Juju vs the Dryer Vent #427

Actually I have lost count on how many times I have battled the dryer or the dryer vent.  I am very close to drilling a whole in wall and running the dryer vent out into the garage or out the front of the house.  Every year I clean out the ducts.  It used to be something I never thought about until one of our dryers caught on fire.  So since then it gets cleaned.

We have had it professionally cleaned and they jammed a bunch of lint up in the top of the duct in which I had to fish out one morning.  That post follows...

Posted on Jan 9, 2010

"What did you do today Juju?"

I stood on a ladder with a long a** pole and poked the dryer vent because i thought a dead bird got stuck in it.

Whoa…k lets rewind. 

As you all know i have a love for the dryer that will stand the test of time! Last year we RIP'ed two dryers. One after it caught on fire. well after it caught on fire we had to have someone come out and clean out the dryer vent. They wouldn't clean out the top because we have clay tile roof and they don't want to be responsible for breaking tiles. 

So Fast forward to today. I'm out in the front yard playing with Clover. She's happy that we are out early. we are out because our gardener was fixing the fence which was just another chapter of the our drama (available in paperback). I look up and notice that the dryer vent isn't really blowing anything out. Then i look some more and notice that there is something stuck in it. So after consulting Hubby, he grabbed his camera to try and zoom in and get a better view. and the verdict…yes there is something stuck in the vent, and its white. 

Fast forward a little bit more to me procrastinating and then finally getting motivated. I decided to try and snake it out from the bottom. because if it was something dead i didn't want to touch it, so i was going to poke it out from the bottom. i took the pool vacuum line hoses that we had extra of and shoved them up into the vent….with no luck. 

And about a half an hour later i am up on the ladder. This really had to be a hilarious site because Lissa wouldn't stop laughing. i rigged a brush onto the telescoping pool pole. it took me a couple of tries to get it but finally poked the brush in….followed by several "EWWWWWWWW"s. I had no idea what i was poking and in my mind i had already figured out that whatever it was was dead.

There was about five minutes of "Ewwww thats so grooooooooos!"

So there is me up on the bright yellow ladder with my gerry rigged pool pole trying to poke a vent about twenty feet away from me. I didn't feel like a total oakie because there was an absence of duct tape. i used it all two weeks ago.

I finally poke it all out and….it was all dryer lint. no dead things. a lot of dryer lint. but just to be on the safe side i left it on the roof for the rain to take care of…just in case. Then it took me another half an hour to get the stupid vent back on the back of the dryer which led to me then having to climb over the dryer to get out of the laundry closet. 

So i had a witness today so that you know that i don't make this stuff up! although by now i could probably write a book. 


So as you can tell the dryer and I get a long oh so well.  Today was another clean it out day since it is once again making noise.  My brother came over and helped me out since I'm not supposed to lift.  I worked on it for about two hours and there was a lot of lint in the duct.  I shopvaced it out to the best of my ability but I am so sick of working on it.  My knuckles are all banged up and my fingers hurt from trying to clean it all out.  I am done for the day!