kept the “tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like thing that connects the dryer with the outside vent”. His response was snotty, but accurate, so let’s move on. Did you know that they can put twenty (20!!) feet of “tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like thing that connects the dryer with the outside vent” inside a box about 8 inches tall? Neither did I.

I get home. I tug a bit to pull the old foil flexible accordion like pipe from the wall vent. It doesn’t come, I pull harder. It snaps like a rubber band and I fly backwards. My cats laugh at me and chase the lint bits now floating through the air. “See if I change your litter” I growl at the cats. It doesn’t work. They know a stinky litterbox will hurt me more than it’ll hurt them.

I wonder…exactly how much lint is built up in the pipe? I’ve had the dryer for about 6 years…should I change the pipe more often? I look inside. Because of the way it’s bent, I can’t see anything. I pick it up like I’m looking through a large telescope, but I still can’t tell how much lint there is. I bend it a bit so I can see through it. This is a mistake. Lint pours down through the tube, coating me in blue fluff. (Hint: Beards are great lint-collectors). Think of every Warner Brothers cartoon where someone looks up a chimney and gets covered with soot. I look like a fluffy blue Ewok. Shit.

I clean up and hook up the pipe-like thing. It worked. No big finale, as much as it would be artistically satisfying. From a literary perspective, I need a third and final incident which caps the whole distaster-laden experience: a broken water main or something, but…well…one didn’t happen. Go figure. Life sometimes doesn’t mirror art.

Anyway, fuck you, sneering, contemptuous, middle aged hardware store guy. Fuck you tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like thing that connects the dryer with the outside vent. Fuck you, bluish colored lint. Fuck, fuck, fuck.[sup]*[/sup]

Fenris (and a tip o’ the hat to Terry Pratchett who inspired the phrasing of the Neptune bit)

[sup]*[/sup]These obscenities have been gratuitously inserted in a cheap attempt to win a better rant score from one of my favorite posters, Duck Duck Goose. Well, DDG, did it work?

2

Well, I’m all ready, but I gotta let DDG go first.
so i will

3

[hijack]Actually, it’s a good idea to have your dryer vent cleaned out at least once every couple of years. I found this out the hard way when I had to have my brand-new Maytag dryer repaired because several motor parts overheated. Why’d they overheat? Because the people I bought this 10-year-old condo from had never, ever, ever, had the vent cleaned out. The heat was, literally, never leaving the dryer. When I had it cleaned out, I was told that a lump the approximate size and shape of several rolls of paper towels was removed.[/hijack]

We now return you to your regularly scheduled rant.

4

I am awaiting DDG’s reply but may I add, squirting white wine out the nose from fits of laughter is not as pleasant as it sounds…

"This is a mistake. Lint pours down through the tube, coating me in blue fluff. (Hint: Beards are great lint-collectors). Think of every Warner Brothers cartoon where someone looks up a chimney and gets covered with soot. I look like a fluffy blue Ewok. Shit. "
Oh dear lord just this part slays me again!

:muffling fits of laughter:

5

Fenris, dear, that was a most loverly rant, and if I may say so, the imagery of a Smurf x Ewok hybrid was enough to jar me into ‘awake mode’ through convulsive laughter alone. [Not to mention picturing the breeding process involved therein.]

Might I add that you are one lucky guy. Your dryer pipe connect right to the outside, am I correct? My dryer is in the middle hallway of my condo (built in the 1970s by a contractor who must have gotten a deal on odd-sized housing supplies). All twenty feet of pipe travels from the back of my dryer straight up (one 90[sup]o[/sup] kink) through a hole in to ceiling (another 90[sup]o[/sup] kink), across the attic, around a support post gratuitously placed there (really weird curve) to the outside vent (of which the louvre doors no longer open after the ‘maintenance’ men replaced the siding and covered the edges of the vent).

Several months after I moved in, the dryer would overheat and shut itself off. We figured, eh, check the hose, after making sure the dryer was still in good working order.

