Vibrition on a wooden kitchen floor

[Brian Gaff]

I was just wondering in this wonderful world of new materials if anyone who has a washing machine has solved the intense vibration on a wooden floor without resorting to pouring concrete? Its begging to vibrate the floor in the next room now as well, and it does seem to be getting worse. The house is circa 1939, and is just standard floorboards throughout, there is a deep void underneath full of rubble, and the wall between the two rooms is not as far as I can tell, sitting on much but some brick short pillars at the bottom. I know when we had the house rewired some plaster fell off and cracked in the next room, so its obviously weight that keeps things together. Brian

[Tricky Dicky]

If the vibrations from the WM are getting worse then it is probably the WM that is wearing out. Could be a number of problems such as a worn main bearing or worn main shaft or as happened to us once a broken damper.

Richard

[SH]

replacing the WM with a direct drive WM will mean a lot less noise and vibration.

In Direct drive, there is no belt and pulleys, the motor is on the back of the drum.....

S.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Very few washing machines have a damper, Only a Miele IME

OTOH if a concrete block has fallen off the drum, that doesn't help.

But most vibration issues can be solved by decoupling. e.g. get a piece of plywood and about 3" of hard foam rubber underneath and put the washing machine on that.

[Bob Eager]

Have you tried something as simple as anti-vibration pads? They work quite well on the portable air conditioner.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Do such things exist these days?

[SteveW]

Yes. We went from having to pause the TV when the washing machine was spinning, despite the kitchen door being closed, to not usually noticing when the new one spins, even with the door open.

[SteveW]

However, it won't then fit under the worktop. Such a solution would generally need to be cut into the floor to retain the correct height.

[Paul]

Doesn't this sound "structural" to you ?

One test you can do for fun, is take a long spirit level, and check the "bubble" on each floor in the house. Then, consider what the "bubble" results are telling you, about foundation support underneath the house. Say, for example, all the bubbles pointed downwards, towards the center of the house. That means the post holding the center of the house up, isn't in contact with the ground.

You can move the washing machine closer to a load-bearing wall... assuming the wall is still load-bearing of course. It will still be noisy, but the floor should not become "excited" quite as much.

Having lived in a plaster-finished house as a kid, I can tell you the plaster tells you stuff. Normal house settling will cause cracks to form. But, the plaster doesn't fall off.

When plaster falls off, that hints that extreme stress is involved (or, the person who did the plaster is not very clever). Maybe the room is distorted, corners are no longer at 90 degrees and so on.

You have to use your seven senses, when working with houses. All the evidence, adds up to something.

Paul

[S Viemeister]

They did, 4 or 5 years ago. I found them on Amazon.

[Bob Eager]

I bought mine last July.

[uk.d-i-y]

Get some support under the wood floor where the wm goes. Reducing spin speed might help. Also the dampers do wear out over time, if it's old it might benefit from added friction on the suspension. Not overloading the machine also helps.

[Brian]

That would be my thoughts, especially if it is getting worse.

Other than the bearings, some (all?) machines have weights which are bolted to the chassis etc. If the bolts are no longer done up tight….

[uk.d-i-y]

Skip the intermediate stages and go immediately to mass concrete. For added improvement add tuned dampers to the drum

[jim.gm4dhj]

get a new machine ... I had a punter who wedged his out of balance machine under a worktop and nearly demolished a tenement...

[Brian Gaff]

Well its done it since new,but seems to be worse, I assumed because of the flexing. Its not banging internally and the rotating of the drum is smooth and you can hear it turning the muter as you move it, but I had not thought of some of the dampers perhaps dampening less, I have to say, its a heavy Panasonic. The reason I like to keep it is it has no touch screen which many more modern designs have and are hence inaccessible to blind users. Some do interface with the Amazon Echo, but it does seem like a sledgehammer to crack a nu nut when it could all be done on two click knobs and a button. I sometimes feel designers are justifying their existence by over designing things. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Surely though it must get off centre if it is spinning fast? I notice that what this one does is spins up to a point where it considers it safe, then reverses a few times then tries again and gradually it gets to its full speed, but it can take more time sometimes than others, depending on how much its managed to bundle off centre I guess.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes good idea, might just have enough verticle wiggle room for that the next time it has to come out to remove all the dead spiders. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

No won't do concrete, in case I want to move stuff about. I think at the moment its going to be more smaller loads. Brian

[me9]

One of mine had concrete weights, which disintegrated into a pile of rubble underneath. Replaced with lead (from a roof refurbishment) wwhich did a much better job than the concrete ever did.