Fire hazard
(midwest.social)
People TwitterLint trap is easy. Exhaust ducts are the real danger. Not only can lint build up in those, but critters like birds and mice can make nests in them which further blocks the airflow. Even if you have the outside vent gated off, they can get stuck open enabling access for critters into the duct. Clean out your ducts at least once a year.
It's absurd that building codes don't require some sort of inspection or access to the vent if it's not a simple straight-through-the-wall affair.
Slum lord gunna slum. I’d say many swap them out when new tenants move in
My Girlfriends aunt complained about her dishwasher not Wirkung properly the other day, GF asked Ehen was the last time you cleaned the filter? Aunt was linke the WHAT? She has owned dishwashers for 30+ years and never heard oft that.
You want to write in English but your phone wants to write in German
yeah I realized too late I forgot to switch. Also for some reason I can never edit comments.
Some keyboards let's you set two input languages, also seems to do a great job at catching on to which language a given input is intended to be in.
I made it a few years before I learned it. When I was a kid we hand-washed, and it took a few years of renting before I caught on - not because of any labels or the like, but because of my troubleshooting a smell.
It's not obvious what it is if you don't already know about it, and if you don't install it yourself...
certainly a unique language you got there
You and fdnomad@programming.dev have been added to the Best of Lemmy: https://sh.itjust.works/post/69167752
“Why does it take 3 hours to dry my clothes when it used to take 40 minutes?” Or “why aren’t my clothes drying at all?”
Thise seems like it’s one or two loads away from house fire territory.
Sometimes it's just a shitty dryer that doesn't work that good anymore.
My last house I lived in for like 5 years and never found the furnace filter... I'm convinced it just didn't have one and the system was raw-dogging the dusty air. I checked the air return vent where I am used to them being, and I checked the furnace in the garage closet. I am glad I moved out before that became a problem...
I'm also wondering "my what" upon hearing about furnace filters. As far as I can tell, my furnace has none. The "filter" is the size of the hole I chuck logs through. If log too big, it no go in.
I'm wondering what "furnace" entails too. I realize I'm showing my ass here but do they mean like the water boiler, or the heater? Do gas burners have filters?
In the US we refer to the large heater for central air conditioning to be the furnace whether it is gas or electric. The filter is on the blower that pushes the hot air around the house.
Interesting. We tend to heat with water in my part of the EU so that specific chore doesnt really exist here.
Depends where in the world you are I think. In the UK most people have combination water/heating natural gas boilers. Some places are on heating oil if you're out in the sticks (or in Northern Ireland which has a different system) and some modern houses are all-electric heat pump setups. We mostly have no air con which is becoming less tenable with climate change, and water-based radiators so nothing like a furnace in American systems.
The HVAC system.
Houses have furnaces now?
Newer machines will stop drying if the sense the filter is too full. Helpful for if you forget when doing a bunch of laundry, but if the sensor goes faulty, it'll be throwing errors regardless of how clean the duct or filter is.
I saw one of these posts about ten years after buying a washer/dryer. So I checked mine. Absolutely nothing in it. What the hell are these people washing? Vacuum cleaner bags?
Not even a whole sock?
What are YOU washig?
Bro doesn't do laundry, bought the machine & never set it up
Is it because it's a washer as well? Maybe all the bits just get washed away...
I have a combined washer/dryer. I have to filter the drain hose so I don't clog my sewer pipe.
my guess is, that those are combined dryer/washer machines. in my old place we had dedicated dryers, those could build up a felt just after one load.
currently we have a washer (non drying) and the filter is a small tube shaped thing under the main door. it never builds up much, except someone forgot some paper in their jeans...
Same, I was wondering how bad mine was after I finally found where it was. Barely anything 🤷
Technology Connections told me about the filter in the bottom of the dishwasher, how cleaning that out can do wonders for the performance. And he said if you hadn't ever cleaned that he felt sorry for me when I would open it up and find out what's inside. I was afraid to, so I sold the dishwasher and got a new one. Checked the filter, clean as a whistle, disaster avoided.
I wish he would do more videos on things I actually own or want to own when mentioning things you should do to improve them. I don't have a dish washer.
But I do have several things which make use of the refrigerant cycle. Fridge, freezer, dehumidifier, heat pump. Maybe some day I will get an aquarium chiller too rather than using 2L bottles of ice.
What fish are you keeping that you need the water that cold? First that comes to mind for me is trout.
Not a fish, axolotl.
Awesome 💛
Edit: Axolotl pics?
Afraid to check your dishwasher filter, so you bought an entirely new dishwasher?? Do you also throw your clothes away when they get dirty, and keep buying new clothes? Lazy irresponsible financial decisions like this remind me of the infuriating saga of Albert Clarke .
