Sep. 1, 2008 - Washer Hypothesis
The walls are painted, so now I can tell the next chapter of the washing machine story.
My daughter came to me last week and asked where her work uniform had been washed. Since she started working at Canadian Tire she has to differentiate between that uniform and her cadet uniform.
“It’s in the wash,” I said.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth we looked at each other in the sudden realization of what being “in the wash” meant. The clothes were in the washing machine. They were with the load that had been started, and stopped with the F20 error message.
“I need them tonight.” She was working that evening. Good grief.
So I said we’d try the load again. I put it on, using only cold water of course since the hot had been disconnected due to the valve not working, and checked back every 5 minutes or so to see if it was still going. I had to see how far into the cycle it got before shutting off so that I would know if the load was washed enough to just put it on another rinse and be done.
The wash load went by unhindered. I fully expected it to stop at some point during the rinse. I wanted to know how far into the rinse cycle it got so that I would know if it needed an extra rinse afterwards or not. So, as it moved on into the rinse cycle I decided to just stay in the laundry room and wait. I got a hot cup of tea and a stool and sat down and waited. And waited. And waited.
35 minutes later the cycle was complete. The load had gone through the whole thing without any trouble. A watched pot may never boil, but a watched washer does wash. However, it does not wash every time.
Since then we have put several more loads on and some have gone through and others have stopped somewhere during the cycle, giving the F20 error message. My brilliant engineer has a theory about this. He hypothesized that the washer, with only the cold tap to draw water from, may not have enough water pressure to complete the load if someone uses cold water elsewhere in the house. So we are trying this theory out and hopefully if we refrain from flushing toilets or using large amounts of cold water during the wash cycle we’ll be able to take a dent out of the mound of laundry that has been building this past week.
Meanwhile, my kitchen and library walls are now a beautiful “silver leaf” green, and we will be spending the better part of today putting the rooms back together again. And there is talk of painting the living room (and connected areas) yet this fall!
