Monkey-ish-ness

I'm sitting here watching the most boring game in the history of Monday Night Football (3-0 after 3 qtrs), so I thought I'd tell you about us cleaning out the dryer pipe (for lack of a better word).

We live in a townhouse (duh) and our dryer is on the top (3rd) floor. Because of its location, the house designer decided it was easiest for the dryer to exhaust through the roof- meaning that's where the lint goes out.

For a long time now, our dryer has had a hard time drying clothes. We thought there was some lint clogged up, so when my dad was in town, we bought a 10' 3/4" PVC pipe and a little cloth duster thing. The thought being, if there's lint stuck up in the pipe, we can stick that duster up and try to get the lint to fall down. That worked for a bit, but didn't solve the problem.

With my father-in-law in town, we decided to tackle it head-on. He and I went in the attic and detached the pipe from where it comes up through the attic floor. We were able to see a lot of lint stuck in the pipe leading to the roof, so we cleaned out lots and lots of lint.

However, having a gut feeling that there was more to be done, I decided to start climbing around and made it all the way up to the underside of the roof.


We pulled the pipe from off the connector that is attached to the roof, and I was able to stick my hand up and feel the screen that keeps birds from coming in from the outside. And what did I find, but the entire screen was plastered with old, stiff lint. I spent about 10 minutes pulling all the old lint off, clearing the path for new air to cleanly pass through.

What an ordeal. But, we should be drying in quick-drying bliss for the next few months, at least.