Washing Machine Woes

Of course I should not even question why a washing machine decides to quit on me just when my husband gets home from a two week trip to China. It's like appliances have brains! That's exactly what happened last Friday. The load inside the machine will not spin and he arrives home with suitcase full of dirty laundry.

Fortunately with the suitcase comes an engineer! I tell you marrying an engineer was not on the bucket list, it's just the way it happened, and boy am I glad! So after some adjusting of time zone and sleep the engineer gets to work. Research first, order part second, wait for UPS third. The part arrives. Of course in the meantime the adult sons are asking everyday, is it fixed, is it fixed. Seriously guys you can manage without doing your laundry for a few days! Apparently not, they have piles of the stuff too. Ugh! Boys!

Fast forward to Wednesday, UPS delivers the part, the engineer gets home from work, grabs a bite and starts dismantling. It takes about 2 and a half hours to get it done and back together but we opt to leave the testing till the morning. Early next day I through a half load of light clothes in and off we go. All good until it cannot get rid of the water and still spins with a clunking thump. I have to stop it and have a load of sopping clothes to deal with.

Thursday I don't have a lot on so I spend a bit of time doing research to find another cause could be rust or a blockage. Engineer comes home and takes it apart again! No rust but yes there is "stuff" in the filter tray and probably far too much. Engineer admits he did not know it had one of these trays but he's not a washing machine expert.

Look at what came out! Looks like a dirty mess and it is, but there's a razor blade, coins, several screws, grit, fluff and as I call is "stuff" It also dumped about a half gallon of water into the bucket, I was scrambling to get another one just in case. So yes we had a pretty big blockage. I am blaming the mechanic son!

Awesome; problem solved. He cleans it all up, re-assembles and throws my wet load back into spin. Better, yes better, but NOT fixed. Spinning at a medium rate it is still clunking. I am allowed to get all the washing done on a slow spin rate, so long as I can be near in case it launches into space!

Back we go to the drawing board. At this point he thinks it's the struts going in which case our washing machine will be headed to the recycling plant soon. Shame it's only 6 years old. My last one was 10 years old and going strong, we donated it to get the front loaders. Now the problem is I want a front load and the engineer does not.

So my washing machine woes continue.