Today i’m actually proud of myself. I’m good with wood, textiles, gardening, trees etc. But metal, machines, electronics don’t come natural to me at all. I learned to take care of bicycles or chainsaws because I had to but those scary household machines never. Until today. The machine stopped midway, full of water and clothes. Panic ensued. I already saw myself forced to buy a new one. After mere 20 years!
But mommy raised not quitter, so i took the stuff out, drained the water (without flooding the bathroom!) and had a look at that debris catcher thing and the lye pump. Both a bit dirty but easily cleaned and the pump’s screw still moved. After looking into the waste tube I put everything together again and run an empty cleaning cycle. At first everything seemed fine but coming back from a short nap the machine was full of water again. So rinse and repeat it is.
This time i watched a few videos on how to dismantel the machine to get to the inner tubes. I had a hard time finding something since i’ve apparently got a rare top loader model. Luckily i watched one vid with a guy looking at the lye pump with a flash light instead of just feeling for coins or buttons with my fingers. So back down on the belly it was.
Lo and Behold! There was the culprit! A bloody rubber band had wrapped itself around the screw. Not nice. At all.
Being the good hoarder i am, it wasn’t difficult to find some long hooks (spare bike spokes) to fish it out. Doing it was though. But with a good amount of patience and some luck (and an astonishing lack of cursing) i managed to untwine it and ease it out, without leaving anything stuck around the screw. (Funny thing is I don’t use any white rubber bands, ain’t got a clue where it came from.)
All in all it took me “only” two hours. But I fixed my first washing machine!
I hope you enjoyed my little Saga of “The Washing Machine and The Rubber Band” and I wish you at least the same amount of success for your own projects. Be they voluntary or not.
Great job!! Our apartment dishwasher stopped dissolving the dish detergent and their maintenance people didn’t do anything about it, so maybe I’ll have to look up the manual and a video or two. :)
Thank you! That could very well be a clogged tube.
Well done. I can fix a dryer but I wouldn’t deal with a washing machine. The combination of water and electricity scares me. Mostly because my own washer gives me a static shock everytime I empty it. The grounding just doesn’t work for that.
Dryer is a surprising simple contraption for what it does, I replaced the wheel inside of my dryer because it is completely stuck. It only took me 4 hours for a first timer.
Never had to deal with a dryer, luckily some things are simpler than they appear to be.
If you’re sure that the wall outlet is properly grounded, you could try running a grounding wire (8 Gauge Copper) from the washing machine case/shell to a cold water pipe. Depending on your area its probably no longer up to code but barring a few situations it should work. It should go without saying, but this only works if the water pipe is metal…
No no no. Ok, I mean this kindly, but this is bad advice, and please don’t do this. It sounds fine but is dangerous in practice.
As a general rule we never want to intentionally create any extra pathways for energized equipment to dump load to ground through a water pipe (or anything else). We also want to avoid ground loops. There should only be one good connection to each run of metal water pipe to ground, and no more.
This is how people (unintentionally!) turn their entire houses into shocking traps. Someone goes to touch a metal faucet with old-school metal or newer stainless piping and suddenly you’ve got 120 or 240 going through the handle into them to get to ground. They might be in a different part of the house - or even outside! A common place to get electrocuted by water pipe ground faults is on outside spigots because the connection is usually all metal and very simple.
In this case, the safe thing to do would be to ensure that the washer is actually connected to the ground (green) terminal of the outlet via it’s cord. Some lazy installers don’t make sure the ground is hooked up on the washer/dryer side, and many (really) old machines don’t have one. Adding a ground wire manually isn’t preferred but could definitely be done by someone qualified or who knows what they’re doing.
Using an outlet tester to confirm that the ground actually works is a good idea too. There might be a ground fault somewhere else in the circuit.
I’m not sure that’s theoretically safe because if the metal washing machine case became energized and someone is touching the metal pipe or taking a shower for instance, they could become the path to ground.
Possibly but what would ground someone better than the earth. I suppose if you were holding the water line and were standing on the ground (dirt basement?) without shoes. Or if you were grabbing two different things.
That being said I concede that the water line might not be continuous to the ground. Which would be bad.
The equipment ground is actually bonded to the neutral that comes in from the electric company.
You’re also supposed to ground the main water pipe within 10’ from where it comes in to the ground in the service panel.
The earth rod is a safety feature in case of a catastrophic failure and dissipates static electricity or lightning.
The equipment ground is designed to complete the electrical circuit if the common side shorts out to any metal on the equipment, which will (hopefully) overload the breaker and trip it immediately.
If you grounded to the water pipe and a short occurs it would have to travel the entire length of the water pipe to dissipate, and if the water pipe is not bonded to the service panel then it won’t necessarily trip the breaker. You’ll have an energized water pipe until it draws enough current to trip the breaker, hopefully.
You could have a scenario where someone fills the bathtub which has an older cast iron waste pipe. They get in the tub and touch the faucet which is energized.
Yeah, it’s a 1:100,000,000 chance, but there’s a reason why the code is written the way it is.
It was the rubber band of believing in yourself. It came down to bestow you with +2 confidence, +1 ingenuity and +3 mending for completing his quest.
I actually put it as a trophy on my pin board, lol.
Congratulations. Well done and very inspiring!
Thank you!
That’s awesome! Feels great don’t it? I got my garbage disposal going again without having to call a plumber, I’m not a household handy person.
What is a lye pump?
Thank you! Yes, I’ve got a large load of dopamine from it.
So you mean those finger mincing knive things in the sink? I’ve seen them only in the movies. Don’t know if I’d touch one of those.
I googled for the translation, so i’m not entirely sure it’s the right word. It’s supposed to be the pump which moves the waste water out.
I think they’re called “drain pumps” in the US, but I’m not a washing machinist (definitely not the right word, but sounds more badass).
In German we usually call it simply a/the pump (Pumpe). I had never heard the official term “Laugenpumpe” (lye pump) before today.
I’m proud of you!
Thank you!
Congratulations! I envy the chance to learn and fix a home appliance like this. But admittedly, I really like fixing things.
Thank you!
