Putting. Gasoline. In. Plastic. Freakin’. Bags!?!?!?!?!
Holy mother of pearl… 20 years ago I would have bet a huge sum that no one on Earth would be anywhere NEAR stupid enough to do that.
Now it seems we’re overpopulated with people that stupid, and I feel no sympathy when they detonate- earning Darwin Awards, and cutting off their obviously defective future genetic lineage.
And to think people have ragged on me for cleaning my reloading dies frequently.
Maybe this ‘public service’ video should be banned in liberal areas, so as to help accelerate their collective demise from their own dumbassedness.
Kevin in PAMay 15, 2021, 6:15 PM
Yes, well, stupid should be painful, but the trouble is that stupid can often take innocent non-stupid people with him, as stated clearly by the Fire Marshall at 2:20 – 2:45
But the depths of stupid never cease to amaze as the devolution rushes on.
gwbnycMay 15, 2021, 8:47 PM
as a Boilermaker employed in a Conrail backshop years ago I gathered between two buildings with some workmates. someone filled a condom with acetylene and I flicked a cigaret at it. it knocked us on our asses, I mean *really*, I think maybe my eyelids were folded back. we got up and streamed into one of the buidings and scattered. I bumped into the night supervisor, he says what was that? I said a firecracker, he says that was one hell of a firecracker and dropped it.
Casey KlahnMay 15, 2021, 10:07 PM
Hoarding? If you live in the country, that’s all you do is hoard. It’s normal.
“Don’t hoard”. “Don’t you fukn hoard, you toady slaves”. “Hoarders aren’t team players”.
The trouble with city folks is: they don’t know how to hoard. That seems, to me, to be the essential form of a city-dweller. Denizens of the urban zone go daily, hat in hand, to the trough. “What have you got for me today?” Today, it’ll be foie gras and tomatoes. Tomorrow, you’ll be happy with table scraps.
Of course they put gasoline in milk jugs and plastic bags. Gasoline scarcity is painful, but food scarcity, that is a whole ‘nother level of want. I can show you how to skin and consume mice. Venison is not gamey if you know what you’re doing. Turkey? Excellent, large and great eating. Game bird: the best.
ghostsniperMay 16, 2021, 4:29 AM
I think those gas baggers should gather in groups of 10 or more and bag as much gas as their vehicles will hold, all in close proximity of each other. It would please me greatly to hear about enormous gas explosions happening in dystopian urban settings all across the fruited plain.
Casey sed: “Hoarders aren’t team players”.
======
Now that’s nothing but funny, right there.
In the right setting food is more valuable than gold.
Lack of gold won’t kill you.
In the Before Times, my wife, The Logistician, teased me about our extensive larder and other readiness supplies. Since March 2020, not so much. Once I explained it in her terms–it’s not “hoarding,” it’s raising the reorder point to account for shipping delay–she got it immediately. Her favorite phrase now is “I am NOT a prepper,” meaning the exact opposite.
The best place for stocking up on gasoline is in your car’s fuel tank, no?
mmackMay 16, 2021, 6:17 AM
OK, I have to tell a story on a former college roommate of mine. This happened over thir, um, many years ago. And it wasn’t when we were roommates yet. To protect his identity, let’s call him T.
T is rooming with a real headcase at the time 😜. His roommate is “odd”, poor hygiene even for a college kid, conducts chemistry experiments in the room, and insists on keeping his mountain bike in the dorm room too. This was when dorm rooms had room for two closets, two desks, two beds, and that’s it. So it’s not like there’s a ton of room there. So one night T’s roommate gets the brilliant idea to clean the chain on his mountain bike. With gasoline.
Brainiac has no proper 1 gallon steel gas can. So he takes an empty plastic 2 liter bottle of soda, rides the bike to the corner gas station, gets 2 liters of gas, and rides back to the dorm. And places the bottle of gasoline in the closet of the dorm room.
