For some reason, the lint trap isn't very good at the "trapping" bit of the equation. This means that every once in a while, I boost Sam into the attic and he has to hot-foot it over to the vent, reach up into the roof-line, and pull a small quilt out of the little bird-blocker screen. The first time we did this, Sam discovered that the geniuses that had installed the vent hoses in the attic for the dryer and the two upstairs bathroom exhaust fans decided to be generous with said hosing, allowing them to coil on the "floor" of the attic. This led to those loops being full of water. And by full, I mean a gallon of water each. Yeah, not exactly useful in the "exhaust" department.
Anyway, we did the attic gig a few days ago, but the dryer has been more picky than usual, deciding periodically that, no, it was not ready to start at the moment, so bugger off and maybe it'll give it a shot later. So we figured that maybe it was time to take the thing apart and give it that cleaning that you're supposed to... every year? I dunno. We've done it once, ever, and the thing is eleven years old. And the only reason we did it that once was because the belt had to be replaced. It's one thing to never clean something you have to crack open, it's another thing to have to crack it open, look at the mess, and still decide to not clean it. So we pulled off the back, pulled out the start of the exhaust line, cleaned all that mess and scored thirty cents. Not bad!
Finally we pulled off the front to reveal approximately four thousand legos, a couple buttons, an enormous quilt, a poor poor motor with fur like a bear, and! Drum roll please! Another $7.59 in change!
Well worth the effort. Oh, and we got the dryer running again. But, hey, almost eight bucks! It was like Christmas.
