ANGRY part 2

Elizabeth asked about washer/dryer-gate so I guess I’ll continue this saga where we left off...

Last Monday, after finally nailing down a time and day to meet Hector, I sped home from work with Brad behind me. As we were walking to our cars, I gave him the rundown of all the drama so he would be well-equipped going into a battle of wits with this guy.

Hector was 15 minutes late but he finally showed up. Brad let him in and posted himself right up behind him as he started to work on the dryer, while I ONCE AGAIN busied myself in the kitchen with a knife, this time slicing fruit. Hector had some questions ("so you only did one load and it broke?") which Brad answered using plural pronouns ("yeah, we just did a set of sheets") so Hector would think he was around pretty often. Hector ran out of the house – I was sure he was going to speed away – but came back up and continued working. I was really pleased that he wasn’t attempting to replace the whole dryer, but rather went to work repairing it.

He replaced what’s called a thermal fuse. For those of you who have never had the privilege of being head of your own household and having to know stupid crap just like this, a thermal fuse (sometimes called a safety thermostat) is a mechanism that comes in newer dryers to prevent them from overheating and burning your house down. In a lot of houses, the laundry room is along one of the exterior-most walls of the house, allowing the lint/heat duct to just flow right on outside the house. In a condo like mine (and every apartment I have ever lived in, come to think of it), the laundry room is actually centered in the unit, which means instead of running a foot or so to the outside of the house, the duct has to go up to the ceiling, along the length of the apartment to the exterior-most wall, where it hits daylight. If there is too much lint built up along that pipe, there isn't anywhere for the heat to go, which means the dryer gets too hot and shuts down. To Hector’s credit (words I never thought I would say), he did kind of explain this to me when he installed it… I wasn’t really listening.

So, he explained all of this to Bradley, who checked to make sure the dryer was heating up again before Hector made his swift exit. Since I had stayed in the kitchen, trying to give off the vibe that I couldn’t care less about this dryer since someone else was there to deal with it, I had to have Brad explain all of this to me when Hector left. I started off asking him if this was something I could have done myself – answer, no. He explained the problem to me and presented me with two options: I could do laundry as normal and see if it broke again, OR, I could run the dryer two or three times without it connected to the lint/heat vent and just let the heat from the dryer free-flow into the condo. Now, you may recall from the last post about this nonsense that I was the one who had to connect the dryer to the vent by installing a little duct hose thing and that was not much fun. So I was not happy about having to undo my handiwork. If, after doing this, the dryer broke again, then it is the dryer that is faulty (surprise, surprise). If the dryer didn’t break and worked just fine, guess who I get to call now?

My landlord. Yep, the same one that wouldn’t spring for pest control when I saw a brown recluse spider in my bedroom which by the way I have another post about those devil bugs coming again soon. I don’t mind my landlord, I just try not to deal with him. I wouldn’t say he is the most helpful landlord I’ve ever had. But, if the dryer breaks again when I connect it to the lint/heat vent, then the problem is most certainly that there is 30 years worth of lint built up in the pipes and I have to have someone come clean them. Again, to his credit (!!!!), Hector did offer to come and repair/fix the dryer if it broke again in this process.

That was last Monday. I put this off again until two nights ago, mostly because I just didn’t want to deal with it. But I climbed back behind the dryer, unhooked the duct hose and started a load of laundry. OF COURSE everything worked again. Was Hector right this whole time?!

I plan to do another load tonight, and anticipating good results, will have to call the landlord sometime this weekend to talk about the next step of cleaning out the pipes…. Don’t you wish you were me?