(Those of you who know what’s coming please don’t spoil it for the rest of the readers)
So Brainiac convinces T and another ne’er do well friend of theirs to take a walk around campus. With fireworks. 🤦🏻♂️ And set them off on campus. When the campus police arrive, they apprehend the three of them. Upon returning them to the dorm, they find the town police and fire department in front of the dorm, and the entire dorm evacuated outside and verrrrrrrry pissed off 🤬.
While the Three Amigos are walking around campus setting off fireworks the gasoline dissolved the 2 liter bottle and leaked all over the floor of the closet. So now the dorm reeks of gasoline fumes. Thankfully their next door neighbors, who were smokers, didn’t light any cigarettes or they’d be taking up residence six feet under. The RA pulled the fire alarm, called the FD, and evacuated the dorm.
T’s roommate got expelled for that little stunt, and charged for damages.
mmackMay 16, 2021, 6:20 AM
I remember working as a mechanic and one of my co-workers came down into the basement of our shop with the carburetor from his motorcycle in his hands.
Leaking gasoline on his hands and leaving a thin trail of gas ⛽️ behind him on the floor.
Smoking a cigarette 🚬
How no fumes caught is a miracle.
I spilled about a cup of gasoline on the floor of my garage this winter fixing my snowblower. I cleaned the floor to an inch of its life and washed my hands about four times. Hey, you want to go up in a ball of flames, have at it. Leave me out of it.
Uncle MikeyMay 16, 2021, 7:06 AM
I’ve been on fire and I do not recommend it, but if you have to be on fire try to do it near a river or lake
Gordon ScottMay 16, 2021, 7:31 AM
There’s a million ways to hurt yourself in the oil fields. And every coin laundry near the oil fields will have a sign: No Greasers. This is to remind workers to NOT wash their oily coveralls in regular washers and dryers, but to only use the designated machines. This is because some of those clothes have so much crude oil and other crap in them that they leave residues in the machines, and the next user can pick those residues up on their clothes.
One rather clever roughneck had a bright idea. Out on the rigs, people sometimes use gasoline to clean a metal part or something. It’s not really safe, but nothing really is out there, and if done carefully it works. But our hero decided that if gasoline cleans oily parts, it would clean greasy coveralls. He added a cup of gasoline to the laundry water and turned it on.
After the fire was extinguished the firefighters pointed out that gasoline and water don’t mix. The gas is lighter than water and rises to the top. The agitation, and hot water underneath cause fumes to fan out quickly. And coin laundromats have numerous natural gas clothes dryers, each of which is an ignition source (the motors on the washers are also).
[5star]
gwbnycMay 16, 2021, 8:02 AM
Uncle Mikey- ✔️
ghostsniperMay 16, 2021, 8:14 AM
Commercial laundry dryers are propane fires so ignitable fumes might be interesting.
My workshop floor has every stain you can think of, to excess. I have used gas all of my life for cleaning stuff, particularly mechanical stuff. Clean my hands with it too especially after working on nasty, greasy under carriage stuff. At least with gas you know what you’re getting into. Some of the commercial cleaners ingredients can be down right scary. One of them, I think it’s Simple Green, leaves my hands feeling funny afterward. My go to hand cleaner is glass cleaner. I have large spray bottles of it everywhere. Spray the hands liberally, dripping on the floor, rub together vigorously, then wipe on pants. Just kidding. I have thousands of shop rags, red, and blue. About once a year I throw them in our non-propane fired dryer after a stern scrubbing in the washer. My wife always screams bloody murder after I do that.
JackMay 16, 2021, 9:03 AM
I have lived a charmed life and by anyone’s measure I should have been killed long ago. I’ve heard it said that sometimes God watches over drunks and fools and while I’ve been both, long ago in the past, my speciality was the latter and I was damned good at it, too. I’ll cite one example.
