The Do-It-Yourself Hero: Plumbing Leaks and Dryer Vents

It should have been a pretty simple project . . . just check those do-it-yourself books that lie in wait near the entrance to every Lowe's and Home Depot. But if you've ever lived in an older house that's already been renovated a couple of times by other do-it-yourselfers, you know that nothing is simple.

Actually, this project was so straightforward that I didn't even consult the Internet, much less a home center tome. What is there to know, anyway, about re-routing a dryer vent? But wait. Maybe I'd better start at the beginning, back before dryer vents were even on my project awareness radar. It all started with a plumbing leak at the other end of the house . . .

The plumbing leak first came to my wife's attention when she noticed a big wet spot on the carpet in our bedroom. She passed that information on to me, as wives are wont to do, prefaced by the words most feared by husbands around the world: "I think we have a little problem."

And she was right. We did indeed have a problem. The carpet was wet, the subfloor was buckling, the sheetrock was mushy, and the leak was deep within an interior wall. In our previous house, I could have been a DIY hero. I would have confidently opened up the wall, found the leak, snipped out the bad joint with my PVC cutters, glued in a new piece of pipe, and expertly patched the drywall. Unfortunately, this house is plumbed with copper, and I don't do copper.

Even a DIY hero knows when to summon help, and soon an official plumber (with paper booties over his shoes, yet) appeared at our door. He shut off the water at the meter, sawed a rather large window in the soggy drywall, and wrought magic with propane, flame, and solder. Then it's back to the yard to open the valve-the moment of truth-and, yes, the leak was secure!

The leak was secure, but the expert reported a disturbing piece of news. Even with all faucets closed, the water meter was still steadily ticking away. (Well, maybe not ticking, but still showing water consumption.) The explanation: there was another leak lurking, as yet undetected. After considerable consultation, we decided that my bank account would benefit from a cooperative approach . . . I would locate the leak, then call the copper-qualified plumber to plug it.

Author's Note: No, I haven't forgotten the announced subject of this piece. Those of you who are actually interested in dryer vents, please be patient. We're getting to that directly.

The leak-locating was delayed for several days while I gathered courage. As a dedicated claustrophobic, crawling the underside of houses is not high on my list of preferred activities. Especially houses built during some unremembered time when concrete blocks were so precious that builders only allowed enough crawl space to accommodate the heating ducts, and in this case, the copper plumbing. Eventually, having run out of even pathetically weak excuses, I donned coveralls and squeezed through the crawl space door.

Back in the late sixties, the Army taught me a lot of skills, many of which have no place in polite society. A few were benign, and among them was the art of crawling. We crawled for miles. We crawled in dirt, we crawled in mud, we crawled in sawdust pits especially designed for crawling. We learned to crawl very low to the ground, encouraged by canopies of barbed wire and grazing machine gun fire. Over time, I became exceedingly good at crawling.

That skill set, it turns out, is extremely useful when seeking out leaky pipes. Rough-sawn floor joists and noxious spider webs aren't quite as menacing as the stuff the Army had, but just as dirty and just as uncomfortable. And I was forty years older . . .

It took about an hour to find the leak, a jeweled drip sparkling in the weak glow of my flashlight beam. And I found something else: just beyond the leaky pipe, just under the laundry room, in the lowest, tightest, most remote corner of the crawl space, was a white and fluffy landscape that looked for all the world like a snowy plain. Squeezing a few feet further, I reached out and grabbed a handful of . . . dryer lint!

And now, impatient aficionados of dryer venting, we come to the real reason for this dissertation. Some idiot had vented the dryer straight into the crawl space.

At last, I could be the hero again . . . just hook a section of that shiny springy dryer vent tubing to the dryer outlet, stretch it along the underside of the floor joists and out the nearest foundation vent. Nothing to it (see paragraph 2). Further reconnaissance of the crawl space, however, revealed an unfortunate juxtaposition of framing members, air ducts, and plumbing pipes. The simple solution was . . . simply impossible.

While the plumber (sans booties this time) repaired the leak, I headed for the home center seeking a dryer vent miracle. And there, among the vent hoses, hoods, and hose clamps, I found it . . . the Lama Flex Duct Lint Trap kit ($12.97) . . . no outside venting required. The DIY hero was poised for a comeback!

Upon unpacking, the Lama was found to be a length of aforementioned shiny springy dryer vent hose and a small plastic canister. According to the directions, the canister should be mounted on a wall and partially filled with water. One end of the hose is then attached to the dryer outlet and the other end fitted into the canister. The hot, lint-filled air from the dryer is blown through the hose and into the canister where the water catches the lint and the filtered air is released through ventilation slits.

Since my dryer backs up to an interior wall shared by the garage, it seemed sensible to run the hose through the wall and install the Lama there. Confident now, I carefully sawed a 4" diameter hole through the wall, wormed the hose through, hooked one end to the dryer and inserted the other end into the water-filled canister. Done!

Now for the big test . . . a load of lint-laden towels awaited. I proudly stationed myself by the Lama and gave the signal for my wife to flip the dryer switch. The result was spectacular, a watery explosion akin to a fat ladies' cannonball contest. When the mess was finally cleaned up, careful reading of the soaked instruction sheet revealed the problem . . . there is a water fill line on the Lama, and it must not be ignored.

The next run involved a little less water and much less drama. The Lama did indeed catch the lint, but the volume of warm moist air vented into the garage was sufficient to produce a small tropical storm. When the lightning and rain finally subsided, it was back to the store for a refund, then back to the drawing board for a new approach.

The final chapter of this story is classic Occam's Razor . . . the simplest solution is generally best. I ended up running vent hose around the baseboard of the laundry room and through an outside wall. I boxed it in with 1 x 6's, painted it to match the laundry room trim, and it looks like a low shelf designed to keep laundry supplies off the floor. The hero is back!

For more adventures of the DIY Hero, check http://www.associatedcontent.com/kencabe