What home improvement work did you do today?

Good to know my kids are not the only ones that do this!

 

I'm glad to see kids are doing the same dumb stuff I used to do

 

Cleaned up the tile job, set the toilet flange and installed new toilet in master bath. Its a corner style, makes better use of space in long skinny master bath.

Still have drywall to do, ran out of days off. Not ideal to jump ahead but wanted to get back to functional crapper for nightime visits.

 

1/2 bath is functional again! Just needs trim. Oh, and a round mirror, wifey is on the lookout for one, the rectangle won’t do she says.

From this:


To this:

 

I thought I found rat hair in one of our ac vents. Turns out it was some old insulation, I think. I'm keeping it for my AC guy to look at. Now that I look at the pic, it's looking like a damn hairball again.



Went back to Lowes today to buy some bits for my impact driver. I have about 20 sets but I never put them back and they disappear. It worked out though because while I was at Lowes I found another bathroom fan on sale for $43, marked down from $171 (last week I got a $217 Whispersync Panasonic for $50). This one was a Whispersync Remodel. Perfect timing because I'd been having humidity issues in my J&J bath. I was pretty sure it didn't have an exhaust vent.



Old fan was 80 cfm. New one is 80 or 110. Pulled out the old fan, no exhaust hose so they were venting it into an HVAC hose space which probably explains the bathroom vent getting condensation when I shower.



Kinda nasty in there. I think the shit hanging from the wall is what they used to put over the shiplap back in the late 1800's. There was also an area that had some drywall painted pink. Our house is supposedly haunted by a younger girl who lived here many years ago. I wonder if that was part of her room.

Anyways, I'm going to cut a hole above the shower so I can get to the exterior wall of the attic area and put a damn vent in. Then I'll patch and repaint the ceiling.
It took me a few hours to install but most of that was because I put a screw down and then forgot where I put it.

 

In my continuation of getting 120vac to my shed, I used one of widowed breakers in the power panel. I had several circuits moved to the solar system back up sub panel. I replaced a 20 amp regular breaker with a new arc fault/GFI Breaker. First of all I was glad it got the right one, so many breaker manufacturers. I found a spot on the bottom of the power panel that was still available. I managed to get my 12/2 into the panel without disrupting the Sheetrock final assembly appearance. I ran the wire thru to the opening where the ground bar exam port was. I added the strain relief and then pulled the strain relief into the panel, added the lock nut! I then routed the wire to a smaller opening where I added a metal junction box. Tomorrow I add wire and conduit to where the wire from the shed comes onto the garage. I wired the breaker and installed it. I did all this with the power on as I did not want to turn off the solar system, etc. Disclaimer Note: I do not recommend doing this with power on, but I have done a lot to electrical equipment development in my lifetime.

T
Cardboard to keep away from the power bus.



Strain relief on metal box also.

All closed up for tonight.

 

Update..painted.

 

I cleaned out my dryer vent and the dryer itself. Amazing how much lint was inside the dryer internals after only 2 years.

The dryer vent wasn't too bad but I measured a 25% increase in cfm after the cleaning. Totally worth the 25 bucks for the brush kit and peice of mind for a few years.

 

The small garage/shed is finally getting organized.

Wiring protected care of my inspection and now the walls can become whatever is necessary...

 

Today I successfully fixed my dryer by replacing the heating element.

Unfortunately, I discovered a bigger issue. The dryer vents into the floor. I had assumed it ran under the floor to the vent in the exterior wall. (first picture). Sadly, when I looked in there with a flashlight I discovered the line must stop where the dryer is. All that dryer lint is just dumping into the floor. It's on the first floor with a finished basement below.


Any thoughts on what I should do? How bad is this? We just bought this house last near and neither the inspector or myself caught it. The distance from the dryer to the outside is around 10 feet.



View inside:

 

if you take the cover off the outdoor wall, can you send the dryer vent tubing from the dryer side to push it enough to reach it from the outside? Is that area too tight to reach?

 

I could reach in there I'm pretty sure. But my arm would be about 8' too short to reach the other end. The dryer is at least 10' away.

I wonder if I could run in a PVC(or other pipe) and then somehow rig the end of the dryer vent tubing to connect to the pipe.

 

Yup, I’d use a nice soft 90 degree sweep and some 4” pvc if you can.

On the bright side you caught it now and it can’t develops more mold or issues after you hopefully fix it.

 

I had been cursing this microwave vent thats above our stove. The freaking vent wouldn't work what so ever and was super noisy on every setting (sounded the same on low all the way up to BOOST). We had GE come out before our warranty was almost up and test the vent, they held a paper towel up to the vents and if it held it up on its own then it was good enough.

One of my neighbors had pulled theirs and was sitting on the street and i asked him about it and mentioned that the vent sucks. he said that his died and he noticed that when he was replacing his, the flapper housing on the top of the microwave was bent and kept the flapper shut. I got a slight tingle in my nuts that maybe this is the reason why i've been cursing at this piece of shit microwave vent....so i tore in and found this


The piece of shit installer bent the frame andloved the vent into the closed position. That little crack on the left is all that was letting air go through. I bent it back into shape and carefully put the vent back on and taped it up.

