Five minutes a month that keeps a washing machine alive
Most machines that die early were not broken. They were loaded wrong, never drained, and shut damp after every wash. None of this costs anything.
A washing machine is the appliance people replace soonest and look after least. Almost nothing on this page costs money, and all of it adds years.
Leave the door open
The single easiest one. A drum shut damp after a hot wash is a warm, wet, dark box, and what grows in it is what makes clothes come out of a clean machine smelling faintly wrong.
Leave the door ajar between washes. Pull out the detergent drawer and leave that open too — it is the other place that stays wet and nobody ever looks at. Wipe the rubber seal around the door now and then, especially the fold at the bottom, where water sits and things collect.
Find the filter, because there is one
Most front-loaders have a small hatch at the bottom front. Behind it is a filter, and behind the filter is everything that has come out of everybody’s pockets for the last two years.
Put a shallow tray and a towel down first — water comes out, always more than you expect. Unscrew it, clear it, screw it back.
A blocked filter makes the machine work harder to drain, and a pump that works harder is a pump that fails sooner. This is the repair we are most often called out for, and it is the one you can do yourself.
Stop overloading it
The drum should have room. A machine packed to the door cannot tumble, which means the clothes do not get clean, the bearings take the strain, and an unbalanced load bangs around on the spin.
That banging is not the machine being dramatic. It is the bearings, and bearings are one of the repairs where the cost starts to rival a new machine.
Check the pockets, every time
Coins and keys are what put a hole in the drum, and they go through the seal on their way. It takes five seconds and it is the cheapest insurance in the house.
Give it an empty hot wash now and then
Nothing in it, hottest cycle, no clothes. It clears out the detergent residue and the film that builds up where you cannot reach. If your water is hard — and a lot of Islamabad water is — this matters more.
When it is worth calling somebody
A machine that stops mid-cycle, fills but will not spin, or leaks from underneath has a fault, and it has perhaps a dozen possible causes costing very different amounts. That is why our price list says inspection first for these, with the inspection price printed next to it. Anybody who quotes you a repair over the phone, without seeing it, is guessing.
One thing before you call anybody: if the machine is still under the maker’s warranty, go to them. Letting anybody else open it usually ends the warranty, and that costs you far more than the visit saves.