Aug. 26, 2008 - The Curse of the Washing Machine
It’s ba-ack. (Cue Twilight Zone music.)
I was washing dishes this morning. At least, I was trying to wash some dishes. You see, I had just made a double batch of zucchini loaves…that is, I had made the batter for the two loaves. I had not baked them yet. When I took the pans out of the drawer below the oven (note to self: move storage location of loaf pans) it came to my immediate attention that they would require cleaning before I could use them for the zucchini loaves. I have several loaf pans, but two particularly sturdy, red silicone ones are the pans of choice for loaves such as this. No problem, I thought in innocence, I’ll wash these, get the loaves in the oven, and then do up the rest of my baking dishes.
No problem, just turn on the water to rinse things off and wait for it to heat up enough to wash the pans. The water running constantly, I had everything rinsed in the still cold water. Why isn’t the water heating up? What’s going on? I know I have a load of laundry in, but it should be almost finished and one load, which is all I’d done so far that day, should not drain the tank completely! …should it?
I decided it might be prudent to check on the laundry. The light on the washer that tells me what cycle it’s in was lit beside the “cycle complete” indicator. So it’s finished, is it? Yet water continued to pour into the tub. I pressed the “cancel/pause” button. All lights went off as the washer power was obviously stopped. Yet the water continued to pour. I could see the water level rising higher inside the glass door of my front-loader. Ok, let’s try a “drain/spin” cycle. I set the cycle up and pressed start. It began to drain. Water continued to fill the tank almost as quickly as it drained out. It began to spin. Still the water showed no sign of stopping or even slowing its eternal flow.
What now? As any self-respecting handy woman would do, I reached for the phone and called my husband. He is an engineer, after all, so he’ll know what to do.
“We’re having a washer crisis. The thing won’t stop pouring water into the tub.” I explained what I had tried thus far to curb the flow of liquid.
“Turn the water off.” Sounds simple.
“Where? Behind the washer? I’m afraid I don’t have 5 foot arms.” I would have to go in from beside the dryer because the washer is flush against the side wall, but the dryer has about a foot and a half space on the other side of it. This meant going in beside the dryer and behind the dryer to the taps behind the washer.
“You’ll have to go behind the washer and shut off both valves.”
“Behind the washer? I think I’m going to need a smaller person to do that.” Now, I am not heavy by most standards, and stand a mere 5’ almost 1” tall, but it was pretty clear to me that there was no way I was going to be able to squeeze behind two machines that stood less than a foot from the wall.
“You should be able to pull the dryer out a bit. It’s pretty light.” Light by my athletic, 6-foot husband’s standards is a whole different ball game from what would be light by my infinitely non-athletic, rather slight frame’s standards. Besides, both washer and dryer stand on plywood (to keep them from vibrating due to being on unstable upstairs flooring) with a lip around it that would not be easy to lift the dryer over.
“Ok, I’m going to have to hang up so I have both arms free. Thanks.”
I hung up the phone and called to my skinny children, “Who can fit behind the washer?” Two such children came running, the one disappointed that her brother beat her to the fun task. I instructed my son to turn both taps off, at which time the flow of the water finally began to ebb, and eventually stop altogether. I put the current load on a “drain/spin” cycle in an attempt to de-waterlog the load (of course this had to be a comforter and sheets load).
The sheets & blanket are now in the dryer, drying. And my washer is unusable until my busy engineer is able to troubleshoot the problem and get it fixed. I am glad I almost caught up the laundry last night, though I wish now that I had put that last load in at suppertime. So one dark load sits on my laundry room floor, hoping that it will not soon be buried beneath another mountain such as it saw last September…
At least this time my engineer is not out of town.
Comments
Aug. 26, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Jacqueline
LOL! I kept waiting for you to say that the washer had overflowed and caused a flood, like what happened here last year. I'm glad that I didn't hear that. Hope you get the problem all fixed soon.
