Saturday, September 04, 2010

Friend called the other day, the dryer

wasn't working right, someone had said "You need to clean out the vent hose" and she and mother had no idea how. So I ran over, found a lot of lint inside but there was a section I couldn't reach into, so said I'd be back today with the shop vac to clean it out.

Imagine this: the vent runs from the dryer down to the wall, into the garage, down to the floor under the cabinet where the water heater sits then sharply up to the pipe through the exterior wall. I started working the vac hose in, heard it sucking up clumps of lint, then it started that "I'm pulling in a lot of stuff" noise, and then the shutoff on the vac tripped. WTH? Shut it off, opened it up and it's full of lint and water.

Yeah. The water heater had just been replaced because of leakage, and it that stretch where the hose ran under it some of the water got into the hose with the lint and made a plug. And a puddle. I had to dump the vac twice more before I was done cleaning it out, but when left the air was flowing well, and I had them leave it blowing a while to dry the hose out.

Never ran into that before.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds as if they need to consider finding a shorter route to the outside world for the dryer.

Keith (in shit house mechanicking mode) said...

The long tube probably works as a condenser, especially as it has a u-bend in the middle to hold the water.