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Dos and Don’ts of Washing Machine?

How you handle your washing machine comes in handy in determining its durability and effectiveness. Have you just started using the machine? Here are a few dos and don’ts you should be aware of as given by washer repair professionals:

Do ensure the washing machine is level

One of the important things you need to do is to ensure that the machine is installed correctly. This calls for you to ensure that the machine is on level ground. Remember that if your machine isn’t balanced, it will regularly develop problems with the spin cycle.

You will also have problems if the machine isn’t correctly installed. For example, if your machine is poorly installed and the waste hose is too high or too low, it won’t function as well as it should.

When the machine is improperly installed, you have a problem maintaining pressure in the pipes. When the pressure is too low, there is the risk of flooding, which can turn the machine off. The pump might not get strong enough to push the water out when the pressure is too high.

For your unit to function correctly, you need to install it properly. Thankfully, most machines come with instruction manuals that guide you on how to install the machine properly. Follow the manual and install the machine, but if you have a problem doing it, let a professional help you.

Do consider the capacity of the machine.

When loading the machine, pay close attention to the machine’s capacity. As a rule of thumb, don’t simply stuff the drum, as this puts too much pressure on the bearings, suspension, motor, and other parts of the unit, triggering the unit to wear out.

Overloading the machine also reduces the quality of the wash.

To stay safe, pay attention to your machine’s maximum capacity and do not overstuff it.

If you have a top loader, ensure that you balance your load. This is because having the weight on one side increases the chances of the machine getting damaged as it spins.

If the situation doesn’t allow it and you have to run an unbalanced load, take care and reduce the spin speed to reduce the chances of breakages.

Do empty your pockets and clean the filters.

Emptying the pockets before putting the clothes in the washing machine might sound obvious, but you will be shocked by the number of people that forget to do it.

Besides coins and other metals getting into the drum and damaging it, there is the risk of different types of debris, such as papers and cloth fibers, getting into the pipework and damaging the various components.

To ensure this doesn’t happen, always empty your pockets before you place the clothes in the washing machine.

If you regularly forget to empty your pockets, remember to clean the filters. Thankfully, most washers come with well-detailed manuals. You should read the manual and find a way to access the filters and clean them properly.

Don’t use too much detergent.

You might argue that using more than usual detergent will get your clothes cleaner, but this isn’t the case. It has been shown that using too much detergent than usual leaves residues on your clothing; hence you don’t have clean clothes at the end of the cycle.

To easily keep your clothes clean, use the right amount of detergent. If you aren’t sure about the right one to go for, get a guide from the manual.

Don’t leave wet clothes in the washing machine for a long time

Some people wash their clothes and then forget them in the washing machine. This is wrong as the moisture from the wet clothes leads to a buildup of mold in your washing machine’s drum and even sometimes on your clothes.

When washing your clothes, it’s good that you concentrate on them. This calls for you to focus on cleaning the clothes and only get to other activities once you are done.

When you finish washing the clothes, appliance repair Alexandria professionals recommend you remove the clothes from the washer as soon as possible after you complete the rinse cycle. You should then leave the clothes to dry outside naturally.

3 Washing Machine Best Practices

For your washing machine to function optimally and last for a long time, you need to observe a set of best practices. Wondering which are these practices? Here they are as given by washer repair professionals:

Separate the garments

As much as clothes appear similar, they aren’t—they are made from different materials with different cleaning instructions. To avoid damaging your outfits, check the clothes tags for washing instructions.

While most clothes are machine washable, check the tags for further instructions as some clothes might get damaged. For example, some might shrink if you clean them using hot water, while others might not be able to handle bleach.

You should put aside clothes labeled as dry clean or hand wash only.

Besides separating the clothes by the material they are made from and their cleaning methods, also separate by color. Separate the lights from the darks and wash them separately.

If you are wondering what should go where, here is a guide:

Darks: These include dark blues, blacks, greys, dark purples, and dark reds

Lights: These are whites, yellows, pinks, light greens, light blues, and lavender.

Whites include anything that is 100% white. You should avoid washing the whites with other light colors.

Jeans or dark denims: They tend to bleed their color, and you should wash them in their separate load.

Use the right washing cycle.

The wash cycles determine the speed at which the washing machine spins. Most washing machines have two primary speeds: a speed that agitates or tumbles the clothes with water and another that spins the water out of the clothes.

The cycle you choose should match the fabric of the cloth. There are four main cycles you can use:

Delicate cycle: The delicate cycle uses the slow approach, where it’s meant to reduce agitation and prevent wear and tear. While it’s highly effective at preventing the clothes from getting damaged, it doesn’t properly clean them.

