At the start of #60

My odometer hits another milestone...

Yesterday, I celebrated the completion of 59 trips ‘round Sol. Yay. Fortunately, my employer gives us our birthday off¹. And it was a good thing because the week was brutal. I am going to admit that the seven and a half hours of meetings on Thursday broke me.

My perfect day would be just one long chill, but alas that was not meant to be.

Six Days Earlier…

Last weekend, my Wife grabbed me and showed me that the washing machine was leaking and wanted me to figure out if it could be fixed. We bought our front-loading Whirlpool washer/dryer set when we moved to Tucson in 2003, so being 21 years old, it could have been time to replace them.

But I wanted to be certain. So I ran a quick-load to see if there was any leakage². Turns out that spending an hour and about 30 gallons of water, there were no leaks.

Weird. Then I ran a load of whites, and when they were in the dryer, a lot of moisture puddled on the floor.

I pulled the washer out and I found that the vent hose had been jury-rigged. The dryer had a 4” hose, and the vent outlet on the side of our garage was 3”. Thus there was a connector between 3” and 4” hoses, and it looks like the moving service we used to move us in and do the little things like this didn’t use a hose clamp, but instead used a couple of wraps of duct tape.

The tape had rotted to the point that it flaked off, and thus when a load of wet clothes starts in the dryer, and that moist dryer air cools off as it wends its way to the outside vent, the moisture condenses, leaks out of the vent tube, creating the puddling (probably a pint or so of water).

Back to the now…

I made a trip to Lowes, bought some new hose, clamps, and a 4”-3” coupler. About $30 total. But, I know I needed to do some gritty work behind the washer (the hose runs behind it) to fix this.

Alas, it went really well, I was able to also clean out the lint trap in the dryer (even with the screen, plenty of fibers get downstream.

So, I guess it was a successful birthday.

We did go out and have a nice meal at a local Korean restaurant, and then my wife practically forced me to eat some cake (I was stuffed from dinner).

A successful birthday.

Meme of the Day

This totally resonates…

I have a couple of posts in the works, and I hope to get them finished and posted this weekend.

1. This is truly a nice perk!

2. One of the benefits of growing up as the stepson of an independent appliance repairman, I spent my early summers with him fixing appliances. I can diagnose almost anything, and often do the repair. Yay.

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