No it was a joke, the dishwasher was over 20 years old and I had maintained it properly. I had repaired it many times, replacing or repairing components, improvising fixes where needed. I am remodeling the downstairs, so I removed the kitchen. I made sure almost all of the cabinets got a second life in a garage somewhere (helped move and install them). The dishwasher was still functional, even though it was old, so I gave it away for free and somebody was happy to have it.
In the end all that actually went to recycling was one cabinet which was totally rotted, it fell apart as I removed it. Some wood trim that was made to fit exactly this kitchen and the hood which was broken beyond repair (needed a new motor, which is almost the entire thing and I couldn't source it).
I plan to re-use the fridge and the hob. The oven has been nothing but trouble since I moved in, with a post-it on the electrical panel for how to reset it when it goes into failure mode that looked like it had been there for decades. That might need to go to recycling. I re-used part of the kitchen counter as a workbench, but part of that has gone to recycling as well.
I'm all about reduce, re-use and recycle and wouldn't just buy something new when I don't need to. I'm still waying my options for the new kitchen, if I'm going to go sustainable or recycled materials I'm going to have to build it myself. Which is in my capabilities, but perhaps not in my time constraints. So not sure on that yet. For now I've uncovered a world of hurt with very questionable and dangerous electrical and plumbing. How this house hasn't burnt down yet is a wonder, and I have uncovered evidence of multiple fires in the past. So that's a big job that takes priority for now.
Pardon me, hobb?
Probably the stovetop
Stovetop, (although hob is spelt with one b. Probably a typo)
Glad you are a responsible human renovating your house & you are adulting well. It's my own problem that something in your comment sent me down a rabbit hole of the infuriating saga of Albert Clarke . It was over an hour ago and I've just emerged for fresh air.
I had no idea that the author of Goodnight Moon is exactly the sort of person I'd love to hang out with
Margaret Wise Brown? Yeah she was apparently a fabulous fun super chill lady.
Mr. Clarke wears a gray button-down shirt so fresh from its plastic packaging that it still bears a symmetrical grid of creases. “I spend a lot of money on clothes for me and May and Aly,” he says. “We wear them two or three times. When they get all wrinkly and funky, we throw them out.”
Holy wow, hard to believe!
Ngl i think id rather have normally wrinkled clothes than the fold lines from when it was packaged
Also fresh new clothing smells. There is chemical residue on it from the dyes or they have sprayed some sort of finishing agent on it to keep it from wrinkling during transport. Which not only smells but can irritate the skin. I can even smell the nylon or polyester in unwashed new clothing that will irritate my throat. Like I had bought jeans with a lot of elastane in it and I had to wash it three times to get the smell out.
If you have clothes that haven't been washed in years, definitely throw them away.
But if you go down the infuriating rabbit hole of Albert Clarke , you'll see he had so little regard for money that he & his 4 children would wear clothes only TWO OR THREE TIMES, buy new clothes, and throw the old ones away. Albert Clarke has never worked a day in his life, just has money constantly showering down upon him. AFAIK he's still alive, currently 83 years old and his unearned undeserved book royalties will continue showering down upon him until he's 99. And he's never done laundry.
Found and removed the filter screen in my moms dishwasher when it broke, scale buildup from the water had grown down into the pump, ruining it :(
Oh yeah, they can get gross, but the easy solution is to just stick it in the dishwasher, and boom, clean as new!
SSSSLIIIIMEEEEEE
I love comments like these.
Now do the sacrificial anode in your water heater.
How long are they supposed to last? I have an extra because the guy who sold me the heater convinced me to upgrade from the factory model. He said the stock ones failed too early. It wasn't a huge cost and I didn't know enough about it to doubt him so I just did it.
It really depends on the properties of the water where you live. I have lived places that needed replacing every 2 years and I have lived places where it was still fine after 20 years. You’ll know when it’s time to swap it, it will look like shit.
Haha good to know. Thanks.
If your hot water starts to smell like sulphur, that can also be a sign. Especially if it's worse when you don't run it for a day or two.
I feel like the sediment would bury the element well before the anode becomes an issue. I'm just imagining this person doesn't flush it either.
You uh... Have you checked your water filters?
In a tank water heater you react out calcium and magnesium when your heat. Tap water varies but you will get sediment from disolved minerals that will eventually bury the element if not flushed out.
I rented a house once that the previous tenant had been living in for about a year with 3 little kids. She had mentioned to me that the dryer worked ok when she moved in but it wasn't working anymore. It still ran but it didn't really dry anything.