After testing its SOOO much quieter and actually works.

 

Ahh. Yeah I would go with @CodyP’s idea. That way you can glue it together and be good to go. I just had to clean mine out. It was crazy nasty. It was so backed the cleaning brush broke of and I had to crawl under the house and take apart my elbow to clear it lol

 

I’d probably open up the ceiling underneath it, big enough to clean it out and be able to attach the exhaust tubing to it. Repair the ceiling afterwards or leave a hatch in case there’s ever an issue with it in the future. Definitely wouldn’t want all that lint under the floor.

 

Glad I don't have kids.

 

Remember, if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself

 

I’d take off the outside vent and I’d use a shop vac and vacuum all I could from both sides, outside and dryer side. If it’s a clear shot to the outside vent, then add the Vent tube to be there. If there was mold, you might want to get a professional cleaning and treatment also before the new dryer vent. Those dryer vent brushes work great with a drill to knock stuff loose.

 

Added 3/4 inch PVC electrical conduit and fished Three 12 gauge wires thru. Easier said than done. Hooked up the wire to the outside going to the shed. Now I just have to wire the shed. I was kinda proud of my PVC tube bend with the heat gun, came out looking good imo.

 

Truth!

 

Unless I’m doing it then it’ll probably be done wrong but at least I didn’t pay somebody else to do it wrong.

 

You and me both. I can turn a 30-minute job into an all-day event.

 

i don't think we're talking about house stuff anymore. unless my mind is too far in the gutter

 

That’s pretty much a given at this point.

 

PVC can’t withstand the heat of a dryer output - you’re asking for trouble.

The “Right” way to do it is open up the basement ceiling and run hard 4” metal exhaust duct. Buy a manufactured elbow to make the turn (not one of the adjustable building center ones). DO NOT USE SCREWS anywhere in the run - use quality foil duct sealing tape on the joints (2” wide minimum). And lap all your joints in the direction of airflow. This is all too minimize places for the lint to catch and build up. Brace/support it well - especially below where you will connect the dryer discharge.

Ceiling patch and repair is going to be a better long term solution vs. The potential for a PVC elbow catching fire

 

Thanks for setting us straight. As I was reading it I thought to myself, “wait, last summer I used metal not PVC. Is PVC ok for dryer vents?”
Got my answer

 

Is it really that hot? The first 3-4 feet would be the normal flexible dryer vent before it would hook to PVC.

it's really not even obvious where I would need to start opening the ceiling. I really can't believe someone thought this was ok. The house is 30 years old. Was it ever done correctly?

Can't I just do the same thing I was going to do with PVC and run that metal exhaust duct in from the outside? Assuming it will fit.

 

I’ve got to cut a hole in the side of our house for a bathroom exhaust vent and I’m kinda going through the same thing with not knowing exactly where to cut. I’d like to cut from the outside in but I’m not exactly sure where the studs are (built in the late 1800’s) and it’s gonna be a bear because the old shiplap is hard stuff. I’m thinking of cutting through the shiplap on the inside of the house, drilling a hole through the center and through the wood siding so I know the center of where I’m coming out and then getting on the roof and cutting through the siding. The siding is pretty old and I’m afraid of it falling off or some shit if I cut it from the wrong direction. I do tend to overthink and make things harder for myself.

Anyways, if you want to go the ceiling route, can you reach down into where the vent enters the floor and put a small hole through the ceiling so you know where to cut?

 

If you can fish/feed the metal duct in where you need it from the outside, then yes. But there isn’t a building code out there that will let you run dryer vent in PVC. It isn’t rated for the heat potential (even 3-4 feet away) and it can create static sparks that could lead to lint fires.

The house may be 30 years old, but I’m wondering if the siding and dryer vent outlet aren’t…but maybe they are. I don’t know about your area, but fiber cement siding didn’t really start showing up around here commonly until later in the 90’s. I’m thinking that it was re-sided and when they pulled the old stuff off, they pulled out the vent and didn’t replace it when they were putting things back together. 30 years of dryer lint in that floor/ceiling space would be nuts.

I’m still trying to imagine/picture exactly what you have going on here - there’s insulation in that space you took the pictures of, so fishing a duct through that could be difficult. And then it goes in 10’ and ends up underneath a hole in your floor in the laundry room? And you’ve then got 3-4 feet of flex dryer duct to reach that hole? This is sounding like a nightmare of a lint trap. I would try to use as much hard duct as possible above the floor as well, though I know 3-4’ isn’t out of the ordinary.

One thing I can recommend is getting a Mag Vent connector if you find yourself moving/cleaning behind or under the dryer often. It makes the pain of re-connecting to the discharge line way easier.

$60 MagVent MV-180 Magnetic Dryer Vent Coupling

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013TINE4S