It’s hard to characterize in a single sentence, so I’ll just break it down into its constituent parts.
The Beep
When the laundry cycle finishes it does the following:
- It beeps super loudly for 5 seconds
- If you don’t run to switch it off, it will wait 30 more seconds and then continue to beep super loudly for 5 seconds
- If you switch it off whilst it’s beeping, it will continue to finish its beeping
- There is no volume setting nor any way to switch this off.
The Door
When it’s finished. It does not release. That beeping sound from earlier to tell you to come get your laundry? No no no, that was just the “come and watch me drain” alarm.
- Switching it off has no effect on the door release.
- It releases whenever it wants. It could be 5 minutes, it could be 20.
- When it does release, all you will get is a <clunk> sound, so you better be around to hear it.
- If you miss this sound, it will lock itself again 10-15 minutes later and rotate your clothes.
- It will then repeat the release process.
HELP ME. HE-ELP ME.
Name and shame!
Friends don’t let other people suffer the same fate.
Why don’t they have proper ball-bearing bearings on the drum instead of just a bushing?
I had to replace mine last week. Okay, it’s been a decade of zero maintenance, and the part only cost a tenner, but still - if this was a decent bearing it would be fine.
Assumptions: For the size a bearing can handle load better, and can be a self lubricating material. Ball bearings are small contact points, and a lot of off center vibration of the machine might wreck the ball bearing. Especially if it gets warm and grease runs out. So they would need to have a much larger ballbearing race like you see on industrial machinery, and the cost probably doesn’t justify it.
My dryer seals broke this year, in replacing them I could see why they wore through. The back of drum wheels are just bearings (no balls), the weight of drum had the wheel bearings wear a wide groove in the support shafts so it shifted everything. And front has no bearings it just rides on the seal. I rotated/swapped them all around so they start with a fresh wear face and replaced a wheel. It should support itself better. Maybe we will get 5 more years out of it.
I personally think it’s down to cost and planned obsolescence. The bearing is so soft, it’s clearly sacrificial. There’s a lot of dust from the eroded part, and the spindle was still as new. Even though the part is cheap and fitting it is quick, most people wouldn’t know how - and calling someone out to do it would cost more than half the price of a replacement dryer.
Can’t be heat - ball bearings, even just steel ones, are fitted to engines and car wheels. A dryer gets hot, but not that hot - and even if it did, ceramics are available. Same with diameter - if it’s too small you just increase the spinder size.
Yeah, main bearings on car, like crankshaft and cam are solid bearings and journals. Wheelbearings are a timpkin flat roller, I think, to support a lot of load and thrust. They are packed and sealed. But if it isn’t heat, then I would say the part size just gets big when you need an inner race (around shaft), bearings , then outer race, housed in a bracket. Lot cheaper for just the sacrificial part, till the wear like you show starts affecting other parts.
Lol my old Maytag is probably the most polite and introverted appliance in my house.
mine is a few blocks away, and requires sacrifice of an always-increasing amount of coinage (literally every other trip costs more).
the dryer half does the same but also now takes twice as long to do its job–requiring even more coinage sacrifice.
they’re also now scared of the dark (it isn’t 24/7 like it used to be), meaning i can’t go there at odd hours to avoid people.
My AEG has been running steadily for 15 years in my possession. It was used already when I got it. It’s a very simple one with no alarm, no display, not even a tiny one with a timer. Just a dial and a start button. The door sometimes needs an extra push to lock fully.
I took the buzzer off my dryer immediately once I heard it the first time. I don’t need that in my life. 10/10 would recommend to anyone that is even slightly annoyed with a laundry buzzer.
My old washer died about two weeks ago. It was a 30 year old Frigidaire that shorted something and made magic smoke. That was a pretty asshole move.
We replaced it with a Speed Queen and it’s been great so far.
I learned my lesson the hard way too. After suffering, I bought the cheapest washer and dryer at the local appliance store, it has an end of cycle alarm that was a simple unplug in the back panel.
My dryer is a Kenmore from the 80s. It is incredibly loud, and I have to push it back in place after every load. It has never broken, though.
Samsung front loader washing machine here.
It is generally musical while selecting program options. It sings a little song when finished, which is only after it unlocks the door. The little song only plays once. The little song can be changed to other tunes by subtle and undocumented button presses.
After about 10 minutes it plays a few notes while turning itself off that are easily recognisable as the notes it plays when it turns itself off, so if you miss the first little song, once you hear that you know it’s definitely finished. After that it is done. No more door locking shenanigans or tumbling or clothes.
Generally I use the “sportswear” cycle which is about 1 hour, my clothes are generally not that dirty. Sometimes I treat towels / linen to a hot cotton cycle which is 2.5 hours and a 90 degree (Celsius) wash.
