The washer is dead, long live the washer

After two previous near-death experiences that would probably have cause most people to replace it, our washing machine became gravely ill again a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't technically dead, just agitating very poorly. We decided it was finally time to invest in a new one. D made a strong argument for a front loader despite my vow to never give up on top-loading. As almost always happens when we want to invest in an electronic, we turned to the wirecutter's recommendations (which also explained why top loaders are less than ideal as front-load technology has become so much better). We decided their reasoning was sound and proceeded to order the recommended pair, the eloquently named LG WM3770HWA and its mate. There was a complication over the drier (more on that later), staggering our delivery dates a bit. So for one weekend, we went from this:

 to this:

There are lots of fancy shmancy settings that, even after reading the manual, I have no idea how to use (seriously, I cannot figure out the difference between "extra rinse" and "rinse and spin" and still don't really know when to use the various sanitary/steam/"allergiene (TM)"settings. But it has lots of overrides so I can get exactly what I want, has a "cold" wash that adds extra time but is more energy efficient and equally as cleaning, and has its own water heater so that we can actually, for once, wash our cloth diapers in actual hot water (our old washer could only use the temperature out of the water heater, which for safety reasons we leave at 120 degrees). It spins out much more water than our old washer, which means things are almost dry before they ever touch the dryer. It's energy star too, which is good for saving power and also for the rebates we're eligible to claim.

One annoying negative is that the door opens with the hinges on the left, which is not changeable. It blocks the way to the dryer. The hoses are too short to switch the order (i.e. move the washer to the left). The only solution we've come up with is to buy another laundry basket, move the wet clothes to the basket, then drag it over and load from the basket into the dryer. I'm sure we'll get used to it, but it's pretty irritating.

The big win is the surprise at the bottom. I knew I wanted to put the unit on pedestals because the added height makes it a little easier to load/unload. For only $100 more than the cost of the pedestal, thanks to a sale, I got a "sidekick." It's a tiny washer under the big washer. It uses its own water and settings, so I can run a hot load above while running a cold load below (or just a load below - it doesn't need the top to be on in order to run). I have no idea if it will be worth it in the long run, but the novelty right now is huge. So far I've cautiously upped the ante on what I've tested, even venturing to some hand knits that I would never mix with regular laundry. This might save me from having to hand wash as much as I do now. I also plan to try it on cloth diapers for those times we have one or two and don't want to wait until we have a full load (like this morning when I discovered last night's diaper up in the girls' room after we did the full cloth diaper load last night). D's extra muddy bike clothes will also get the sidekick treatment.

I had planned to write this post up on Saturday, not Monday, so there would be more suspense before the dryer arrived but...

Stay tuned as I put it through its paces.

Back from the Brink

This post has an alternate title of "My Husband is Awesome" which is maybe poorly timed for a *mothers day* weekend post. But yet again my husband has brought our laundry appliance back from near death. In 2014, the washing machine stopped agitating. In 2015, our dryer stopped heating. After apparently a year's hiatus, it was time for another problem. For a few weeks, the washing machine spun so aggressively and out of balance that I thought it would bounce its way across the basement floor. I went down several times a load to try to rearrange our wet laundry, but it never seemed to help. 

After a little reading and YouTube research, D was ready to take the whole thing apart and try to diagnose it himself. First, the top panel:

 Then all the rest:

At last, the problem! The hook (circled in red) that attached a spring between the drum and the frame had been attached at a spot that was totally rusted through (arrow) and was now freely hanging. So nothing was restraining the drum from banging all around when it was spinning.

What to do? Drill a new hole next to the hold one and reattach the spring, of course. And so in a half hour, with 0 cost, our washing machine is back in tip top shape.* Yay for handy husbands!

* I mean, as tip top as a rusty old washing machine can be. I know it's just a matter of time before there's something we can't fix. But I adore my totally dumb, manual mechanic appliance and will be so sad when we finally have to buy a new fangled "smart" one.

Agitator Dogs

The inserts of our pocket diapers haven't been getting cleaned as well recently. We assumed it was because we were being lazy and not removing the pee and poop-ridden inserts by hand. The inserts were coming out by the end of the wash cycle, but they may have been only coming out in the last spin cycle. After I started another wash cycle this morning, I found another potential reason - the agitator wasn't agitating. After some quick Googling, I found a lot of videos which explained the probable cause: agitator dog wear. Below is the agitator.

After pulling the top off, we can see a (scummy) cap. The (scummy) cap can be pulled off.

Now we can see the mechanism of the agitator. It's similar to a bicycle hub, where a ratchet-spline system is used to propel the shaft. After removing the 7/16 bolt in the center we can get at the individual parts.

After pulling out the inner section we can easily see the splines (tooth-looking things) of the agitator shell.

The agitator dogs are the yellow plastic bits on the photo below. On a bike hub, they'd be called ratchets. A local Sears appliance store had them in stock, so we didn't have to wait for an Amazon delivery. This must be a fairly popular product, since the women at the store knew what I was talking about when I asked if they had a "reservoir dog" in stock.

The new agitator dogs have three teeth on them - the older dogs have maybe one tooth left. Once I popped in the new dogs and put it all back together, the agitator was working very vigorously again. It was an easy fix and only cost about $20 in parts ($10 for an extender rod for the ratchet and the agitator dogs were another $10). I'm sure a service call would have cost a lot more money.

Hot and Cold

We made good progress on last week's Honey-do list, though we didn't make it through quite all the way (that window pane is never getting replaced, is it?). Today I'll cover one repair that was pretty quick and easy (says the girl wielding the camera while everyone else was doing the heavy lifting): replacing the hoses on our washing machine.