When I was a kid I was apparently fascinated by fire so, one day, I was playing around in an old storage shed where my dad kept a few dangerous things and I found an old yellow rubbery, plastic toy rail road coal car, something that was just in that shed for no apparent reason. So, I took it outside and with an idea that came from absolutely nowhere, I filled it with gasoline from a lawnmower gas can that just happened to be around.
Then, I found one of my dad’s half smoked cigarettes and I lit it, took a couple of drags from it and choked and then I tossed it into the gasoline filled toy railroad coal car. When it hit the gas, for some odd reason….and I believe to this day that it was because of my assigned squad of 10,000 guardian angels….the gas did not ignite.
I had no more cigarettes but I still had a couple of matches so I struck one, tossed it into the gas and the little railroad car and everything around it for 2-3′ erupted in fire with a loud ‘whoosh’!. Scared the ever loving crap out of me and from that day on I never played with gasoline or matches again.
It was a lesson learned but in the course of my life there were many more to follow and a few years ago it dawned upon me that when my earthy life has passed I will probably spend the first half or so of eternity, pressing the shirts, polishing the shoes and cutting the grass of the 10,000 or so gentle angels who have been with me every step of the way. It will be my pleasure, too.
[5star]
EX-Californian PeteMay 16, 2021, 10:12 AM
Hey, maybe I’ll postpone constructing a flamethrower, and instead, start giving away ‘free plastic gas bags’ on Craigslist in libtard cities. Same results, and I don’t have to pay for the gas!
Or maybe someone who is on Facebook could start a ‘gas bag challenge’– something like the ‘ice bucket’ or ‘Tide pod’ challenges they all jumped on.
Casey and Ghost brought up good points about the importance of having/access to food, and the false security of “investing” in precious metals like gold. My ‘precious metal’ is lead- both for stocking up on, and investing in.
Check out the increase in value over the years- https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lead
And look how much it’s gone up just since January, around 8.20% so far.- https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/lead-price?op=1
Lead & ammo. The perfect universal currencies in times of crisis or SHTF.
Thud MuffleMay 16, 2021, 5:49 PM
W. F. C.
azlibertarianMay 16, 2021, 6:47 PM
Since we’re talking about dryers and such, I thought I’d tell this little story…..
I was kicked back in my recliner one day, prolly watching a ball game or something, when Mrs. azlib came to me and asked if I would take a look at our dryer. She said that it had water leaking out of it.
Well, I’m no dummy, and I knew right away that dryers don’t have water going into them, so how could there be any water leaking out of it? When I got to our laundry room, I saw that she was right….there indeed was water leaking out of our dryer. We had a grey puddle coming out from under the dryer. [And yeah, I made sure that the water that I was seeing wasn’t coming out of the washer next to the dryer.] So I did the next sensible thing, and pulled the dryer back away from the wall to see what I could find. When I disconnected the dryer vent line from the dryer, I found a giant, grey, wet sopping mess inside the vent line…..about as big as a cat. The vent line wasn’t venting at all, because I had this cat-sized clog of wet dryer lint preventing any air from venting.
From there, I had to find out why the vent wasn’t venting. Our laundry room was an interior room, and the vent went out through the roof. So I climbed into the attic, and there I found that the vent line had somehow disconnected itself at the roof, and the line had fallen onto the insulation above my ceiling, pinching off the vent line. So I got all that put back into place, and I thought I had solved the problem.
But it turned out that I had only discovered just how close we had come to disaster. On a hunch, I decided to open up the dryer to see if any of this lint had built up inside. A dryer is basically a metal box containing a motor which turns a heat-filled drum in which your wet clothes are tumble dried. When I opened up the dryer, I found that the entire volume between the outside of the drum and the inside of the dryer body was also filled with lint. Our laundry room’s dryer was literally a giant tinder box, just waiting for a spark.
And to this day, Mrs. azlib makes me open up our dryer regularly, just to see. We also use our clothes line. A lot.
[5star]
ghostsniperMay 17, 2021, 10:36 AM
FWIW, a dryer vent line should never be run more than 6′ in any direction unless an auxilliary air pump is employed in-line. Ever. But they are rarely used and difficult to install after the fact.
