April 2008 - The Ghost in the Gas Dryer

If you live in rural West Virginia, most of the time you don't think twice about having natural gas appliances, or better yet, free gas rights on your property. It's just a way of life here. You burn gas in your furnace, your dryer, your cook stove, your hot water heater, and so on. You go to bed at night and you don't lose sleep over it.

But if you're new to the idea like me, gas makes you uneasy. There are a lot of opportunities for problems - from leaking lines to malfunctioning furnaces. And, under a rare set of circumstances, gas can quickly become fatal. It happened to a good friend of ours. His son was killed instantly when his kitchen literally blew off the side of the house (it was later thought to be a leak that ignited when he lit a cigarette). And, as usual, my pessimistic sense says if it's going to happen, it will happen to me.

As luck would have it, there was free gas on the property we bought. Richard was so excited. Free energy! According to him, we had to convert everything - so he sent me on a gas-appliance buying mission. I found good deals on a cook stove and a water heater. Both were used items, so I was very cautious about the whole situation. In North Carolina, energy (electric) is made using nuclear reactors, coal-fired steam plants, or with water (hence the many man-made lakes in the area). Gas was not common, and very expensive at that. Like everyone else, we used electric for most of our energy needs, and I didn't lose any sleep over it.

That was about to change. If keeping warm meant a lurking element of danger, I wasn't sure if it was better to potentially become a fried shish kabob (from an electrical fire) or a petrified dust cloud (from a gas explosion). It didn't help that Richard was gone a week or so at a time. I was always paranoid that I could "smell something." And since my sinuses were routinely congested, I'm not sure I could have smelled something anyway. So, with great hesitation, I agreed to all of the gas appliances, as well as gas heating stoves.

We took a lot of precautions including buying carbon monoxide protectors and always leaving a window or two cracked open a bit. Richard even replaced some of the older gas fittings around the place. I still was nervous though. If the snakes weren't enough to keep me up at night, now I had to worry about gas leaks, too. I wasn't sure the cost savings were worth the sleepless nights, but I hoped I would eventually get used to it.

Things went along without incident until the clothes dryer arrived. We had gotten a good deal on it at just $25 dollars, even though it looked brand new. It came from a store in North Carolina (used gas appliances are hard to sell there so they're cheap). I had never owned a gas dryer before, so I didn't really know how it worked. Richard looked it over and went to work installing it.

After about an hour, he announced it was ready to use. We put some clothes in and turned it on. Everything seemed to operate OK, but the clothes never really got dry. It would routinely take over 90 minutes or so to "almost" dry a load. That didn't seem right. Maybe that's why we only paid $25, I thought. Now I was really worried. Did it have something to do with the gas? Was it burning properly? Was there a leak?

On top of that, I was starting to think I was hearing things. Even after the dryer finished its timed cycle, it would seem to start up out of the blue without anyone near it. Every few minutes or so, the dryer would make a beep and sound like it was turning, but then before I could get to it, it would shut off again. I wasn't sure if I'd had too much medicine, or if I was just paranoid, or if there was a "dryer poltergeist" inside somewhere. I would think I heard it kick on again - and again, but then it would quit before I got there. This went on for a couple of days and about drove me mad. Richard told me to quit looking for problems.

I told Richard he couldn't leave me there another week with a gas dryer that didn't actually dry clothes and had a poltergeist in it. So, he went back to investigate again. He pulled the front panel off and exposed the working elements so he could see if everything functioned properly.

He went back outside under the house to check the electric and vents and I stayed behind in the kitchen to wash dishes. I could glance at the dryer in the distance. He yelled from outside and told me to start it up. I went in and set the timer and hit on. It started up just fine.

I peeked in at it every couple of minutes and could see the drum turning. All at once, I heard this tremendous "whoosh" sound. I turned around to see what looked like fire burning completely around the bottom of the drum. I knew it was going to blow at any minute. I screamed at the top of my lungs for everyone to get out!

Richard was outside near the dryer wall, possibly under the house. I raced outside mumbling and screaming at the same time to warn him. I had a feeling this natural gas was going to kill me somehow and I guessed this was going to be the day.

"The dryer is on fire," I yelled. "It's going to explode. Grab the cat. I told you this gas was a bad idea!" (I'm not sure why I was so worried about that cat - I've never really been too fond of it.)

He came around the house in a hurry, white as a sheet. Against my better judgment, he ran inside with a bucket of water. I stayed outside with the kids, bracing for the big "kaboom." A few seconds later he came back with a nasty look on his face.

"How many years did you go to college?" he asked, shaking his head.

"Enough to know fire when I see it," I snapped back, not quite sure yet what he was making fun of.

"Well, you need to get your money back," he torted. I wasn't amused.

"Did you put the fire out?" I asked.

"Yeah, I just turned the dryer off," he snapped.

Turns out, the so-called fire

was actually the ignition of the thermostat turning the gas on. I didn't realize that turning the dryer knob to "on" was only the electric running the drum. The loud "swoosh" happened when the gas kicked on to apply the heat. I could see it all out in the open because he had the front cover off and had all the inner workings exposed. He gave me a "how the gas dryer works" lesson and put the cover back on. I understood how it worked, but it still seemed a little risky to me.

Later, I found out what the "poltergeist" was, too. Apparently, this dryer has a function called Wrinkle Guard built into the cycle. Basically, after the time is up, the drum will spin a couple of times every 5 minutes or so to keep the clothes from getting wrinkled in one position. Hence, the explanation of why it turned itself on every once in a while, but would shut off by the time I got in there.

And, the reason the clothes weren't drying properly had nothing to do with the gas, but was because the washing machine wasn't spinning out properly and leaving the clothes too wet. We fixed that problem by putting each through the spin cycle a second time.

I'm still a little nervous about the gas in the house. I have a habit of checking everything each morning and again at night. I still find myself occasionally drawing a deep breath to see if I "smell anything." And I can't sleep unless a couple of windows are cracked open a bit. But I guess the mountain therapy in this situation is being able to write a check for a mere $30 each month rather than the hefty electric bills we were used to for over 20 years.