The washer actually says that the hoses should be switched out every 5 years and the ones in place looked a lot older than that. We were ready with stainless steel hoses that don't need replacing, so now we can proceed with being lazy, a skill we are already very good at.

The hoses are conveniently laced with blue and red to keep them straight, and we made sure to only install one at a time to make sure we didn't mix them up on installation.

 Step one, move washer away from the wall (duh).

Step two, disconnect old hose, keeping a bucket ready since the hoses have water in them:

Step three, magically fast forward 5 minutes and voila! New hoses!

Only kidding--step three was to screw the new hoses back on with a wrench, but I'm sure smart people like you already figured that one out. Step four, not shown, is say a little prayer and do a load of laundry. We kept the washing machine pushed out for the first load, just so we could keep an eye on the connection and make sure we didn't spring a leak. All clear!

This one was so easy that I'm embarrassed it took so long to get around to doing. But it was easier having a few more big strong people around to help.

Honey-do list

It's September which means, if you go all the way back to this post from March, that we need to revisit the notion of getting our heating system fixed. We still have no idea of the ideal solution to make the warmed water in our baseboards get to all the rooms in the house. We still don't know who to hire. But, fortunately, we do have some wonderful friends who know more than we do. Next weekend a car full of family and family friends are headed our way to give a more knowledgeable look at the heat system and hopefully propose a few solutions that we can take back to the heating specialists.

Not one to waste a car ride, my family also asked me to put together a list of all the little things we need to do around the house that are just one notch up from "total amateur" so that they can take a look while they're here. Makes perfect sense! And makes for a decent blog post too. So without further adieu, our list of things that need doing, not all of which will happen next weekend:

(Advance apologies to anyone reading this via an RSS feed--I might update this post if I think of more things...)

• The post lantern at the bottom of our walkway is out and it's not the lightbulb or the circuit breaker.  That's the extent of our electrical knowledge for a fixture that travels 30 feet away from our house underground.

• The handles in our main bathroom sink are backwards (the "on"position turns the water off, the "off" position turns them on) and it drives us--and our guests--crazy.

• Our basement light switch crackles when we turn it on and the lights flicker a little (we're pretty sure we just need to rewire a new switch, but want confirmation before we play around with electricity).

• This is pretty embarrassing but 3 months after we bought this house, a branch came through a window pane. And yeah, we still haven't fixed it. Probably should do it before it gets cold but hey, the tape has already made it through 3 winters and we plan to replace all the windows...eventually. Plus it's usually behind blinds and curtains, so it's only an eyesore on the outside of the house.

• We love our new bathroom but we don't love the drain. There's nowhere to put in an easy-to-empty hair trap and I shed. So poor D has to unscrew all the hardware and use a plumber's snake every week or two to clean it out. There has to be a better solution!

• The hoses connected to our washing machine say they need to be replaced every 5 years and we've already lived here for nearly 3 years, so it's probably time to change them.

• We bought an insulation wrap for our water heater 2 winters ago but my fear of fiberglass* (and us being lazy and forgetful) has meant our water heater remains scandalously naked. 

• Thought we bought it over a year ago, when my parents helped us de-lint the dryer, the new vent for our dryer remained uninstalled.

(You can see the roll of fiberglass insulation for the water heater and, next to it, the new dryer vent, just hanging out here serving absolutely no purpose.)

*Last time we bought fiberglass wrapping for our pipes, I somehow got little fiberglass particles all over me in the store despite trying to be very careful. It itched and burned and I'm a little scared to work with it again.

OK, this post was supposed to be short but became depressingly long as I wandered around looking at things we need to do around here. And it's not like we don't regularly work on home improvement projects. I guess the job of a homeowner is never done....I'm sure we won't get all of this done next weekend, but at least we have plenty to keep us busy. And a list to keep us on track throughout the fall.

Overflow

While working upstairs, letting the mechanical water-mediated clothes thrasher (aka: washing machine) clean some sheets, I heard a strange noise. I went downstairs, holding the all-to-common homeowner pang of fear in my belly (oh lord, what is broken now?). Thirty six of out thirty seven times, it's nothing. Unfortunately this was the 37th time.

The washing machine vents the excess water into the utility sink. The water (and excess detergent) goes down the drain, to the sewer, and eventually ends up in the Chesapeake, contributing to its death. This time the compact was broken - the water (and suds) were just sitting in the sink. If I hadn't come down, the next water dump probably would have overwhelmed the sink. I opened the lid to the washer to pause it and began a series of futile actions.

1. I tried the plunger. That didn't work.
2. I tried to remove the trap. We don't own pliers large enough to fit around the bolt. Curses!

I decide to wet/vac the water out of the sink to let the washer finish. I now know that our washer (on permanent press) fills and empties the basin THREE times. That's a lot of water.

After returning from Home Depot with a big channel plier:

3. I remove the trap and find....nothing. Oh crap.

After returning from Home Depot with an drain snake (less awesome than it sounds):

4. I run all 25 feet and remove.....nothing. Double crap.

Now I'm all out of ideas. I'm forced to call in a plumber. He tries to clear the clog with his drill-powered 25 foot drain snake. Fail. What's next? More power tools of course. He cuts through the drain pipe (shared with the kitchen sink) with a reciprocating saw

and runs 10 foot long heavy duty snake segments through our pipes. He has five of these. The first three do nothing. Halfway through the fourth one, he hits the blockage. He clamps up the cut and I pay him $240.

To delay this from occurring again, I've installed some filters to catch the crud from the washer and other junk we put in the sink.

After the first rinse, I'm already seeing lint being collected.

When doing this load I used 1/3 the recommended detergent and even on the final rinse, there's still a lot of suds.

This article is right, I guess.