About 10 years ago our dryer was producing an intolerable stench. I yanked it open and found a mama and 4 infant mice in the internal working of the vent pipe. Dead and partially cooked. Our vent goes through the wall behind the dryer directly outside and the flapper gate on the outside had stuck open allowing them to get inside.
2 years ago, after about 2 years of putting up with a horrible grinding sound, I tore our 15 year old Maytag dryer apart. I never tore a dryer completely apart before so I was prepared to order another one and have it delivered. In actuality they are very simple machines, primitive really, and are quite easy to figure out. A switch system controls a motor that spins a large barrel that has hot air blown into it. The barrel has a long belt that wraps around it in the middle and that belt is connected to a pulley on the end of the motor shaft. As the motor spins so does the barrel. The back end of the barrel sits on 2 roller bearings about 4″ in diameter, 1 on the left and 1 on the right. The front of the barrel is supported by a thin plastic race that lets the barrel glide. There are no bearings on the front.
Well, 1 of the 2 bearings at the rear had seized (locked up) at some point and eventually the bracket that held the bearing that was welded to the rear of the cabinet had broken loose. Essentially the barrel was supported by bearing on 1 side and bare metal was rubbing on bare metal on the other.
I knew what was needed and ordered the parts online and they showed up a few days later.
The intact bearing was replaced, and I drilled 2 holes in the rear of the cabinet wall and used bolts/nuts to reposition the bearing bracket. A little bit of hammer work backed with my small railroad track made everything acceptable again. While it was apart I went ahead and cleaned the whole thing out and replaced the light in the front of the barrel that had been out for years. Putting it all back together I was doubtful that it was going to work properly. I had to tear it almost completely apart to get to the bearings so I was sort of negative about my success in this venture. So, got it all back together, spun the barrel a couple times by hand and felt nothing dragging. I cranked the knob, hit the button and lo and behold it ran! Yay!!!!!
I put the temperature on Fluff and let it run for 45 mins to make sure there were no problems.
If you have a problem with your clothes dryer I encourage anyone to give repair a try before calling someone else. With the model number you can find the manuals online and you can find some repair videos online as well. And you can buy the parts online. If you know which end of the screwdriver to stick in the bad guy’s eyeball you can probably fix your dryer. You’ll never know unless you try. Go U!
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Putting. Gasoline. In. Plastic. Freakin’. Bags!?!?!?!?!
Holy mother of pearl… 20 years ago I would have bet a huge sum that no one on Earth would be anywhere NEAR stupid enough to do that.
Now it seems we’re overpopulated with people that stupid, and I feel no sympathy when they detonate- earning Darwin Awards, and cutting off their obviously defective future genetic lineage.
And to think people have ragged on me for cleaning my reloading dies frequently.
Maybe this ‘public service’ video should be banned in liberal areas, so as to help accelerate their collective demise from their own dumbassedness.
Yes, well, stupid should be painful, but the trouble is that stupid can often take innocent non-stupid people with him, as stated clearly by the Fire Marshall at 2:20 – 2:45
But the depths of stupid never cease to amaze as the devolution rushes on.
as a Boilermaker employed in a Conrail backshop years ago I gathered between two buildings with some workmates. someone filled a condom with acetylene and I flicked a cigaret at it. it knocked us on our asses, I mean *really*, I think maybe my eyelids were folded back. we got up and streamed into one of the buidings and scattered. I bumped into the night supervisor, he says what was that? I said a firecracker, he says that was one hell of a firecracker and dropped it.
Hoarding? If you live in the country, that’s all you do is hoard. It’s normal.
“Don’t hoard”. “Don’t you fukn hoard, you toady slaves”. “Hoarders aren’t team players”.
