Sometimes the Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
We bought our house in January 2007, but because the lease on our apartment wasn’t up until May 1st, we chose not to move in immediately and do some minor cosmetic changes (mostly repainting most of the rooms) and didn’t move in until March 2007. So this past winter has been the first one for us living in our house, and we’ve discovered that we have a few, shall we say, quirks to contend with.
One of those quirks involved our laundry room. We have a laundry room, or more accurately a laundry closet, which was created by partitioning off one end of the kitchen to hold the washer and dryer plus a few cabinets. This little room gets extremely cold compared to the rest of the house. At first we thought the door in that room to the outside (the partitioned part includes our back entry) was inadequately sealed, but we soon realized that the cold was coming from the dryer itself when it was not running. So - aha! The vent must be the culprit. And sure enough, when I went out to look at the outside end of the dryer vent, underneath the slanted protective hood the vent was wide open. There was no flap over the actual vent to keep the cold air outside when the dryer was not in use.
Well, this is something I knew we could fix. We took a trip to Home Depot, and bought a new dryer vent cover. When we brought it home however, it didn’t quite fit on our vent tube. I was a bit frustrated because they are generally just a certain size, and the fact it didn’t fit probably meant our vent is somewhat warped and wouldn’t fit any new cover. The last thing I wanted was to have to move the dryer, take out all the tubing, and reinstall new tubing. While pondering how annoyed I was, I looked at the old cover. I had cleaned out the inside of the vent the last time I came out to investigate the cover, but I hadn’t really looked inside the cover at all. There was some lint trapped up near the top of the cover, and in fact, once I cleaned that out, a vent cover flap dropped down. The cover had a flap to block the vent when not in use after all, the hinges had just become stuck because of lint buildup.
So I spent a few minutes with a q-tip cleaning out the hinges, and reinstalled the cover on the dryer vent. I don’t know if it’ll make a difference in our energy bills (although I assume it can only help) but the little laundry room has stayed much warmer ever since. All because of a little misplaced lint.
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February 11th, 2008 at 7:26 am
It’s amazing what little things can do. Enough little hairs will clog a drain (ick, but true!). Though the lint still surprises me.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Your post reminded me of a similar situation we had. We had an old exhaust hood opening going from our kitchen to outside that wasn’t used anymore. Here it made the kitchen drafty, we sprayed it full of that insulation in a can and sealed it shut. It made a huge difference!
I really like your blog. Just wanted to let you know I am adding it to my blogroll! Thanks
S.B.
http://bethriftylikeus.blogspot.com/
February 11th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I haven’t had much trouble with lint, just the buildup of it. My “laundry closet” is in the middle of the condo and vents to the back yard. I actually looked at the vent cover and noticed it was caked with lint. I put the vacuum to it and got it all off and was worried that the build up outside could also be building up inside somewhere.
The wife and I aren’t freaking out or anything, its just a concern. So we just keep an eye on the vent outside and keep the dryer clean. I picked up this dryer lint cleaning system thing from bed, bath and beyond and haven’t had a problem since.
http://www.pottersgifts.com/proddetail.php?prod=LINTBGONE
ps
great site, btw. Long time subscriber, first time “caller”.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Good ending to the story!
Not to be negative but it sounds like you burned quite a few months rent with the house purchase.
Mike
February 12th, 2008 at 12:47 am
We had to pay both the mortgage and rent for two months. We had planned for it and saved the money but it still stunk, and reimbursements at closing were part of our final negotiations. But the timing on the house closing dictated it as such. We couldn’t delay closing any further or we wouldn’t have been able to buy the house because the owners were moving to texas and started a new job. in fact, we delayed closing until the morning they were moving and they were starting work two days later, outside the office the closing was held in was their moving truck. lol. But we left closing with a check for one of the month’s rent in exchange.
February 12th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Oh two months isn’t bad. I thought it was more like 4.
I burned a month of rent when I bought my house and I hated it! In retrospect however it wasn’t a big deal.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I love it when a problem you think is going to cost you money actually just needs a little elbow grease!