Had it for 10 years now, no mechanical or electrical issues. I always leave the door ajar when finished and once every few months I do a cleaning cycle.
I also have a Fisher and Paykel dryer. I have owned it for 8 years, in which time it has needed a replacement drive belt as it gets used heavily. The bushes on the drum need replacing soon, but I just turned it upside down so it will last for a while longer
Regarding your door issues, well that’s because idiots try and open the door during a load, and then when it’s locked, they turn it off and still try and open the door. They subsequently complain about the water going everywhere. Don’t forget that manufacturers have to deal with the lowest common denominator end user.
Name and shame my guy
Bosch Serie 4
I have a Kenmore 80 Series washer and dryer set. There’s a knob on the control panels to turn the buzzer off. It runs until it’s finished. There is no lid lock, the washer is top-loading. The drum brake is a bit loud these days, should probably look into that. And it’s probably about time to clean out the dryer’s vent, the dull men’s club will enjoy that.
I mostly fight with AEG’s auto dose, they have built it in a way where the gaskets only lasts a year before it starts dripping liquid detergent.
They gave me a replacement but now it’s dripping again.
Liquid detergent with Auto dose is cool and all, but stick to powder if you want to save yourself some worry.
We have a front filter drain model. If draining is stuck you flip the flap open, and uncap the drain tube and lower it into a shallow container. Check the filter, and close the flap. I have had to do this 2-3 times in 5 years
Fuck modern appliances.
I’m lucky enough to have bought both washer/dryer almost 20 years ago. Both of 'em for $600 at Future Shop, which now ironically only exists in the past.I never really think about these appliances, which is the nice part that I realky love about them.
They don’t remind me they exist with beeps or phone notifications. They just do their thing.
Anyway, the washer is an old, cheap top loader, that can also periodically be used to tamp the soil beneath your foundation to make sure your house is stable. You activate that feature by bunching the bed sheets all wrong on the same side of the drum.
That’s a nice feature that’s been deprecated in newer models.
It’s an overall easy model to repair because it’s mostly just an oversized salad spinner with 2 water valves and a pump.
The dryer is like the quiet nephew that you like but never hear much about, nothing much to say really, but it works.Anyway.
When the temperature dial on the washer broke 15 years ago, there was no way I was paying $90 to buy some complicated part that would break again.
So I just removed the knob and twisted the stranded wires to a dumb switch that you could reach by putting your finger in the knob hole as a proof of concept, left for the cold valve, right for hot. Sketchy? Sure. Warm? I don’t know? Use a bit of both, or whatever.
I never even got around to actually solder it, which is weird because I’ve soldered lots of electronics. It worked, I guess I forgot, so whatever.Until it stopped working a few months ago, having finally shaken itself loose and I opened it up again, only then realizing I didn’t solder it way back then. Oops.
This time, I ordered a proper 3 position rotary switch, which I did solder. Left for the cold valve, right for the hot valve, and amazingly: middle for both, which is how warm water is made.
I also 3d printed a knob to fit the new switch.
Fancy right? but my last repair is still nowhere near as complicated as the original broken part was and we still only ever use the cold water setting.Now, it turns out the reason the original part is complicated and expensive is that in normal washers, the temperature selection thingy only ever changes the washing temperature and not the rinsing temperature.
This means which valve needs to open has to change depending on where it is in the wash cycle, thus the more complicated part.Anyway, technically, my washer now has more features than before it broke in the sense that we could theoretically now rinse with hot or warm water, which y’all plebs probably can’t. Not that we ever use anything but the cold setting, but we could and you can’t.
The dryer? It has just kept working.
Now and then we’d feed it something wrong like a bunch of loose balls from an old bearing that was sitting in a pant pocket or a set of lockpicks or whatever and I take the back panel apart to retrieve the stuff stuck in the back elbow somewhere. When that happens, I also vacuum the lint that is stuck in this quantum realm of not being caught in the lint filter, but also not expelled out, just caught in that same hungry void elbow.Both have no music, no tunes, no beeps, no capacitive buttons that you don’t quite know if you pressed or not, no lockout, although there’s a safety switch that stops the drum from turning if you open the lid. No wifi, no app, no mold.
There’s no soap dispenser, although I do have a peristaltic pump and tubing so I could easily enough just drop that in a jug of liquid detergent and time how much to use… but… we prefer powder detergent anyway because shipping water around is just dumb when I can get the same shit in concentrated powder and add water myself, which washing machines conveniently already do.
A bucket of the stuff lasts several years too.They’re old and all that, but these things keep on doing what they’re made for while friends have gone through 3-4 sets in the same time line.
Fuck modern appliances.
