Washing machine sticks with water flushing through - ideas?

[Matthew Newton]

Hi

Sorry if this has come up before. I've had a look and tried all the suggestions I can find, but nothing so far has worked.

Problem: Washing machine (Hoover SoftWave, about 8 years old) sticks in the middle of the cycle, sometimes more than once. When it does, it is letting water flush through the drum. This happens indefinitely until the control is clicked around, and then continues as normal.

It normally happens (so I am told by my wife) soon after the programme starts, and before it is going to do its final spin. I guess, therefore, when it is filling up at the beginning, and for the final rinse. It doesn't always do it, though.

I have tried the following:

Removed the programmer switch, filled with WD40 and cleaned as much as possible without dismantling.

Checked pipe to pressure switch. Seems all clear (cleaned small plastic pot at bottom of the pipe where it connects to the drum, but wasn't a lot of scale in it). Pressure switch clicks at different pressures when blowing in the pipe.

Checked output drain pipe from the bottom of the drum. Completely clear as far as I can see. Nothing obvious in the pump, which is also clear.

Does anyone have any other ideas? There doesn't seem much more than can be wrong with it to me, unless the programmer itself is broken internally. There are a couple of what look like sensors on the front of the outer plastic drum in the machine (the bit that doesn't spin round). Don't know what they are, could they cause problems?

Have had no problems with it at all so far, and don't want to waste money for someone to pull out a paperclip or similar, if possible!

Thanks for any suggestions.

Matthew

[Peter Andrews]

"Matthew Newton" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

In the past I've solved some really 'odd' faults by simply replacing the brushes on the motor - at less than £10 it's probably worth a try.

Peter

>

[Andrew Gabriel]

If the water level in the drum does not appear to be abnormally high when this happens, I suspect the problem is that you don't have the drain pipe clipped up high enough at the back.

[David Hearn]

We had this recently, and most people thought it was the programmer - however on another list someone suggested that it was syphoning, whereby the output hose was pushed too far down the drain pipe, allowing water to be drawn out by syphoning. This means that when the machine is filling, it never fills and so keeps adding water. It also co-incided (looking back now) with me pushing the hose further down the drain when I was doing something else.

Ours was intermittant too - but since doing it (week or so) we've not had a problem.

May be a nice, cheap and easy solution. :)

David

[bigcat]

programme

therefore,

plastic

sounds like a sticking water inlet solenoid. The [umping out would be the machines reaction to excess water level detected.

Easy way to etll if this is it is to hook up a meter to the inlet solenoid, see what happens when its in this fault mode. If the pwoer to the solenoid is off at this time, its the solenoid. If its on, its summat else.

Avoid frying self.

NT

[Matthew Newton]

Thanks to all who replied. I have not tested this yet, but I think it is probably the case. The hose was not clipped to the back of the machine (just running along the floor), and was also pushed right down the waste pipe, into the water at the bottom.

I'll give it a try and see if that fixes it, before checking the solenoids/brushes, etc. Thanks!

Matthew

[Matthew Newton]

Thanks, all.

It must have been syphoning the water out. Since readjusting the waste pipe and clipping it up properly it seems to be working fine now! I now have a happy wife again. :-)

[mungoh]

Though the water level sensor "clicks" when you blow through it (and incidentally, these switches can be sensitive so blow *gently*), there is no guarantee that the switch is working behind this. Power down the machine and either use a multimeter or some concoction of lamp and battery to prove that the switch is in fact changing over.

At a guess I'd say that the pressure switch isn't working leading to a "water level low" state hence the machine keeps admitting more water ad infinitum.

But then I've been wrong before...

Regards

Mungo

[Jim Crow]

"Matthew Newton" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

Don't know if it's relevant but I had a similar thing happen a few years ago. The old machine's waste was plumbed directly into the household waste pipe - did the same with the new machine and got similar symptoms to yours. This only happened on certain programmes which is what confused me - called out the engineer and he solved it immediately - appears my machine needed the waste pipe to be hooked into an upright open waste pipe to prevent 'siphonage'. On certain progs (possibly during the rinse) the out going water caused a siphon effect and the incoming water never reached a level to cut off and so kept flowing. (Hope that makes sense). On reflection I now wonder if I'd looped my flexible waste pipe high enough in the first place things might have been ok. Just wondered if your flexible waste pipe may have recently dropped down behind the machine and it's no longer 'looping' high enough to prevent the siphon effect. Just a thought ..................................

[Mathew J. Newton]

When I read your post I though I was suffering from severe memory loss... I too have a Hoover Softwave but wasn't aware of it having any problems currently, and certainly didn't recall posting about them...

Mathew Newton (just the one 't' but close enough!)

[Phil Addison]

Too late for you now, but I added Ian Tilley's Washing Machine FAQ to the group FAQ a couple of days ago, and sure enough, it does quote "syphoning" as your problem.

uk.d-i-y FAQ is at Google uk.d-i-y archive is at NOSPAM from address to email me