SUN CITY WEST, Ariz. — Laundromats are packed with many machines, each of which has many parts that will eventually fail. All told, there are probably thousands of parts in a typical self-service laundry.
Many parts rarely fail, while others can fail repeatedly. It’s been my experience that the majority of equipment failures come from a lack of routine maintenance and are many times caused by lint buildup.
So let’s take a look at the most common failures, the reasons behind them, and what can be done to not only diagnose and fix them, but to slow down their frequency.
The nature of the laundromat business is that it attracts many who think that one practically runs itself. Or at least it does part of the time, with a minimum of effort. Therefore, a newbie can become overwhelmed with keeping the equipment in good working condition.
The good news is that many common equipment issues cost very little to fix … once you know how to diagnose and repair them.
COMMON WASHER FAILURES
Let’s start with the simplest understanding of how a washer works. Water goes in, the motor turns the basket, the water drains out, and the motor spins the basket. That’s basically it!
OK, so you come in and someone in your crew tells you, “A customer said Washer No. 17 doesn’t have enough water during the cycle.” So you turn on the machine to check it and discover that it’s not filling at all, but you can hear the water entering and see water vigorously flushing down the soap boxes.
At least you know it’s not the fill valves, so the drain valve must be only closing partly or not at all.
You’ll need to shut the power down, open the machine and inspect the inside of the drain valve by removing the hose from the tub to the valve … by golly, it’s an obstruction!
If you’re lucky, you’ll see something inside that’s preventing the valve door from sealing completely. It could be anything: a bottle cap, credit card, keys, etc. You can clean out the valve, put the hose back on, and try again. Most likely that fixes it.
If you have troughs, you can easily check to see if any washers are leaking water out the back during the wash while the drain valve should be closed.
These partial obstructions are an insidious waste of water since the machine is continuously trying to fill the machine throughout the cycle as the water gets lost down the drain. If you have enough washers doing this, you’ll be paying a bigger water bill than you should!
Sometimes, it goes the other way and the washer won’t drain, or it takes a long time.
This is also from an obstruction, namely a lint ball inside the drain that built up to the point that it’s plugging the drain valve so much that the water can’t drain out. Removing the lint ball should fix it. If there’s no lint ball in the valve, there could be a buildup further down the drain so you’ll need to visualize and confirm by removing the drain hose behind the washer.
It’s also possible that the washer has a blockage at the bottom of the tub before reaching the drain valve. Visualize the tub drain by shining a flashlight downward so you can peer through the holes of the basket. Such a blockage is usually due to some kind of plastic card.
The next most common drain valve issue is that the valve isn’t getting the power to shut its door. This is most commonly due to the air pressure hose that actuates the fill switch.
If air is leaking from the hose, or if gunk has it blocked at the bottom, the air cannot rise up the hose to create enough air pressure to trigger the fill switch. Clean the gunk out of the bulb.
I found that after a few years, the end of the hose that is slipped over the level switch nipple can stretch out. Remove the hose, cut about one-third of an inch off and reattach.
If you have a machine that contains wet, soapy laundry at the end of the cycle, the customer likely put soap in the softener compartment. But if they didn’t, the cause is almost surely a blocked drain.
Coming Tuesday in Part 2: More common washer failures, and the value of a repair log
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Bruce Beggs at [email protected].
