The Sweetest Taboo

Will your mouth still remember the taste of my love? Ed Sheeran.

Don't know exactly when and why drying clothes outside is taboo in the US. It's a cultural thing.

They instead use these electric tumble drier powered by electricity. 6% of total household electricity usage is not that much some would say. Between 100 and 150 dollars a year if you run your drier one hour a day every day for a whole year.

But there's more to it.

When drying using an electric resistance, that resistance heats up to more than you imagine. Though the air is heated to no more than 200 F, in order to do that the heating elements heat much more. In fact, to glowing red temperature. At that temperature the resistance pretty much like those in old furnaces in central ACs in most American homes, looses some of its metal through evaporation, in time getting thinner and needed to be replaced. Which means evaporated heavy metals like nickel and chrome get into your clothes and homes.

Also any tiny piece of dust from inside your home that gets in there burns. And in between these extremes, there's a temperature gradient that has areas where the bacteria remaining from dust gets mutated into weirder strains together with bacteria from laundry heated up by the air that passed through the heating elements that are also selected to most resistant strains by that heat

And the ancient US old top load washers besides using up to 50 gallons (200 liters), regularly less (150 liters) of water per load to wash 5-10 pounds (up to 5 kg of dry laundry), they also don't wash very well (while making the annoying rhythmic sound). Which means that anybody who accidentally breathes "air" that comes out of that drier gets contaminated. It also depends on the temperature of the water used during washing, the amount of detergent and the cycle type.

In our building as per some weird modifications, the vents are at the basement line and are also leaking in the basement. He did laundry all day yesterday starting before midnight Thursday night. After not doing it for months, except once or twice. And i got really really sick in the evening, especially after tasting a few grapes. Infections in the top of my mouth first lead to a headache (from infection propagating to your sinuses), and after that you get pains in my stomach and pancreas areas. You go to your doctor and he prescribes to you strong antacids (as i took for years on the past) and nowadays they are even available over the counter (the "conditions" of course meaning environmental ones and instead of fixing your environment, you take pills).

I remember the first apartment we rented when i moved in the US. Fox Pointe, Vancouver (Washington, near Portland) was next to a coin operated drying room. That's where i got first sick and then crazy. After that we moved to Sussex Village Apartments in Beaverton, Oregon, where we lived for 13 years and our building and windows where also closest to the drying room. In those coin operated drying rooms anybody, not only from the apartments could come and dry anything. Many times i found animals' hairs in the washers, thought it was a pet free complex.

Tiny wounds you have in your mouth from neglected teeth or even each time after eating get infected with different strains during those hours of cooking bacteria in a drier. Bacteria that during a drying cycle gets mutated way faster than your immune system can handle. First you may have a slight nausea or indigestion. But wait until you eat. All that bacteria in your mouth contaminates your food that start fermenting in your stomach. Your stomach acid level goes to the roof and your stomach starts hurting. It also start attacking your pancreas which has a positive pH and not defended  by acid and in time it may lead to diabetes.

Nowadays they have these close circuit driers which do not release "lint" up in the air and use less electricity.

In the previous named post i said we live in a movie-like environment, pretty much like in the Truman show movie. Then why would they do that? Simply, to control, especially me who i am more sensitive to this stuff. Making me sick would make me more manageable. Also for the authenticity of the appearance of a constantly sick person.

I believe they ran out of other means (i cleaned the unused dishwasher pipe that had stalactites of greasy mold in it and was opening in the open sink, i removed the dead squirrel) so they had to do a 24 hours laundry marathon.

But i remember the times when i had a woman neighbor upstairs who also had a tiny dog she was keeping inside, who was constantly bringing laundry from other places (could have had a business) and washing them here, doing many loads a day (around 5 maybe) for more than 6 months.

BTW while i was writing here i heard a noise at my door. Someone came and put a note on it that was repeating what they said in an email last night. There is a four days interval next week when they'll come one day to replace the famous sliding doors. I guess there will be another interval when they'll come to replace the windows as they started at the other buildings.

I dry in a closed circuit using an old drier connected to a window AC used as a dehumidifier. It dries faster and cleaner, since is not pulling air from the apartment to release it outside, air that is constantly contaminated with many things like dog poops left outside, so the clothes won't smell (if i give some manual pushes to the load in the middle of the washing cycle to boost cleaning, that is i pump inside the load with my hand, cycling more water through the laundry).

The smaller lint not caught by the screen, that otherwise would be released outside gets stuck on the front cold radiator of the AC where i connected the exhaust pipe from the drier, and from where i remove it from time to time.

Water dripping from the AC gets collected into a tube and i get about one quart a load.

Air dried, cleaned and cooled in the front or cold side of the AC then gets through a short flexible pipe back inside in the hot radiator in the back or hot side of the AC, heated back up (to no more than 120 F) and from there through another pipe in the intake of the drier. AC acts as a heat pump, storing the energy of the hot air and releasing it back into the drier.

What i'm saying is handy DIY-ers could turn an old drier into a closed circuit one with a cheap or old 150 dollars window AC and a few 4 inch flexible pipes and a couple of plastic boxes for adapters (10 dollars max). I've used it for about 6 years now and it's safe though i never leave it on unattended.