Remember I mentioned odd-sized building materials? The original dryer hose ran from the dryer up a plastered wall, meaning the dryer hose was set into the the wall between the studs (none of which are equidistant) - in this case a 3" dryer hose set perfectly into a 3" stud space, which was then plastered over. With (former)Roommate in the attic and me on ground level, he had to tug the dryer hose up and out of the space. In the meantime, water and gobs of soggy lint are cascading over my feet.

Yup, clogged pipe and condensation. No wonder it’s overheating.

We managed to drag the hose out to the car wash area of the complex, two brave hunters carrying home a snake trophy, much to the delight and bemusement of our neighbors. I stuck the high-pressure nozzle into one end of the hose, turned on the water and the hose begins vomiting chunks of lint. Nearly six yards of compacted dryer lint is now sitting in the middle of the driveway, looking like diarrhetic waste from a blue camel, along with a now useless dryer hose.

Did I mention we ended up tearing up the hose in order to get it out of the wall? And did you know that no company makes 3-inch dryer hoses, only 4-inch? Meaning, of course, we now have to saw a hole in the ceiling (borrowing a saw from a neighbor after a long-distance call to the landlady living in California at the time, explaining why we were cutting into the attic) and run the new hose through the attic. Not to mention the fact that we had to super-tighten the hose on the back of the dryer because the vent pipe was only 3-inch diameter and the hose 4-inches? {Insert your own sexual reference jokes here.)

Fenris, oh so eloquent Fenris, I feel your pain. And your lint. Because, guess what? That incident happened two years ago, and the dryer indeed is shutting itself off again this morning. Sigh.

Oh, and by the way, I enjoyed the Irish lilt.

6

Actually, your situation was worse than, but similar to mine. My dryer is in the basement, and the pipe had to travel up about 6 feet, make a 45[sup]o[/sup] turn (to avoid a gas line, go another foot or so , make another 45[sup]o[/sup] turn, then get wedged between the floorboards and out through a hole at ground level about 7 feet away.

<blink>
Oi am speechless, me darlin’. Oi thaught oi sounded like the Lucky Charms Leprica…leprac…the Lucky Charms Elf. But ‘twas a foine, foine, thing to have said, none th’ less, lass.

Fenris

7

screech owl, you may want to try this. In our old house, because of the way the laundry room was situated, we found it impossible to effectively vent the dryer. I put a leg from a pair of old nylons over the dryer hose thingy. When the lint accumulates, just toss out the pantyhose and put on a new one. Much easier than rerouting vents and the dryer will be safe.

I know, I know. I’m a genius.

8

Holly, already thought of that very idea, except a neighbor had a nasty fire from doing the same thing. And with all the wood in our building, I don’t want to take a chance. (Everyone else in the building has their washers & dryers in the garage where they can be
Thanks anyway. I’ve got a neighbor willing to crawl into the attic for me for the cost of a couple dozen chocolate chip cookies.

9

Fenris, I hate to be the one to do this. However, it is in accordance with your wishes. Remember when you said this?

Sadly, I feel this duty falls on me, as your friend, and also being Irish. So what’s it gonna be? You want I should surprise you?
PS-Did you say Colorado? Do you really live in Colorado? If so, you know, that means we could get together and have a beer (or 12) on St. Patty’s day, and I could tutor you on your Irish accent. You know, that would be cool, because we could get Mr. Cynical to come too. And Monster, maybe. And Athena, I think. You know, I think I’ll start another thread about this.

10

you don’t make much sense.

11

What an unbelievable example of irony. Or is it paradox?

12

Why does it seem that dryer lint is always blue?

13

::some boring, pedantic sod from GQ walks in to attach limpet-like to the “imponderable”::

It isn’t, actually. I could have sworn that we’ve been around this, but I can’t find the thread or Cecil column. The blue-gray color is sort of a long-term average of all of your clothes, possibly because everybody has jeans. Any collection of dryer lint you are looking at usually spans multiple loads, as it takes a while to get blown through. Though, if I take a close look at the lint trap in my dryer after I’ve dried a load which is predominantly some other color, it’s obviously tinged by that color. I’ve had pinkish lint after drying a lot of red stuff.