The trouble with city folks is: they don’t know how to hoard. That seems, to me, to be the essential form of a city-dweller. Denizens of the urban zone go daily, hat in hand, to the trough. “What have you got for me today?” Today, it’ll be foie gras and tomatoes. Tomorrow, you’ll be happy with table scraps.
Of course they put gasoline in milk jugs and plastic bags. Gasoline scarcity is painful, but food scarcity, that is a whole ‘nother level of want. I can show you how to skin and consume mice. Venison is not gamey if you know what you’re doing. Turkey? Excellent, large and great eating. Game bird: the best.
I think those gas baggers should gather in groups of 10 or more and bag as much gas as their vehicles will hold, all in close proximity of each other. It would please me greatly to hear about enormous gas explosions happening in dystopian urban settings all across the fruited plain.
Casey sed: “Hoarders aren’t team players”.
======
Now that’s nothing but funny, right there.
In the right setting food is more valuable than gold.
Lack of gold won’t kill you.
In the Before Times, my wife, The Logistician, teased me about our extensive larder and other readiness supplies. Since March 2020, not so much. Once I explained it in her terms–it’s not “hoarding,” it’s raising the reorder point to account for shipping delay–she got it immediately. Her favorite phrase now is “I am NOT a prepper,” meaning the exact opposite.
The best place for stocking up on gasoline is in your car’s fuel tank, no?
OK, I have to tell a story on a former college roommate of mine. This happened over thir, um, many years ago. And it wasn’t when we were roommates yet. To protect his identity, let’s call him T.
T is rooming with a real headcase at the time 😜. His roommate is “odd”, poor hygiene even for a college kid, conducts chemistry experiments in the room, and insists on keeping his mountain bike in the dorm room too. This was when dorm rooms had room for two closets, two desks, two beds, and that’s it. So it’s not like there’s a ton of room there. So one night T’s roommate gets the brilliant idea to clean the chain on his mountain bike. With gasoline.
Brainiac has no proper 1 gallon steel gas can. So he takes an empty plastic 2 liter bottle of soda, rides the bike to the corner gas station, gets 2 liters of gas, and rides back to the dorm. And places the bottle of gasoline in the closet of the dorm room.
(Those of you who know what’s coming please don’t spoil it for the rest of the readers)
So Brainiac convinces T and another ne’er do well friend of theirs to take a walk around campus. With fireworks. 🤦🏻♂️ And set them off on campus. When the campus police arrive, they apprehend the three of them. Upon returning them to the dorm, they find the town police and fire department in front of the dorm, and the entire dorm evacuated outside and verrrrrrrry pissed off 🤬.
While the Three Amigos are walking around campus setting off fireworks the gasoline dissolved the 2 liter bottle and leaked all over the floor of the closet. So now the dorm reeks of gasoline fumes. Thankfully their next door neighbors, who were smokers, didn’t light any cigarettes or they’d be taking up residence six feet under. The RA pulled the fire alarm, called the FD, and evacuated the dorm.
T’s roommate got expelled for that little stunt, and charged for damages.
I remember working as a mechanic and one of my co-workers came down into the basement of our shop with the carburetor from his motorcycle in his hands.
Leaking gasoline on his hands and leaving a thin trail of gas ⛽️ behind him on the floor.
Smoking a cigarette 🚬
How no fumes caught is a miracle.
I spilled about a cup of gasoline on the floor of my garage this winter fixing my snowblower. I cleaned the floor to an inch of its life and washed my hands about four times. Hey, you want to go up in a ball of flames, have at it. Leave me out of it.
I’ve been on fire and I do not recommend it, but if you have to be on fire try to do it near a river or lake
There’s a million ways to hurt yourself in the oil fields. And every coin laundry near the oil fields will have a sign: No Greasers. This is to remind workers to NOT wash their oily coveralls in regular washers and dryers, but to only use the designated machines. This is because some of those clothes have so much crude oil and other crap in them that they leave residues in the machines, and the next user can pick those residues up on their clothes.
