Switching to a Heat Pump Clothes Dryer

As part of our on-going electrification efforts, we replaced our natural-gas powered clothes dryer with an electrically powered heat-pump clothes dryer. This also entailed the final bit of new flooring installation, as I only wanted to move these appliances once.

First up was removing the washer and dryer, and removing and capping-off the natural gas line that went to the dryer:

That was followed by removing the old linoleum and plywood:

Then came laying down the last bit of LVP and patching the vent hole:

Here's what happened on the outside of the house:

And here's the final product:

We gave away the old natural gas dryer, so it can give more years of service rather than taking up space in a landfill.

The dryer is a Whirlpool WHD560CHW ventless heat pump clothes dryer, with a 7.4 cubic foot capacity, which pretty much matches the capacity of our washer and previous dryer. So far it does seem to take about 25% longer to dry, but I don't think I would have noticed if I hadn't been timing things.

Now we just have to replace our natural gas water heater with an electric model, and we will be able to have our natural gas meter disconnected!

Basement Smart Switches

This is kinda a place-holder post. There is a lot more work that went into these switches, but I only have time for a quick write up:

I put the basement lights on smart switches, which involve reworking the existing wiring a bit:

I also got a dumb motion-sensing switch in the laundry room.

It's really nice to walk into the laundry room with a full load of clothes and just have the light turn on automatically, without having to fumble for the switch. The light turns on almost as soon as something (including the door itself, which opens into the laundry room) breaks the plane of the doorway.

This switch is somewhat remarkable, as it does not require a neutral wire. Apparently Lutron holds a patent on the technology. It will be really nice for DIY home automation smart switches when that patent expires.

Laundry Room, Completed

I finally finished up the laundry room this weekend, two months after I painted it.

I installed an additional shelf and replaced the saggy, wooden clothes rod with a heavy-duty metal one, and I hung a new set of blinds and curtains.

It's nice to have some additional storage in this room, and the countertop is finally clear again!

New Dryer

We bought a new clothes dryer. It runs on natural gas.

The old dryer was electric. So why does the new one run on natural gas?

One of our long-term goals as a family is to have an electric car that charges from our solar panels (enabled by net-metering). But when we sized our solar panel system, the utility only let us install a system big enough to cover our current electricity consumption.

Part of the plan to fit an electric car into our existing electricity budget was to switch from an electric to a gas dryer. Natural gas is an extremely economical heating source in the US, and with the advances in hydraulically fracturing gas-bearing shale reservoirs, the price of natural gas in the US is going to stay very low for several decades.

So switching over to a natural gas dryer has been part of the plan for a while now, and me breaking the old dryer just pushed forward the schedule a couple of years.

(We don't have any plans to update the clothes washer for a while - it's a low-efficiency model, but those have a much better track record for actually cleaning cloth diapers than the high-efficiency models do).

Sunday evening we made a family trip to our local Sears Outlet, and purchased a nice Kenmore gas dryer for 45% off list price due to some scuffing.

Because of all the snow on the ground, it wasn't until wednesday that the plumbers were able to come out and install the new gas line for us.

It's the yellow flex line. The other two lines go to our water heater and furnace.

Everything is working nicely now!

(I put the old, broken dryer on the free section of craigslist, and had multiple people offer to come pick it up Monday evening. It was surprisingly easy to get rid of it.)

Fixing the Dryer

Our clothes dryer has been making a lot of noise while running lately. I took off the cover today to figure out what exactly the problem was, and whether I could fix it easily.

It turns out the front "slide bearings" had been almost entirely worn away. Here's a photo of the new bearings on the left, and the remains of the old bearings on the right.

I replaced the bearings, cleaned out a crap-load of lint, and in the process discovered that several other plastic pieces look like they're about to fail, as well. It'll cost around $100 to buy replacements online. Sigh.

But wait! Once I verified that this took care of the squealing noise, I put the dryer's frame back together. In the process, I had to adjust the dashboard a little. There was a spark. The dryer no longer turned on. Facepalm.

I checked the circuit breaker and all the electrical connections. Heck, I even did a conductivity test on every wire. I have no idea what could have caused a short. Everything checked out. Only explanation is that some internal component got fried. Based on the location of the spark, the most likely component to be "burnt out" is the timer, which would cost at least $100 to replace.

So I've got $100 worth of components ready to fail in the near future, and a $100 component to replace just in hopes of getting it running again. $200 (not to mention the $36 sunk cost of replacing the bearings) just to keep an old dryer around for a few more years.

I think it's time for a new dryer. Brianna is actually pretty pleased with the idea of getting a new appliance.

Laundry Room, Continued

I painted the walls green on Saturday. Taping was a pain in the butt in a room this small. Kept bumping into the washer and dryer, and it seems there was a new corner every three feet. Oh well.

I also put fresh caulking around the entire perimeter of the floor. The old stuff was completely rotted away, and having a modicum of water-proofing seemed like a good idea for this room.

I really wanted to replace the light switch with a motion-sensing switch, but there's no neutral wire at the switch currently, and I had enough on my schedule this weekend that I didn't want to fish a new wire. I think it might be possible to do in the future, though.

I also redid the shelves. All of them are anchored to studs now, not just hanging off the drywall:

I still need to rehang the clothes rod, install a window blind, and touch up some paint. And I have some leftover crown molding from the kitchen that should be just enough to finish off the cabinets in this room, which I didn't get around to this weekend. But I think everything looks pretty decent, and it was all put back together and operational before Brianna got home. I'm going to mark it down as a success.