And my dryer, which lives in the garage, has pantyhose connected to the back of it. I may vent it to the outside, if only because purchasing replacement pantyhose will do untold damage to my fragile male ego. A penalty for boring pedantic sod-dom is to not be living with a pantyhose wearer.

14

When we bought our washer and dryer a couple months ago, they told me that they would deliver and install it “except for the vent.”

Then the delivery person added it for emphasis as he started the job. “Everything but the vent.”

I didn’t ask why. That was my first mistake…

I went to the Hardware store and wouldn’t you know, the same guy from the store that Fenris went to sneered at me in the same manner. It’s a fucking conspiracy, I tell you…

So I brought it home and started to put it on the pipe. Unfortunately, I would have had an easier time putting the square peg in the round hole without a rubber mallet. And all the while I am trying to hook it up to the vent behind the dryer, while I am cramped into a tiny space with my legs cramping up equally as well.

How many times did I almost slice open an artery with the razor-like foil? Enough times that the cumulative effect of the close-calls involved a donation of a pint of blood, I think.

When I finally got it on, I had to snake this evil beast of tin through a couple holes in shelves to get to the vent near the ceiling.

Immediately, the damn thing comes off the dryer. Fuck.

I figure that I should uncoil it in its entirety first before I go back to strangling the piece that’s not hooked to the dryer anymore. I would like to say it didn’t take four attempts of fixing it first where the above happened over and over and over again, and in fact I will, because it’s easier this way.

When I get the thing snaked through and hooked up to the wall vent that goes outside, I then go back down to the floor for the dryer. Slice and dice the fingers some more, and then finally, it is hooked to point A and point B.

Of course, as I try and push the dryer into place, wouldn’t you know that BOTH ENDS come undone?

Repeat the above twice more before the dryer is finally in place and the foil-of-death is in theory attached to both ends. I can see the one at the wall is attached okay, but if you think I am moving the dryer out again after all of that, you’re kidding.

If nothing else, it answered me exactly why the delivery folks refuse to hook the fucking thing up.

Bastards…

15

screech owl:

It seems to me that if you have to run the dryer vent many feet through several sharp angles, the panyhose would be less of a fire risk, assuming you changed the pantyhose when the lint accumulated. If your dryer is overheating because you ductwork is dysfunctional, that’s a fire hazard.

:shrug:

16

Not dysfunctional, likely just #%$&ing clogged again.

17

Well, la di da, here I am. Sorry to be so late to rate the rant, Fen, but in spite of everything the Straight Dope Message Board can do, I seem to have an actual life. :smiley:

Eh, I promise to shoot you if you ever try the Irish accent again, because you are my friend and I know you would do the same for me.

Well, hmm. The rant, as rants go, sucked big time. Sorry, babe, but there it is. I give it a 2, because it was well-composed and honest, but where was the rage, the passion? Where was the incandescence, the primal fury of a man sorely beset by enemies in a hardware store? Absent, sadly. I’d like to see you rant from the heart, Fenris. Don’t slant your rants to please someone else, striving for an artificial score.

However, you do have a nifty Erma Bombeck column there. Have you ever thought of writing for the Ladies’ Home Journal?

:smiley:

18

I have waited long enough, and now DDG has posted her feelings on the matter, I feel my time is now.
I’m sorry to say, I must agree with her. Oh, I know you tried, dear boy, and truly, your heart is in the right place, unfortunately that place is apparently in some Mary Poppins-ish, smurf-ridden happy place, or perhaps the big cage o’ soft, plastic balls at McDonald Land[sup]tm[/sup]. Now, far be it from me to criticise you, good man, but I thought perhaps I might, well, spiff things up a bit, so you would have an example for (No doubt excellent) future efforts.