Normal cycle: This cycle goes with a fast approach where it tumbles and spins fast. It’s highly effective at cleaning extremely dirty and sweaty clothes, and it’s the cycle that most people use regularly. Using this cycle, some of the best fabrics to clean are denim, cotton, towels, and beddings.

Special cycle: You will find these cycles in modern washing machines. The cycles vary in functionality and among washing machines. For example, you will find some machines that will sanitize, others steam, and so on.

Permanent or perm press: The perm pres cycle goes in a fast/slow approach, and it’s best for fabrics that need fast agitation to clean but a slow spin to prevent wrinkles. You should use this cycle when cleaning synthetic fibers such as knits, rayons, acetates, and polyesters.

You should use this cycle because synthetic fibers are known to pill or even create small balls of fiber, and spinning the fabric slowly prevents the piling from coming about.

Use the right temperature.

The same way you should use the right cleaning cycle is the same way you should take caution and use the right cleaning temperature. If you do your research, you will find that most experts recommend that you clean your clothes with hot water, which is for a reason.

When you use hot water, you not only have cleaner clothes, but the hot water also sanitizes clothes and kills germs. It also dissolves detergents more effectively and removes any built-up grime, so your clothes look cleaner and brighter.

While hot water is great, it can shrink the clothes, fade the fabrics, or even set certain stains. Some people have even pointed to the hot water being an expensive addition to their energy bill.

If you don’t want to use hot water, appliance repair Alexandria recommends using water at different temperatures, especially if the materials in question allow it.

The common options include:

Cool water: You can use cool water if cleaning delicate items or items with dyes that might bleed. Cool water is also ideal for clothes that aren’t necessarily dirty.

Warm water is best suited for cleaning dark colors and moderately dirty loads.

If you are unsure about the right water temperature to go with, get the input of a professional.

How Do You Use Washing Machines Properly

Thanks to washing machines, we no longer worry about washing clothes with our hands. To draw the most benefits from these machines, you have to use them properly.

How do you use washing machines properly? Here is how to go about it as given by washer repair professionals:

Always prepare your clothes before putting them in the washing machine

Don’t just toss your clothes in the washing machine—prepare them for washing. A good rule of thumb is to close the zippers, unbutton shirts, secure straps, hooks, and Velcro, and inspect the pockets for any important items before putting the clothes in the machine.

The purpose of doing this is to prevent the clothes from getting damaged as you are cleaning them. For example, if you leave the clothes buttoned, you risk losing a thread around the buttonholes. Lint can also catch on the Velcro straps if you don’t close them properly.

Remove stains beforehand

While it’s possible to put bleach in the washing machine and remove stains or even whiten the clothes as you are cleaning them, it’s unwise to do this as sometimes the washing machine fails to remove the stains properly.

If you have stained clothes in your basket, remove the stains before putting the clothes in the washing machine with the other clothes. Besides having an easy time getting rid of these stains, removing the stains beforehand prevents stain transfer.

Separate light and grey clothes

The purpose of separating the clothes before putting them in the washing machine is to protect them from damage. For example, if you put lightweight clothes such as t-shirts and leggings together with jackets and other heavy clothes, it means that the clothes will stay in the washing machine for a long time so that all the dirt can come off the jackets.

As you can guess, this puts the leggings and the other lightweight clothes at the risk of getting damaged for staying in the washing machine much longer than they should.

To have an easy time sorting the clothes, have multiple hampers. You also should sort the outfits by their material. For example, put clothes made from lighter materials such as shirts and leggings in one basket and clothes made with thicker materials such as jeans and jackets in another.

You can also separate the clothes by color. Dark-colored clothes have dyes that can seep into the lighter clothes, so you should put them separately.

Turn the clothes inside out.

The point of doing this is to prevent your clothes from fading and maintain their original color. If you have fading clothes, it’s always recommended you clean them with cold water. The cold water sets the dye to the fabric, preventing it from floating away in the wash water, so you keep your clothes in their original color.

Don’t overload the washing machine.

When you have a large load to clean and minimal time, it’s tempting to load all of your clothes in one go and get done with it, but don’t. This is because you end up overloading the machine, which makes it work harder than it should and puts it at the risk of getting damaged.

All washing machines have their capacities indicated, so you can’t miss that. All you have to do is check on the indicated figures and ensure that you don’t overload your appliance.

Leave the washing machine door open.

After using the washing machine, don’t close the door. Instead, leave it open for air and light to get in. Mold and mildew thrive in damp areas, so when you close the washing machine’s door immediately after using it, you keep the insides damp, promoting mold and mildew growth.

By leaving the door open, you give the appliance time to air out and dry up, which kills the mildew and mold and prevents foul odors from occurring.

Keep the washing machine clean.