One rather clever roughneck had a bright idea. Out on the rigs, people sometimes use gasoline to clean a metal part or something. It’s not really safe, but nothing really is out there, and if done carefully it works. But our hero decided that if gasoline cleans oily parts, it would clean greasy coveralls. He added a cup of gasoline to the laundry water and turned it on.
After the fire was extinguished the firefighters pointed out that gasoline and water don’t mix. The gas is lighter than water and rises to the top. The agitation, and hot water underneath cause fumes to fan out quickly. And coin laundromats have numerous natural gas clothes dryers, each of which is an ignition source (the motors on the washers are also).
[5star]
Uncle Mikey- ✔️
Commercial laundry dryers are propane fires so ignitable fumes might be interesting.
My workshop floor has every stain you can think of, to excess. I have used gas all of my life for cleaning stuff, particularly mechanical stuff. Clean my hands with it too especially after working on nasty, greasy under carriage stuff. At least with gas you know what you’re getting into. Some of the commercial cleaners ingredients can be down right scary. One of them, I think it’s Simple Green, leaves my hands feeling funny afterward. My go to hand cleaner is glass cleaner. I have large spray bottles of it everywhere. Spray the hands liberally, dripping on the floor, rub together vigorously, then wipe on pants. Just kidding. I have thousands of shop rags, red, and blue. About once a year I throw them in our non-propane fired dryer after a stern scrubbing in the washer. My wife always screams bloody murder after I do that.
I have lived a charmed life and by anyone’s measure I should have been killed long ago. I’ve heard it said that sometimes God watches over drunks and fools and while I’ve been both, long ago in the past, my speciality was the latter and I was damned good at it, too. I’ll cite one example.
When I was a kid I was apparently fascinated by fire so, one day, I was playing around in an old storage shed where my dad kept a few dangerous things and I found an old yellow rubbery, plastic toy rail road coal car, something that was just in that shed for no apparent reason. So, I took it outside and with an idea that came from absolutely nowhere, I filled it with gasoline from a lawnmower gas can that just happened to be around.
Then, I found one of my dad’s half smoked cigarettes and I lit it, took a couple of drags from it and choked and then I tossed it into the gasoline filled toy railroad coal car. When it hit the gas, for some odd reason….and I believe to this day that it was because of my assigned squad of 10,000 guardian angels….the gas did not ignite.
I had no more cigarettes but I still had a couple of matches so I struck one, tossed it into the gas and the little railroad car and everything around it for 2-3′ erupted in fire with a loud ‘whoosh’!. Scared the ever loving crap out of me and from that day on I never played with gasoline or matches again.
It was a lesson learned but in the course of my life there were many more to follow and a few years ago it dawned upon me that when my earthy life has passed I will probably spend the first half or so of eternity, pressing the shirts, polishing the shoes and cutting the grass of the 10,000 or so gentle angels who have been with me every step of the way. It will be my pleasure, too.
[5star]
Hey, maybe I’ll postpone constructing a flamethrower, and instead, start giving away ‘free plastic gas bags’ on Craigslist in libtard cities. Same results, and I don’t have to pay for the gas!
Or maybe someone who is on Facebook could start a ‘gas bag challenge’– something like the ‘ice bucket’ or ‘Tide pod’ challenges they all jumped on.
Casey and Ghost brought up good points about the importance of having/access to food, and the false security of “investing” in precious metals like gold. My ‘precious metal’ is lead- both for stocking up on, and investing in.
Check out the increase in value over the years- https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lead
And look how much it’s gone up just since January, around 8.20% so far.- https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/lead-price?op=1
Lead & ammo. The perfect universal currencies in times of crisis or SHTF.
W. F. C.
Since we’re talking about dryers and such, I thought I’d tell this little story…..
I was kicked back in my recliner one day, prolly watching a ball game or something, when Mrs. azlib came to me and asked if I would take a look at our dryer. She said that it had water leaking out of it.