Finally getting around to the Laundry Room

Well, Brianna and Link are going to be in Washington this weekend for my sister's baby shower. Since I have the house to myself, I'm going to invite all my guy friends over and have a debauched party with lots of booze and music and HAHAHAHA, no. I'm going to paint the laundry room.

The laundry room is the last significant room in the entire house that hasn't been repainted or at least patched and touched up (there are two closets that are still in their "pre-Medema" state). There are quite a few holes in the drywall, and the shelves above the countertop are drooping under their own weight. Here are the "Before" pictures:

And here's under countertop. That's not dirt. That's after I scrubbed at it for five minutes. It's just that badly stained.

And here's some intermediary pictures:

I got the ceiling painted:

And the trim and window sill:

And I took the shelves down. Blasted things were only anchored in drywall - no wonder they were drooping.

And that's as far as I got on a Friday night. Tomorrow I paint the walls green.

Sputnik Lamp Above Piano

Brianna and Link gave me a day to myself today! Rather than catch up on sleep, or reading, or anything like that, I opted to do some electrical work.

We have been meaning to put a light in above the piano for awhile now:

There is an outlet at the base of that wall, behind the piano. The opposite side of that wall is the laundry room.

Inside the laundry room, I cut an exploratory hole to see what I was dealing with:

Turns out there were already wires back there (I left them alone). I cut another hole just above the counter, where I would install a switch for the new light, and add an outlet - for some reason there is only one outlet in the entire laundry room, behind the washer and dryer. This project was a great opportunity to add an outlet on the opposite wall. Who knows? Someday we may even use that outlet to iron our clothes.

I ran a wire up from the outlet on the piano-side of the wall, installed the switch and outlet, and buttoned everything up:

Regrettably, I installed the switch upside-down. Oops. I don't expect to use the switch much, so I left it as-is for now - I was tired for turning the circuit breaker on and off.

And here's the new light!

The bulb is a color-changing LED. It came with a little remote control, which will be the primary method of turning the light on and off. I installed the switch mainly in case of an emergency.

Laundry Room Cabinet Hardware

I had a few handles left over from the kitchen cabinets, so I installed them on the cabinets in the laundry room.

I also raised the cabinet door second-from-the-left by a quarter inch. Doesn't look like it's falling apart, now.

Another Trash Day Find

I was walking during my lunch break, and passed this great wicker shelving unit next to a dumpster. I got my car, came back and picked it up.

It was somewhat "broken" when I found it, but a little work with an allen wrench (literally less than 5 minutes) and it was perfectly usable!

I ain't proud. I'd furnish the whole house with freebies if I could.

It's hanging out underneath the counter in the laundry room for now. If it's not useful there, we'll find another place for it.

Lots of Little Things

Brianna wanted a second shower curtain so the curtains in the first guest bedroom could be parted down the middle. The first one came from the "last chance" bin - they had been discontinued and were being cleared out. I stopped by IKEA on the way home from work, and found one last shower curtain in the bin. I grabbed it and ran. (well, actually I walked to the as-is section).

I picked up a small bedside lamp for $5 in the as-is section, and headed home. The filing cabinet from the garage sale this weekend is going to pull double duty as a bedside table in the guest bedroom for now, and the lamp completed the set.

Once I got home, I finally installed the last light switch I had planned to do the weekend before last:

The switch on the left controls the ceiling fan and light in the family room off the kitchen. So I'm done with electrical work for a while (phew! I was getting tired of shocks!)

I had picked up another ceiling lamp last week, to replace the one in the laundry room. I took care of that this evening as well. Even in the laundry room, the existing light fixture was grody and the interior insulation was stained black and brown with tobacco smoke. Now that this one is replaced, I think I only have one more light fixture in the basement to replace.

And I wasn't done yet! I put some wood filler in (and on) nail holes in the trim around the kitchen - I'll sand it down tomorrow:

Finally, once the upstairs had cooled off in the evening, I finished assembling the new bed frame. Brianna strung up the curtains, and I brought up another garage-sale find: a gliding rocking chair and ottoman:

Together, they certainly seem to fill up that room. And eventually we'll get a mattress on that bed frame and dig out some appropriately sized sheets.

Non-Painting Day

Didn't get much done around the house today.

Stopped by Goodwill and picked up a few button-down shirts that were a little lighter-weight and had sleeves long enough for my arms, then got a haircut that was nearly a month over-due.

Swung by IKEA as-is section on the way home from work. I had found a couple of cabinet pulls of the style Brianna wants in the kitchen yesterday, and was hoping to repeat my luck. I didn't find any new cabinet hardware, but I did find a combination microwave and exhaust fan marked down 40% because it didn't have its original box (it was still in its original plastic, though). It was relatively tempting, because Brianna has been wanting a vent hood over the stove since we bought the house, and I finally have that area empty and painted. The IKEA microwave was still $150 though, and I did not want to spend that much money right now, especially without researching this particular model. When I got home, I was glad I held off: the microwave was the right width for our cabinets, but would have jutted out in the other dimensions by a couple of inches. That money will live to fight another day.

I also had a package waiting for me when I got home: a new lint filter for the dryer. Man, they make you pay through the nose for replacement parts for appliances: Amazon wanted $30 for a bit of plastic and metal - I took a risk and got this one from a less reputable distributer for $22.

No sign of any mice in the garage, and the traps are un-sprung, which gives me hope that Bob nipped that problem in the bud.

Kitchen is Unpacked!

Brianna's sisters spent the night and helped us unpack the kitchen!

Today was mostly spent cleaning and organizing, though Brianna did get some priming done in the Master Suite.

I'm really bad at taking "before" pictures, but here is an "after" picture of some shelves in the laundry room that were sloped at 10 to 15 degrees before I tightened them up.