The Dryer is Done! No, Wait, It's Broken! Wait, What?! Agh!!!

I was workin' alone today (Dad's LAST day of work is today!), and I had two goals:  get the dryer vent hooked up and installed, and get my skinny cabinet installed to the left of the stove!

The work wasn't very difficult in theory, but it was a bit difficult by myself!  I was trying to connect the five-foot ducts together while raising them up in a straight line from the vent hole from the dryer to the vent hole on the exterior of the house.  Again, it sounds simple!  But trying to raise them and line them up at the same time while trying to connect them (loosely until I had it exact) was proving to be a chore!

Setting the ductwork in place.

And the hardest part was trying to get the elbow on the exterior piece!  It just did not want to go!  So I finally went upstairs and secured that outside.  That way it wouldn't move on me anymore.  The rest was just holding it together and strategically working my way back towards the dryer.

Once I had all pieces elevated to the right height and in a straight line, I taped them all up with foil tape.  And with the two-foot pieces I bought, I only had to use two out of the three five-foot sections I bought.  It was nearly perfect!  With the slightly extra length, I used that to raise the dryer vent attachment point above the hole in the laundry room.  In other words, I left about three or so inches to easily connect to from the dryer.

Starting to look good!

Directly below the dryer.

And a perfect amount to attach to from the main level.

It turned out looking pretty good, if I do say so myself!  And legal!  With two five-foot sections and two two-foot sections, I'm up to 14 feet!  And because I have four 45-degree bends, that reduces the total length by 20 feet.  So from national code, I am allowed 15 feet.  With Springfield code, I'm allowed 25 feet.  I beat 'em both with my 14!

Turned out looking pretty professional!

Dad came over after being released from his last day of work early (Happy Retirement, Pa!  Now it's time to put you to work!).  I tested out my vent, and when I went outside, I saw dryer lint hanging off the exterior plastic vent!  That's a good sign!  Air is going all the way through!  Woo hoo!

I see lint!  That's a great sign!

The vent officially installed!  Done!

I was going to work on the skinny cabinet next, but we decided to tackle the dryer itself next.  Over the last month or so, my dryer has been making a terrible clunking noise.  It's a weird noise, and I assumed it was the rollers.  But before I went and ordered those, Dad said we should tear it apart and see rather than ordering a wrong part.  Well, we opened it up not having the slightest clue what we were doing, and, wow, did I learn that my dryer had been broken for a long time!  There was lint EVERYWHERE inside the unit.  I noticed that the exhaust vent was only venting about 75%, and the rest was being let inside the dryer!  So I had lint and dust everywhere!  But I thought the rollers appeared just fine.  Hmm.

I had lint everywhere!!!

Look at that mess!

Dad moved the big drum by hand, and I tracked down the sound that the dryer was making to the motor.  Being covered in lint, we figured it dried up the bearings.  "Dust is the worst thing for a motor," Dad said.  So we sprayed the motor with a bit of penetrating oil, but it still made the noise.  And it would make it just after I stopped moving it by hand.  Hmm.  It didn't matter if I went right or left, it wobbled.  Yes, it was a loose wobbling sound.  So I tracked it down to the front of the unit where the fan was.  I thought the motor shaft that went to the fan needed lubricating.  We had to tear down the dryer even further, but that's when we saw the exact problem.

Look at all of that lint!  It's not getting out like it should!

The fan was broken on the motor shaft.

Getting paid to work is fine by me!

The fan itself could be pushed back and forth on the motor shaft.  We would later learn that two snap-rings hold it in place (one on the front of the fan, one on the back), but the back one had become dislodged.  So the fun was able to move freely back and forth.  At electric motor speeds, of course it wobbled!  But when tearing it down even further, I found out that the fan itself was broken.  It's not perfectly circular on the inner plastic shaft as it has a straight edge to line up perfectly with a straight edge on the metal motor shaft.  By having this edge, the fan rotates in step with the motor shaft.  Without it, it rotates simply by friction, not by rotation.  In other words, it wouldn't spin as much as the motor shaft would.  And there was my wobble!  If it would slip on the shaft, it would wobble!

So as any cheap man would do, I simply stuffed a metal staple in there and tested it out.  Perfect!  The fan moved in-step with the shaft!

So we went to put the dryer back together, and that's when we encountered a mind-boggling problem.  When I went to connect the belt to the pulleys, I had the belt rubbing against itself.  Hmm.  Maybe I didn't have it on the drum properly.  I checked that, but it was in the groove.  So I tried figuring out how I connected it wrong, but there was really only one way it could go, and it matched the pictures that I pulled up online.

It just wasn't making sense.  It's like the belt stretched while we were working on the dryer.  Dad couldn't believe it, so he looked at it himself.  I showed him how it rubbed, but he just wouldn't buy it!  I made sure it was on the necessary groove of the dryer, watched videos on how to install it properly, and lined it up on the pulleys.  It still rubbed.

It was maddening!  And Dad still wasn't buying it.

For whatever reason, though, the belt stretched.  Just enough to get it to rub.  I don't know how or when or why it happened, but it's definitely too long now!  So I needed a new belt.

The belt as it was taken off.  When put back together, the part on the right rubbed on the upper shaft!

With all of the tearing apart, cleaning, learning, video-watching, and head-scratching, we ended up working on this thing for four hours!  And still had it apart.  I was getting frustrated, but I bought that the belt was loose.  Dad was still not buying it!

So we called it a day, and Dad headed home.  I headed to the crawlspace to pick up all my tools from the duct install, and I decided to fix another problem that I noticed a couple of months ago.  While in the crawl for something previously, I noticed that my plumbing drain pipe had fallen.  Almost every single strap had broken, and the pipe was laying on the ground, most likely accumulating poo and everything else at the lowest point in a corner where it was not supposed to be accumulating!  I temporarily fixed it by setting it on top of wood that I found in the crawl.  At least it would drain properly now.

The straps had broken.

Almost every strap had snapped.

Cheap material or heavy pipe?

My make-shift stand that has worked for the last month.

So while down in the crawl, I decided to tack it back up.  The less time I spend down here, the better!  The dust is just crazy!  Well, the pipe is very heavy, and it was difficult to hold up while I held up my metal support band.  Long story short, the pipe gave way, and the band went with it, slicing my pinky along the way.  Somehow I had managed to avoid getting cut working with ductwork (that stuff is nasty) all day, but this little metal strap got me.  It was a clean slice, so it didn't hurt initially, but did it start bleeding.

Time to call it a day.

I used my leg to hold up the pipe and at least mount one strap to it, but I called it a day after that.  Ouch!  I cleaned up and threw a Band-Aid on it and decided to put that afternoon behind me!

Tonight, though, I ordered a new dryer belt ($11) and fan ($7).  I also ordered myself a new soap door kit for my dishwasher ($15) and a new brush for my vacuum ($7) which I broke today while cleaning the dryer.  So for $40, I should have two working appliances again!  That's about the cost of the service call alone from an appliance repair man!

So it was a decent day.  The dryer ductwork is up and waiting for the dryer!  But it was frustrating, too, as the previously-working dryer is now not working!  It really IS weird about that belt.

I just hate it when projects are left unfinished!  But she needs a new belt.

But soon enough, the dryer will be fixed and back in place.  And the dishwasher will work flawlessly.  And the skinny cabinet will finally get attached to where it goes!

Little by little...