Since the washing machine cleans clothes, you don’t need to clean it, right? Wrong. According to appliance repair Springfield professionals, if you don’t regularly clean your washing machine, you don’t get rid of dust and debris that might get on your clothes, and they come out dirty.

To keep your appliance clean, clean it at least once a week.

How Long Does A Washing Machine Take To Wash Clothes?

Wondering how long does a washing machine take to wash clothes? Well, according to washer repair professionals, it often depends on the type of washing machine you have. Here is the average amount of time it takes for different washing machines to clean clothes:

  • Front-loading machines: 70-120 minutes
  • High-efficiency top-loading machines: 60-85 minutes
  • Agitator top-loading machines: 35-80 minutes

If you have been following washing machines, you should have noticed that these figures are higher than years before, and there is a reason for that—washing machine manufacturers are deliberately designing slower machines.

While this might be off-putting as it means you will be spending more time waiting for the clothes to get clean, it comes with several perks:

  • The clothes don’t tear or wear out too fast as the machine isn’t too fast, and this comes in handy at ensuring that the clothes last for a long time.
  • Although the washing machine manufacturers have come up with slower machines, they have increased the tub capacities meaning that you can wash more clothes than before, which means you still save time.
  • You spend less water as the machine isn’t pulling a lot of water. When the washing machine is spinning at high speed, the machine consumes a lot of water, which increases your monthly water bill.
  • Since most modern washing machines are slower, they don’t consume a lot of water which sees you saving money as your water bill isn’t too high.

How the washing machine works

If this is your first time using the washing machine, you should know that it works in different stages that include:

Prewash: Here, the lid locks, and the tub senses the load’s weight and volume. It then fills with water and agitates the clothes lightly to distribute the detergent throughout the load. If you had selected the presoak option, this is where it will occur.

Wash: At this stage, the clothes will be agitated for some time then the machine allows them to rest so that the detergent can do its work. If you had chosen a heavy-duty wash cycle, the machine will have longer periods of agitation and soaking.

Rinse: Rinsing involves draining away the soapy water and spraying the clean water over the clothes. The washing machine adds clean water, spins the load to drain, and then adds clean water again to rinse away the detergents and soil.

If you are washing the delicates such as the underwear and brassieres, the washer doesn’t spin as fast, but if the cycles involve heavier soils, the washer might be fast and do several rinses to ensure that all the soils are completely removed.

Final spin: The final spin might include one or more rinses, then it picks up speed to wring out the clothes before they enter the dryer. It’s at this level when the washing machine spins at its highest, and if the load is unbalanced, you might have problems such as the machine making a lot of noise or moving around too much.

How to reduce your wash time

Even if most machines are now slow, you can do several things to ensure that they are efficient and clean the clothes as fast as possible. Some of the things you should do include:

Use the right detergent.

The detergent you use can significantly affect the time it takes to wash the clothes, so you need to ensure that you use the right one. As a rule of thumb, ensure that you use a detergent specifically designed for the machine model you are using.

Balance your load

According to appliance repair Springfield professionals, the load will often get unbalanced if you have overloaded it, mixed heavy and lightweight items, or using an improperly leveled machine.

Most modern machines will pause the cleaning cycle when they sense the load is imbalanced, which results in you wasting a lot of time.

To save time, take your time when loading the machine and ensure that you have loaded it properly. As a rule of thumb, ensure that you have loaded the right amount of clothes. Also, ensure that you aren’t mixing lightweight and heavyweight clothing items in the same cycle.

How to Drain a Washing Machine for Moving

You are excited. You have found a new job in a different state or you built your house and you have to move from your current rental apartment. Among the things you have to move with is the washing machine.

Unfortunately, you can’t carry it with water—you have to drain the water. Since you don’t want to have any water remaining behind that might damage your other valuables, you have to properly drain the washing machine.

How do you do this?

Here is a guide given by washer repair experts on how to drain a washing machine for moving:

Step 1: Disconnect the machine from the power

Start with switching off the power button on the machine and unplug the machine from the power source. To avoid splashing the power cord with water, duct tape it to the top of the washing machine.

Step 2: Locate the drain hose and water supply hoses

If necessary, pull the washing machine away from the wall and access the drain hose. The drain hose is often located at the back of the washer, along with hot and cold water supply hoses. And it carries wastewater away from the machine while the hot and cold water supply hoses bring clean water to the machine.

To tell them apart, the hot hose is colour-coded red while the cold one is coded blue. The drain hose is often gray.

Step 3: Drain the washing machine

Depending on how the washing machine is installed, the drain hose might be carrying water into a standpipe, a drainpipe in the wall, or a large nearby utility sink.

To drain the washing machine, place a large bucket in place and disconnect the drain hose from the pipe by simply wigging it loose. You should then hold the hose up in the air to prevent water from flowing out until you place the bucket in place.

