30 january

The morning has been productive. By 9:30, I had my clothes washed and put away. The towels will be done by noon! You may be wondering why I am a bit too exciting about doing laundry. Well, after 8 months, the dryer is finally fixed!



The problem started last April. After a week of the clothes taking forever and a day and still not being completely dry, I called a repairman. He came out and said, "Oh, it's a Maytag. Oh, it's gas." That did not sound good.



After a bit, he decided it was the vent full of lint. He climbed up on the roof and pulled a couple of handfuls of lint from the vent and called it good. I paid him $75 and he left. My dryer still didn't work. I thought I might need a professional clean the vent and after a week placed a call. This visit took a while and cost $89. The dryer still didn't work.



When I made the first call, I was dismayed to find my appliance repairman was no longer in business. He had been out a couple of times. He did good work and his prices seemed fair. I used to belong to Angie's List but stopped because I didn't want to spend the money. I checked around and called the first repair service. I should have called back after he failed to fix the dryer. But I had little confidence in their ability. I learned to do smaller loads that would still take 2 hours and leave the clothes damp.



My dad arrived in November. I had intended on calling before he arrived but something always ate up any extra money I had. (That's a subject for another post.) Dad did not like the dryer not working. He offered to pay for the repair and still I didn't call. (Did you know that I hate making phone calls? And I hate asking for help. Doomed from the start.)



Right after my birthday I called. The nice repairman Scott came out. My dad hovered while Scott checked things out. My suspiscion was that it was the coils. The dryer would heat but not stay hot. Scott declared that to be the problem. I felt chuffed.



But Scott didn't have the part and had to order it. It would be another week.



Dad only washed what he had to wash. I continued to do my half loads and fold damp clothes. I told myself it was good because dryer clothes too much leads to the fibers breaking down. Right.



Scott came back last Friday and replaced the coils. It didn't work. He concluded it was the gas valve and another part would need to be ordered. We talked about repair versus replacent. Replacement makes more financial sense but I hated the idea of throwing away an appliance if it could be repaired. I do think about the planet now and again.



Would it be another week? Scott would ask for rush delivery. One part arrived in time, the other did not. We had to wait until Friday.



Scott arrived after 1 pm yesterday. He had said this was only the second valve he has replaced in over 10 years of repair work. And it happens to be the most expensive part. He fixed it and it works. When it was all said and done, they owe us money. What? See, you pay $129 for the initial service call and all labor and parts. Each time they had to order a part, we had to pay for it. Since he didn't need to replace the coils and the sensor, we got refunded for those costs. The total was $353.98 to fix this 8 year old dryer. But that is about half of what a new dryer would cost. And we saved the land fill one more dryer for a while.



So now the clothes are once again dryer faster than it takes the clothes to wash. Front loaders do take longer cycles since they use less water. And it's odd to fold dry stiff towels once more. I did lower the dryer temp back to low and moved the sensor to just below "really dry" to avoid static cling. I stopped using dryer sheets about a year ago.



I made another batch of Chocolate Sugar Cookies. I had to redeem myself and I did. I also added up the calories...



And found that one cookie is 120 calories. Oops.