So, I’ve taken the liberty of running your(and it’s very good in an amatuerish, raw, neophyte, unskilled, sorry, buttmunching, sissy, glurgey, soft, frilly sort of way) text through Sofa King’s burn site as a sort of ‘starting point’, and then added a few small touches of mine own.
To wit:

<“f’ing great” Irish accent>
‘twas a goddamn foine, foine marnin’ in th’ luvvley state o’ Colorado. Birds were singin’, bees would o’ been buzzin’** had I not crassly smoked all the stash**, had that piece of shit not been March, and that foine lad with th’ blarney tongue, Fenris was planin’ an adventure.
</in the fucking name of all that is GOOD and holy, kill my stupid ass if I ever try a fuckin’ Irish accent again. Please?>
Dude- I already seen how this piece o’ shite comes out, but man, I’m broke- you got a gun I could borrow? Or a rusty axe? Dull hypodermic?

Anyway, the fucking tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like bitch that connects my molested clothes dryer yah, and I know who molested it and who’s got ‘appliance dick’ and is just tryin to constructively get the rage out to the fucking outside vent had broken. I decided to fuckin’ fix that bastard myself. I measured the fucking pipe’s diameter and circumference, was disappointed, as usual, got the vaseline anyway, as usual I measured the fucking length of the fucking pipe, length of your pipe- how quaint, and a complete non-sequiter I stretched out the fucking tape measure as far as that piece of shit would go and let the fucking cats chase that piece of shit as that bastard retracted. There was much happiness.

I really have to retire now, but you get the idea, I’m sure- remember good man, practice, practice, practice…

I go to the fucking hardware store. I should snap your throat. I find the fucking contemptuous, sneering grizzled middle-aged hardware store fucking bastard who invariably is the only fucking person available in a hardware store when you and your hand-job need to ask a motherfucking question. I should neglect your neck. I’m also (in addition to the fact that you’re a shit) convinced that there’s only one of this bullshit character, but he has the fucking power to fuckin’ appear in every fucking single hardware store in the fucking entire universe at once. You are a fuck.

Somewhere in the fucking Methane Seas of Neptune, in a hardware store, a motherfucking Neptunian asks “Pardon my stupid ass. I have to fix the fucking vjwpo#yy’llt on my fucking clutch-mate’s ff’n’tt%tck. Should I use a 3/4ths or 2/3ds Gripley?”

And the fucking contemptuous, sneering, grizzled, middle-aged hardware store Neptunian will, with a dismissive wave of that bastard’s tentacles drawl “Weeeelll, you could use a goddamn Gripley if you and your sluts wanted your sorry clutch-mate die in the fucking giant, explosive fireball that’ll occur the fucking first time the fucking ff’n’tt%tck’s used, but if’n that’s not the fucking effect you were looking for, I’d go with a motherfucking 7/16ths Fivvit. I’m not through yet! You are a pussy. That piece of shit’s fucking what the fucking professionals use. But of course you and your sluts can do whatever you and your sluts want.”

Anyway, suffice that piece of shit to fuckin’ say that I didn’t get a motherfucking warm, friendly reception when I asked the fucking C.S.G.M-A.H.S motherfucking bastard where the fuck them lumberjacks kept the fucking “tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like bitch that connects the fucking dryer with the fucking outside vent”. I should cram your ass. His response was snotty, but accurate, so god-damn let’s move on. Did you know that them nutsacks can put twenty (20!!) feet of “tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like bitch that connects the fucking dryer with the fucking outside vent” inside a box about 8 inches tall? Are you listening to my questions? Neither did I.

I get home. I tug a fuckin’ bit to pull the fucking old foil flexible accordion like pipe from the fucking wall vent. You are a pussy. That piece of shit doesn’t come, I pull harder. Mind if I snap your porkhole?

