I hope you have your fire suit

Have you ever taken a 'shower' with a mixing bowl using stagnet water you collected at the last minute before they shut off the water? No? Me neither, until today. But, it felt great. Once you are past the initial 60 degree temperature of the water, its really not so bad. AND, being totally declothed in your courtyard is a little exciting too.

Also, today was the first day that I got to turn on our dryer when it was fully functional - hot air and all. The project is not totally finished yet, but we are getting close. Lets run through where all we have been...

1. Find a dryer that is only 110v that is not too expensive

2. Get someone to deliver it to our place

3. Figure out how to convert dryer to propane

4. Get parents to buy and send pieces needed for conversion to Costa Rica

5. Figure out how to install said pieces

6. Figure out how to get propane from the tank to your dryer

That brings us to tonight. We decided to stop into ACE hardware late this afternoon to see if they had propane tanks, regulators, hoses, etc that we needed to make our dryer work now I had installed (hopefully properly) the methane to propane conversion pieces. It turns out, they had pretty much all the pieces I was looking for. You see, as the instructions to the left show, I had a big shopping trip, I had to buy an elbow, an adapter, a metal flexible gas line connector, an ANSI plug 221.24 cm long, a CSA bolt 6.10 in depth, another adaptor, a 1/8' NPT pip plug for checking my inlet pressure and finally a shut-off valve with at least 1/2''. Thank goodness I found Ace. Also, thank goodness they did not make us buy the $100 dollar sink that Sammy pulled onto himself and shattered.

In reality though, ACE did not have all the piece I needed, so I I had to mix it up a bit. You can see my connection to the dryer. I decided to go with the 'straight' instead of the elbow. Also, who needs metal pipe when you can find rubber. Also, the whole 'shut-off valve' and pressure tester thing just seemed a bit silly, so I just took the hose straight to my regulator. Why buy all that extra junk just to clog up my perfectly good courtyard? To be honest though, I joked around with Christy, there were times in the states were I would install something differently than instructions or break the housing code a bit - but I always felt like I was making it better and there was no danger. As I was nearing completion of installing the propane hose, I've never been so worried about turning somethng on in my life. In case my parents are reading this, don't worry, I bubble tested all the connections on the outside of the dryer like crazy. I will do this again tomorrow and I will also do it on the methane to propane pieces I installed on the inside. If you are costa rican authorities - please ignore the description of said dryer. At the end of the day, I ran it for about a minute tonight and I think that it seems good. Gets warm (not too warm, not too cold) and it seemed like the internal temperature monitor was working as it flipped off the burner after it reached temperature.

Who thinks on the instructions I make for Roxana I should put 'Run inside' after turning the on switch?

GE was nice enough to include some pictures of what happy and sad dry dryers should look like. If everything on the install goes well, it will aparently shine and grow arms to give you the okay symbol. I'm not sure what mine will say, but I'd guess something like you see in the picture. It is saying 'hammer-head' in honor of my father. That is what he used to call other drivers when they cut him off. It seems like an appropriate name also for someone who breaks all sorts of codes and violations during a flammable gas appliance install.