Not a big deal I thought. Went over to the dryer and took a look at it. First thing I did was pull the filter. It was clogged solid. She didn't even know it had a lint trap, never mind that you're supposed to clean it after every single load. Not only was the trap plugged, so was a bunch of the hose and ductwork. I spent several hours taking everything apart and cleaning it out, finally got it all back together, turned the dryer on, and it worked like a champ. Not a single problem for the 7 yrs I lived there.
She was a lady already in her thirties with 5 kids (3 lived with her)... you'd think she would have known how to use a dryer at that point. I'm just happy she never burnt the house down..
I genuinely think that you should take a class in highschool that teaches basic life skills like this. 1 class each year. It could cover cooking/nutrition, mental health, chores, financial literacy, First aid basics, etc. Then by the time thye graduate they have had 4 years of teaching about basic stuff like that. I bet it would save tons of lives.
This is a common opinion that never holds up. Kids' schedules are insanely bloated compared to a few decades ago and honestly, think about what would have been taught as "useful" at home 30 years ago and how much of that would still be in use today... Its just a waste of expensive teaching resources for something that anyone with a search engine can teach themselves.
We could call it something like Home Economics, or "Home Ec." for short.
Which appliances do you cover cleaning on though? I have never owned a tumble dryer, or a furnace (is that american for boiler or are they a bit different?).
Meanwhile I do have a heat pump, not had to clean it yet, I think its more of a problem when you have lots of trees around, especially ones that drop sticky residue.
I'd say anything that is relatively common and could potentially be dangerous if not maintained properly. You don't need them to be masters of every appliance. Just to be aware of the dangers of the most common ones.
I think a furnace would refer to forced hot-air heat, with the furnace being the thing that heats the air being blown around through the vents.
Boiler would be to heat water/steam for radiant heat.
I am wondering what other appliances would be covered. What about electrical work or plumbing? Even if you don't do the work yourself, knowing a bit about what's involved can help avoid getting ripped off.
I'm regularly shocked by people who are incapable of doing basic home repairs.
Knowing how to wire a plug or change a fuse is apparently a vanishing skill. Even calling it a skill feels odd, its barely any harder than Lego.
You dont have to clean lint traps at the laundromat. I wonder if this was her first in-house one
Maybe. She grew up on a small farm outside town but I'm guessing she must have got out of chores a lot. She was moving to get married to another guy I knew which lasted for 8 months, but at least she carried the knowledge on how to use a dryer with her.
small farm outside town
Sounds like her only was with clotheslines. Having a dryer must have been absolutely glorious, at least at first.
I know her parents had a washer and dryer, I assume she wasn't allowed near them I guess. Clotheslines are very rarely used up here because we get a lot of snow.
I've never had a dryer so only ever heard about lint traps from random internet stuff.
If I'm around, I clean it mid-load. Makes a huge difference on every model I've ever had.
My sister in law refuses to clean the dryer filter, and also wants to be the one in charge of the laundry for her and her husband. Whenever I do a load of my clothes, I clean the filter and it's at least 10 layers of fire hazard
My SO and I argue over who gets to clean the lint trap. We love it.
Hey, theyre clearly made for eachother. Good for them tbh.
What is her reasoning?
Seasoning
If this is what her lint trap looks like, I can't imagine what the dryer vent looks like.
Btw, get your dryer vents cleaned out! Annually is ideal, but absolutely no more than every 3 years. A blocked dryer vent is a huge fire hazard.
Two houses on my street have burned down within the past two years for this exact reason. It happens more frequently than I think people realize.
Used to be it was shit wiring or something. Now it's mostly stuff like this that burns down most houses now a days. Better safety and wiring standards over the decades has helped.
Don't ever run washers or dryers or dishwashers when not at home.
That's not warranted for the very very unlikely chance of that happening vs the impact that would have on getting chores done. Just keep your appliances well maintained and in good condition and then use them whenever it's convenient
What is a dryer vent even for? Do dryers in North America burn gas, is it the exhaust?
The vent is for the moisture-laden warm air that results from forcing hot air into it. Possible than vented dryers are less common in your region if you are not familiar? They are an incredibly simple design, and thus very cheap to make, but are significantly less energy efficient than modern condenser or heat-pump dryers.
Yeah looks like only heat pump driers are even allowed to be sold in the last 14 years here. But even before that, my family never had one that vented outside (Switzerland).
There are gas burning dryers, but I've only ever personally seen or used electric ones (resistive heaters), it's there to vent the damp air outside. I'd personally like a heatpump dryer, as far as I know they don't need any venting.
Heat pump dryers have a huge drawback though: the heat exchanger is woven through the condenser. So you cannot remove the condenser from the system. The lint which is not in the trap thus builds up in the condenser over time. Bad enough, but that's also where the moisture goes. So after several years it will start to reek, and your laundry will start to reek, as the reheated air goes through there.
So, long story short, cleaning that mess: you're going to have a bad time, as you can't just remove the unit and cleanse it under running water. I would rather buy just a condenser dryer (or check up whether heat pump dryers became better, our model is 7 years old now, maybe they're better nowadays).
You just need to brush it out about once a year. Might need to partially take it apart depending on the model.
Looks like that in my machine
There is a brush that came with it and the manual said the same, but after 5 years of family use, that stuff was not only in the front anymore. I had to use a pressure washer and some chlorine based detergent to get rid of everything (if I knew about an ozone generator back then I might've tried that against the odor).
YMMV. If you're using it e.g. in a 2-person household you might never have that issue during the whole expected lifetime, but with our usage and especially all that babystuff, that happened, and I hated it 😅.
Mine is a different style of condenser. For that, I'd probably brush it out a lot more often.
Oh yeah that's unpleasant, good to know.
I just hang my clothes outside, inside if its raining and use a dehumidifier if necessary.
This is what my clothes would look like half the year if I dried them outside.
I’d personally like a heatpump dryer, as far as I know they don’t need any venting.
Ah, that might be it. Apparently only heatpump units can be sold here in Switzerland since 2012.
Mine froze shut, or at least small enough that the dryer stopped drying two winters ago. Luckily it was near the end of the season so I just used the laundromat a few times then it warmed up and thawed.
Then I procrastinated getting it cleaned and the same thing happened last winter. This time, I bought some extra venting tube and a plastic box that you plug one side in to your dryer and the other side in to the wall vent, and it has a switch and a screen that lets you pick between venting inside or outside. Heat and humidity are in demand during the winter, so it was a win/win. My clothes came out dryer and faster than ever, plus the heat and humidity were appreciated.
I got the duct cleaned this year.
As long as you're not using a gas dryer.
Ah yeah, didn't even realize that one of those would vent the same way as the humid air. But no, I don't have a gas dryer.
Ok good lol. Don't want you slowly killing yourself.
Yeah, would have quit cigarettes for nothing.
Congrats on quitting! That's so freaking hard to do.
It's not that hard, I've quit smoking many times!
Though joking aside, for some reason this last time it was actually easy. Other times I'd be tempted to bum a smoke at social gatherings, which would lead to me feeling embarrassed about that and getting my own pack for a gathering, which then would turn into "better have them before they go stale and not waste them" and then the nicotine addiction would be back and I'd get another pack.
But this time, there wasn't even much temptation to have social smokes. Probably helped that I made the decision in early 2020 when health was a popular topic for some portion of the population. I did have one social smoke since then, more out of curiosity than a craving, and it was back to tasting like an ashtray. Didn't even finish it because I got tired of it before it was done.
It's nice to be actually done with them instead of just stopping because I probably should even though I didn't want to.
I'm fortunate that ours runs into the attic. I check it every year, but it's always spotless
Mine runs into the basement. I should check it.
Yeah I had to seal mine. Extra important if it's a gas dryer.
I am that person who gets after my friends if they don't clean out the lint from their dryer every load of laundry.
I may be a pain in the ass, but my friends aren't gonna burn alive if I can help it!
I'm the kind of person who would give a fire extinguisher as a housewarming gift.
I've always just trusted my friends know to do that. Maybe not always warranted, but these days it certainly is
I used to live for the satisfaction of pulling thicc lint sheets out of the filter every time I used the shared dryer in my student house
There's gotta be a modern fairy tale about a witch who uses that to make a magic shirt or homunculi or something.
You're a good friend, people are surprisingly clueless about shit like this and the risk is substantial. Most people don't care about their friends that much. You should be proud of who you are, you're a good one.
That's really sweet of you to say, thank you :3
And where are those located on the heat pump? Asking for a friend.
Just before the inside air handler. The big box, usually in the basement, the one that makes noise when the blower kicks in.
Or alternatively on big intake vents throughout the house
Got an air to water system so there really isn't much cleaning to worry about at all. Other than occasionally cleaning the cat hair from the blanket we put on it to make it more comfortable for him.
Sweet thank you so much!
I for one am amazed that you could create an entire clothing item from all that lint, if it was connected.
I could use it to start my fireplace for like a year imo, in tiny pieces
You could probably felt it into something.
Is that a dead mouse?
I checked mine after a year, there was barely anything there, mostly just water. Did i do it wrong or is that normal?
