Neighbor Vent

A little history first. We live on the 1st floor of a 3 family house that we used to own. We purchased it in 2001 about 6 months after we got married. (There's a bigger story there, but that's not the point.) After having issues with problem tenants, and frequent vacancies, we decided in 2003 to take advantage of the rapid appreciation in the market and we sold the house. We weren't planning on buying again right away, but we had issues finding an apartment with our dog, so the new owner allowed us to rent the same apartment we were living in on a month-to-month basis. Technically, the same tenants are in the house as there were when we sold the house, with some minor changes. The third floor was originally a single girl, and it was explained to her that only she was approved to live there. I don't know what her arrangements were with the landlord, but first a guy moved in with her, then she moved out and her boyfriend moved in with the guy who was here. These people leave exterior doors propped open all the time, the Bilco doors unlocked, have been stacking wooden furniture right next to our gas furnace, and like to leave their garbage pail out at the road nearly the entire week. They're slobs and inconsiderate. But I ignored them and expected the same from them.

Back in July, we purchased a new washer and dryer because our dryer was no longer fuctioning properly. Our set was a used one that my parents bought us when we got the house. The dryer started to sound like I was running cycles full of rocks, so we decided to replace both at the same time. We got a nice front loader set (pretty much the cheapest one we could get, but still nicer than what we had). We decided to hold on to our old washer though to use for Brian's filthy clothes he wears when he's working on his vehicles. We moved it to the left of the new washer and left it there.

Tonight I went down to the basement to run a load of wash and found that our old washer had been hooked up to the 3rd floor hookups and they were running this dryer they had down there for a year now (not previously hooked up) without a vent. Soooo many things wrong with this picture. Number one, they basically just took our washer without asking and started using it. That's pretty ballsy. I told Brian about it and he went down there and disconnected it, turning it back to the side and throwing out the drain tube (that was ours) so they couldn't connect it back up. Number two, running a dryer without a vent is a fire hazzard. And this dryer is right in front of our furnace. Fortunately, the furnace isn't on currently (we shut it down for the summer). But if you're going to do something that is a fire hazzard, it's not a good idea to do it in front of a gas furnace that normally has a pilot light on all the time. No brains here, obviously.

I'm pretty pissed off. I try to mind my own business and I've never been one to complain to the landlord. But this is pretty bad. I won't say anything about the washer to him, but I do think I will mention the dryer set up since he can get in a lot of trouble if the fire marshal finds that during his next inspection.

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I'm sure you're all wondering about the wedding today. I'll keep it short. We were 10 minutes late. They are married. Margaret spent the day with my MIL and sisters-in-law so we could have fun at the reception (and she did very well for them). We danced. Came home. Margaret had a lovely poopy diaper blowout. We went to my parents' house for the party afterwards. And now we're home again. I'm glad it's over!! It was kind of nice to not have to worry about anything today, though. It wasn't my day, after all. ;)