Go climb a roof.

[quasigeostrophy]

I keep telling soaring_phoenix that one of these days, I'm going to put some eyebolts in the second floor eaves along the side of our house where the dryer vent emerges.



Several years ago, we came home in the middle of the day after running errands, on a day when Toni was also doing laundry, and I went upstairs to restart the dryer for her. I heard a light tapping and scraping behind the dryer, as if the noise was coming from the vent hose. I pulled the dryer away from the wall and a small songbird (don't remember what species) hopped out. Enlisting Toni's aid, we closed the laundry room door and spent the next while trying to catch the bird under a blanket. The poor thing was panic-stricken and went crazy in the confines of our small laundry room. Once we finally caught it, I released it out the front door (where it promptly headed for the dryer vent of the house in front of ours, across the common drive).

Concerned that birds were going to be a recurring problem, I asked my father to cut some chicken wire and bend it into a screen, which he stuck in the dryer vent opening outside. To date, it has successfully kept any more birds from trying to nest in the vent hose. However, the screen also acts as its own lint filter. Periodically (usually noticeable when the dryer begins to behave less efficiently), I need to go up on the garage roof and clean the lint from the screen.

I don't mind heights. I've been to rock-climbing gyms and even rappelling in the Hoosier National Forest. What bothers me is lack of stability (or at least feeling like I'm not stable), and the 45-degree angle of the garage roof is not exactly confidence-instilling. We usually put a ladder against the gutter along the side of the garage, Toni holds the ladder, I climb to that roof, and then I scoot up the roof to the second floor wall where I can reach the dryer vent to clean it. We have a ladder tall enough to reach, but it won't help avoid that roof section, given where the dryer vent is. I would love to put in some eyebolts and run a line up so that I can hook in with a climbing/rappelling harness. :-)

Going up the roof section isn't even the worst part - it's the shimmying back down to the top of the ladder.

Comments

[lightning-rose.livejournal.com]

Re-route the dryer vent?

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

It's a tempting thought. The vent (in the photo) that comes out the back of the garage is from the downstairs half-bath. I'd switch them if I thought there was enough exhaust power from that bathroom fan to reach the second floor. I'm not sure I want to make new holes in the house at this point in time.

[gasslight.livejournal.com]

Put the eyebolts. And then next time you clean it, get someone to take pictures - because that would be funny.