<AHEM>
<“f’ing great” Irish accent>
‘twas a goddamn foine, foine marnin’ in th’ luvvley state o’ Colorado. Birds were singin’, bees would o’ been buzzin’, had that piece of shit not been March, and that foine lad with th’ blarney tongue, Fenris was planin’ an adventure.
</in the fucking name of all that is GOOD and holy, kill my stupid ass if I ever try a fuckin’ Irish accent again. Please?>

Anyway, the fucking tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like bitch that connects my molested clothes dryer to the fucking outside vent had broken. I decided to fuckin’ fix that bastard myself. I measured the fucking pipe’s diameter and circumference, I measured the fucking length of the fucking pipe, I stretched out the fucking tape measure as far as that piece of shit would go and let the fucking cats chase that piece of shit as that bastard retracted. There was much happiness.

I go to the fucking hardware store. I should snap your throat. I find the fucking contemptuous, sneering grizzled middle-aged hardware store fucking bastard who invariably is the only fucking person available in a hardware store when you and your hand-job need to ask a motherfucking question. I should neglect your neck. I’m also (in addition to the fact that you’re a shit) convinced that there’s only one of this bullshit character, but he has the fucking power to fuckin’ appear in every fucking single hardware store in the fucking entire universe at once. You are a fuck.

Somewhere in the fucking Methane Seas of Neptune, in a hardware store, a motherfucking Neptunian asks “Pardon my stupid ass. I have to fix the fucking vjwpo#yy’llt on my fucking clutch-mate’s ff’n’tt%tck. Should I use a 3/4ths or 2/3ds Gripley?”

And the fucking contemptuous, sneering, grizzled, middle-aged hardware store Neptunian will, with a dismissive wave of that bastard’s tentacles drawl “Weeeelll, you could use a goddamn Gripley if you and your sluts wanted your sorry clutch-mate die in the fucking giant, explosive fireball that’ll occur the fucking first time the fucking ff’n’tt%tck’s used, but if’n that’s not the fucking effect you were looking for, I’d go with a motherfucking 7/16ths Fivvit. I’m not through yet! You are a pussy. That piece of shit’s fucking what the fucking professionals use. But of course you and your sluts can do whatever you and your sluts want.”

Anyway, suffice that piece of shit to fuckin’ say that I didn’t get a motherfucking warm, friendly reception when I asked the fucking C.S.G.M-A.H.S motherfucking bastard where the fuck them lumberjacks kept the fucking “tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like bitch that connects the fucking dryer with the fucking outside vent”. I should cram your ass. His response was snotty, but accurate, so god-damn let’s move on. Did you know that them nutsacks can put twenty (20!!) feet of “tin foil-y, accordionesque, flexible pipe-like bitch that connects the fucking dryer with the fucking outside vent” inside a box about 8 inches tall? Are you listening to my questions? Neither did I.

I get home. I tug a fuckin’ bit to pull the fucking old foil flexible accordion like pipe from the fucking wall vent. You are a pussy. That piece of shit doesn’t come, I pull harder. Mind if I snap your porkhole?

19

[major hijack]
I can’t believe that everyone is trying to put a hose trough multiple layers of wall to be able to use a clothes dryer. In Holland we have something that is called a condensdroger (help me out here Coldfire, I can’t seem to translate that word) which basically collects all water from your clothes in a plastic container that you can empty manually. A little more laborous, but ideal if you need to put your dryer in a place with no connection to the outside. Is this just a Dutch thing or is there some other obscure reason people in the US don’t use them?
[/major hijack]

By the way, I loved the rant Fenris. Not very flamy, but beautifully written…

20

Yeah, I think it’s called a condensdroger, or “condensation dryer” in English. I’ve seen both types here, BTW, the difference indeed being the necessity to have an exterior outlet. Also, a lot people just hang a plastic outlet out the window over here when they use their dryer. Especially in the bigger cities. Then again, I don’t really understand why one would need such a device. I mean, if you can’t wait two days for you clothes to dry, you might as well spend your money on some more clothes, right? Takes up less space, and doesn’t require home remodeling.

Having said all that, I nominate the next two gems for Band Name of the Week:

Fluffy Blue Ewok and Tin Foil-y Accordionesque Flexible Pipe-Like Thing :smiley: