Damage Around the House

Let's start with the good stuff.  Unlike many people who live along the Winooski River, as well as some other rivers in other areas, our home did not suffer from any flooding.  Our home is still intact, standing and in relatively good condition so that is very good news. 

Sheila is working from home for the foreseeable future but we expected that to happen.  Montpelier was devastated due to catastrophic flooding.  Sheila's office building fared relatively well through the flooding but, since the entire downtown area is in recovery mode, they don't need people driving in and parking in areas that are in full recovery mode.  They would only get in the way.  Consequently, Sheila will continue to work from home for the foreseeable future.  

On a sidenote, we've also heard of a few buildings in downtown Montpelier being condemned.  This will make the recovery significantly more difficult and more prolonged.  

We had a couple of power outages through these storms over the past week.  Unfortunately, our four month old refrigerator stopped making ice after the longest power outage.  Long story short...  I disassembled the entire icemaker...  cleaned up what I could (frost/ice buildup)...  reassembled everything...  reset the icemaker...  it is now making ice but it seems to be taking far longer to make ice.  I'm not sure what is wrong or if maybe something in the freezer/icemaker was damaged due to the power outage.  Well...  technically, damage would have occurred due to a brownout or surge associated with the power outage.  So, after hours of work, we're keeping on a close on the new refrigerator.  

At the same time, on the same day, we noticed that our dryer is making all of our clothes stink like a dead animal now.  Finding mouse nests occasionally is pretty typical in rural areas so we didn't think this was so unusual.  We would just need to find the next and remove it.  What started as a small search for a small nest has turned into a major project.  

I started with checking our dryer vent hose to the exterior of the house.  If we had a mouse nest in the dryer somewhere, they had to enter through the dryer vent outside.  As I was attempting to unscrew the dryer vent from the exterior wall of the house, the vent crumbled in my hands.  I now needed a new dryer vent and the project is getting larger.

I pulled off all the pieces of the dryer vent and started cleaning up the exterior wall of the house finding a bunch of rotted, damp wood.  After all the rain we've had the past month, this was not much of a surprise.  The project just get even bigger though because I would need to do something with all this rotted wood before I could screw the new dryer vent into this wall.  At the moment, I have no good wood to mount the new dryer vent.  

We have an extra long hose for our shop vac that we use to clean our heating ducts with before each heating season so I used this hose in the dryer vent to see if I a mouse nest would stick to the end of the vacuum hose.  I removed some lint but there were no signs of a mouse nest.  

I pulled the dryer out from the wall so I can gain access to the dryer vent from this end too.  I did the same with the long shop vac hose...  I got some lint but no mouse nest.  I guess this is good news but I still couldn't find a source of the nasty dead animal smell.  

Now I turned my attention to the inside of the dryer.  I did some disassembly of the dryer...  no nests.  Actually, the interior of our dryer looked clean with absolutely no signs of any dust, dirt, mouse poop, or even lint.  The interior from the back side and top side was in like new condition.  

We cleaned the inside of the drum.  We cleaned the beginning of the vent where the lint trap is located.  We cleaned the lint trap.  Even after all of this, we're still getting a smell like the smell of a dead animal.  

Then, I noticed that there were two small moldy spots on the lint trap.  Hmmmm...  if mold is here, then the remaining lint stuck to the walls of the dryer vent hose must be moldy too!  And, the closer we get to the exterior of the house where all the rain and moisture is moistening all the lint stuck to the walls of the dryer vent hose, the more mold we'll probably find.  So, I need to find a way to clean the whole inside of that dryer vent hose.  This is likely the primary source of the nasty dead animal smell!

I ended up ordering a dryer vent hose brush cleaning kit from Amazon.  It is 30 feet long and attaches to a drill.  This will allow me to clean the whole inside of our dryer vent hose.  This should get rid of that smell.  

In the meantime, now I need to fix all that rotted wood around the dryer vent on the exterior wall of the house.  Unfortunately, this is also the area (within a foot or two) where we have outlets for our backyard.  So, I need to pull off all the electrical too to replace the rotted wood.  This has become a big project.

And, we are still getting rain showers so I'll need to figure out how to get all of this accomplished in the coming days between rain showers.  All the parts I ordered won't be here until Thursday so I do have a bit of time.  Since Sheila is working from home, I can't turn off the electricity either until after work hours so I need to accomplish most of the work between rain showers and after work hours...  and when my health allows.  Fun.