Once the bucket is in place, lower the end of the hose below the water level and gravity will cause the water to flow out.

If the water is too much that you have to pause to empty the bucket, simply place the disconnected end of the drain hose.

Step 4: Get rid of the drain hose blockage

If you find that the water doesn’t flow out or it drains too slowly, chances are you have a blockage in the drain hose. To unclog the drain hose, release the clog using a plumber’s snake. To do it, push the tip of the coil until it reaches a blockage, then turn it manually with the handles on the opposite end until you get through the blockage.

Step 5: Remove the clog in the drain pump

If the clog isn’t in the drain hose, chances are it’s in the drain pump. Depending on your machine, the drain pump might be located behind the removable panels in the front or back of the washing machine. It’s also not uncommon to find it at the bottom of the machine, and you have to tip the machine forward to access it.

After locating the pump, remove the spring clamps by squeezing them with a pair of pliers and clear any clogs present using needle-nosed pliers. The clogging material can range from small articles of clothing to a buildup of lint or pet hair.

Once you are done, reattach the hoses.

Step 6: Inspect the machine

You are better off fixing the washing machine before you move so that when you get to your new home, you will have time to enjoy it, not start looking for an appliance repair Fairfax to fix the machine.

Inspect the washing machine’s lid switch and confirm its working properly. All you need to do is to depress the lid switch by hand and if you don’t hear a click, its most likely broken and needs replacement.

You also should take a look at the belts and if they are damaged, unscrew the access pane and replace them.

You can do the work by yourself, but if the work is above your skill level, let a professional handle it. For best results, ensure the professional is experienced and certified to work in your local area.

Appliance Repair: Washing Machine Maintenance Tips

For your expensive washing machine to last longer and function optimally, you need to take good care of it. According to appliance repair professionals, you should have a daily, weekly, and monthly washing machine maintenance routine to keep the appliance in top shape the entire year-round:

Daily maintenance of the washing machine

Once you are done using the machine, take some time to wipe the drum. This comes in handy at preventing the machine from getting smelly. You also should check the detergent compartment and confirm whether there are still any detergent residues left.

If there are any left, wipe them away with a clean dish rag. By so doing, you prevent mold from building up. If you want to have an ultra-clean appliance, clean it with a hose taking care not to damage it with excessive water pressure.

Once the clothes are clean, immediately remove them from the washing machine and transfer them to the dryer or hang them on the clothing line to dry. You shouldn’t leave them in the washing machine as they will get moldy and musty.

When you aren’t cleaning, leave the washing machine door open. This will allow the air to circulate inside the machine reducing the chances of mold or awful smells from developing.

Weekly washing machine maintenance

At least once a week, inspect the washing machine for signs of leakages. Ensure that the rubber seal of the washing machine hose is still working perfectly at sealing the connection of the hose and the water source.

If you notice the connection beginning to deteriorate, consider replacing it.

Pay attention to the detergent compartment water slots. These are the slots where the water comes out. Ensure that there are no hard minerals or residues left that might clog the slots. Pay close attention to them and clean them if necessary.

Monthly washing machine maintenance tips

Here you should pay attention to the belt of the washing machine and pay attention to any signs of wear and tear. If the machine is wearing out faster than it should, the chances are that you are using the wrong laundry cycle.

Take time to go back to the manual and confirm the cycle you should be using. You also should use the washing machine wisely by avoiding running small laundry cycles.

Are there worn out or damaged parts that should be replaced? Whether they are belts or bearings, replace them if they need to. While at it, tighten up screws or parts that might have gotten loose.

If you live in a hard water region, limescale can build up, leading to plenty of problems such as limescale building up on the heating element resulting in the component being less effective.

To prevent this, descale the washing machine at least once a month. If the water in your area isn’t hard, you should still descale your appliance, but you should do it every three to six months.

Proper washing machine use

How you use the machine goes a long way towards keeping it in top shape. One of the things you shouldn’t do is to overload the machine. When you overload it, you throw the machine off balance which leads to plenty of problems.

If you are new to using the machine, consult the owner’s manual for instructions on the proper loading sizes.

Keep the machine level: Washing machines always vibrate when working, and when they aren’t level with all the four legs, they rock back and forth and even vibrate strongly than they should.

To prevent this, ensure that the machine is level at all times. You also should keep it as close to the floor as possible to reduce the vibration.

Use the right amount of detergent: Most people pay attention to the information given on the packaging, but you shouldn’t. The best way out is to follow the owner’s manual and follow the instructions given by the washing machine manufacturer.

According to commercial appliance repair Springfield, when you do this way, you don’t use more detergent than you should hence putting your appliance at the risk of clogging up.