.... Water?
Are you sure you checled the lint trap? That should be purely dry lint, not any water.
Not checling/cleaning it (every load) is a pretty severe fire hazard.
I think I see what's going on here.
If you have a combo washer/dryer (common at least where I am in Europe), the lint trap is wet and it uses water to rinse it towards a collection point. I use a paper towel to pull it out each load.
~~Stærk~~ Stark contrast to separate washer/dryer which will have a dry lint trap in the dryer.
Stærk
ash guy?
Lol freaking autocorrect 🙃
How reliable are those combo ones?
In general, I guess I don't know, but ours is fine. The drying is weak shit in comparison and I miss our giant American dryer
Yea I was talking about my washing machine
If those have a lint trap I am in some serious trouble.
Not a lint trap per se, but:
Boy, don't see anything like that on mine. Ill have to look at the manual.
Are you talking about the lint trap in your washer? Those don't really fill up with lint but can catch like coins and stuff (and one time a sock)
The ones in the dryer fill up enough to impede airflow after like 2-3 loads of laundry
Oh yea just the washer, I dont have a dryer and now looking at that original post that massive amount of lint is definitely from a dryer
What did you check exactly? The exhaust hose, or the trap on your drier that pulls out?
If there is water in your hose you are not removing the air fast enough to avoid condensation. If there is no lint it might be due to pressure drop (friction loss) because of duct length or other blockage.
I'm assuming if your clothes are getting dry it's probably not a blockage or total failure of the fan but that the fan isn't running long enough to extract the last bit of humid air all the way back (either straight up or not long enough to overcome friction losses in the hose).
This, but unironically. "All/Top 6 hours" is currently 50% Patrick Stewart as I write this and it isn't enough.
Why do people loudly and proudly complain that they don't understand the nature of how things work?
Attention/
Fair point lol
Why do you all have dryers tho? Seems a huge hassle to keep track of to avoid not burning down your shit. Doesn't it also reduce the lifetime of clothing?
I just throw my laundry vaguely on a drying rack and be done with it. Works just fine
Most dryers have an easily removable filter just under the door that you clean after every use. No hassle at all as long as you know it's there.
There are six people living in my house. I would need to build out another room just to make hanging space for everyone's wet clothes on laundry day. And in winter I would need an HVAC system to manage the moisture in the air and avoid growing mold on the walls.
Heat pump or dehumidifier and a lot of hanging space, spacing out laundry loads. Works fine. Yes it takes space.
HVAC is still less of a fire risk than a dryer though.
Both are a massive risk if not maintained regularly. One literally uses a live flame vs a heat element, and you want to say the latter is a higher risk?
Modern HVAC systems also use hearing elements or heat pumps. But a live flame is not that dangerous if it has no chance of falling over and it's kept in a dust free environment. At least in my country most does are caused by 1) open hearth fires 2) malfunctioning electrical appliances, with dryers being the most common appliance to cause a fire
No they don’t, to heat a whole house with electricity is incredibly inefficient. And a heat pump in -30 isn’t gonna work that well.
Not if you use an air-source heat pump, but there's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_source_heat_pump and electricity from renewable sources like wind turbines are used more and more in many parts of the world. Over here new houses don't use gas anymore, just electricity. Though temperatures usually don't reach -30 here.
Scale and location. Those don’t work everywhere.
Gas will always be needed, only way to heat at night, and what about during winter when there only 6 hours of sunlight?
Your link also talks about why geothermal isn’t good for single homes, it’s incredibly inefficient to drill thousands of holes for one community. There’s a host of other issues too.
lol my dryer uses flame
Not sure why the downvote—it’s a natural gas clothes dryer…
I have one because I live in the Pacific northwest rainforest and we get a lot of rain here. Plus, I really hate how humid the house gets if you line dry indoors. I guess it's much more heavily used in the us.
Seems like more work than shoving my clothes in a dryer and spending 2 seconds taking lint off a grate. I have adhd and there's a lot of household tasks I have trouble keeping track of, that's not one of them.
That works depending on the climate where you live and the amount of laundry your household produces. Usually it's beter to dry laundry outside, but in climates where it can rain a lot that may not be an option in every season.
Agreed. There are also climates where it snows a large portion the year. Winter would get awfully stinky if I couldn't handle all my laundry indoors.
The drying rack is way better for your clothes, but I live in western Washington so the dryer is pretty necessary for about half the year.
Dehumidifiers exist if high humidity is the problem.
I compromise and rack-dry my nicer t-shirts, but machine-dry everything else.
Clothes go from loud rolling box A to loud rolling box B and are done before loud rolling box A is finished with the next load.