Well, I’m no dummy, and I knew right away that dryers don’t have water going into them, so how could there be any water leaking out of it? When I got to our laundry room, I saw that she was right….there indeed was water leaking out of our dryer. We had a grey puddle coming out from under the dryer. [And yeah, I made sure that the water that I was seeing wasn’t coming out of the washer next to the dryer.] So I did the next sensible thing, and pulled the dryer back away from the wall to see what I could find. When I disconnected the dryer vent line from the dryer, I found a giant, grey, wet sopping mess inside the vent line…..about as big as a cat. The vent line wasn’t venting at all, because I had this cat-sized clog of wet dryer lint preventing any air from venting.
From there, I had to find out why the vent wasn’t venting. Our laundry room was an interior room, and the vent went out through the roof. So I climbed into the attic, and there I found that the vent line had somehow disconnected itself at the roof, and the line had fallen onto the insulation above my ceiling, pinching off the vent line. So I got all that put back into place, and I thought I had solved the problem.
But it turned out that I had only discovered just how close we had come to disaster. On a hunch, I decided to open up the dryer to see if any of this lint had built up inside. A dryer is basically a metal box containing a motor which turns a heat-filled drum in which your wet clothes are tumble dried. When I opened up the dryer, I found that the entire volume between the outside of the drum and the inside of the dryer body was also filled with lint. Our laundry room’s dryer was literally a giant tinder box, just waiting for a spark.
And to this day, Mrs. azlib makes me open up our dryer regularly, just to see. We also use our clothes line. A lot.
[5star]
FWIW, a dryer vent line should never be run more than 6′ in any direction unless an auxilliary air pump is employed in-line. Ever. But they are rarely used and difficult to install after the fact.
About 10 years ago our dryer was producing an intolerable stench. I yanked it open and found a mama and 4 infant mice in the internal working of the vent pipe. Dead and partially cooked. Our vent goes through the wall behind the dryer directly outside and the flapper gate on the outside had stuck open allowing them to get inside.
2 years ago, after about 2 years of putting up with a horrible grinding sound, I tore our 15 year old Maytag dryer apart. I never tore a dryer completely apart before so I was prepared to order another one and have it delivered. In actuality they are very simple machines, primitive really, and are quite easy to figure out. A switch system controls a motor that spins a large barrel that has hot air blown into it. The barrel has a long belt that wraps around it in the middle and that belt is connected to a pulley on the end of the motor shaft. As the motor spins so does the barrel. The back end of the barrel sits on 2 roller bearings about 4″ in diameter, 1 on the left and 1 on the right. The front of the barrel is supported by a thin plastic race that lets the barrel glide. There are no bearings on the front.
Well, 1 of the 2 bearings at the rear had seized (locked up) at some point and eventually the bracket that held the bearing that was welded to the rear of the cabinet had broken loose. Essentially the barrel was supported by bearing on 1 side and bare metal was rubbing on bare metal on the other.
I knew what was needed and ordered the parts online and they showed up a few days later.
The intact bearing was replaced, and I drilled 2 holes in the rear of the cabinet wall and used bolts/nuts to reposition the bearing bracket. A little bit of hammer work backed with my small railroad track made everything acceptable again. While it was apart I went ahead and cleaned the whole thing out and replaced the light in the front of the barrel that had been out for years. Putting it all back together I was doubtful that it was going to work properly. I had to tear it almost completely apart to get to the bearings so I was sort of negative about my success in this venture. So, got it all back together, spun the barrel a couple times by hand and felt nothing dragging. I cranked the knob, hit the button and lo and behold it ran! Yay!!!!!
I put the temperature on Fluff and let it run for 45 mins to make sure there were no problems.
If you have a problem with your clothes dryer I encourage anyone to give repair a try before calling someone else. With the model number you can find the manuals online and you can find some repair videos online as well. And you can buy the parts online. If you know which end of the screwdriver to stick in the bad guy’s eyeball you can probably fix your dryer. You’ll never know unless you try. Go U!
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