Be Excellent To Each Other

So about an hour ago I walked down to the kitchen to get a cup of tea, and my ears were assailed by a most unusual sound coming from the utility room, a sound that can only be described as 'the gushing of water'.

Upon opening the door to the utility room and stepping in, I found myself standing in an inch of water, and looking to the corner of the room where the washing machine is, there was a geyser of water shooting up from behind the washing machine with such force that it was going straight up to the ceiling and then splashing down in quite an impressive 'ceiling waterfall' effect.

After having a little panic I remembered that the stop-cock is outside in the yard, so I went outside, plunged my hand into the horrible manky hole where it resides, and turned the water off at the mains.

Surveying the damage it could have been worse, it managed to miss the plug sockets and the boiler, and having cleared everything out of the room and sweeping all the water and crud out into the yard - there's nothing in there that won't dry out. Anything in there that was cardboard is trashed, and it had managed to completely saturate the washing basket and all the washing in it.

Having pulled the washing machine out and looking under the worktop, the cause of the disaster was the washing machine's hot water feed pipe coming off the 'mains pipe' that it joins to. (The washing machine has a hot and cold water feed.)

Over an hour's clean up later and the room is back in reasonable shape, however, this is where I'm a bit confused. I've attached a couple of pics, one shows what it looked like when I got to it (I've restored mains water to the house so I've turned the valve to the off position, as of course as soon as I turn it back on mains pressure water will again shoot up to the ceiling), and the other shows me having put the pipe back on to the best of my ability.

If you look at the two pipes, it's very obvious that the cold water pipe is far more snug and properly attached to its feed pipe, to the extent that I can't get it off with my hands. The hot water pipe however clearly isn't back on properly at all, and whilst if I turn the valve back on, the pipe stays in place, I won't trust it not to pop off again (I can easily pull it off with my hands).

So the question is, in the midst of the disaster, has a washer or something other little gubbin become detached and lost? Or has the hot water pipe never been attached properly and we've just been lucky up to now? I don't want to call a plumber out for such a trivial job, but at the same time we're currently minus a washing machine so something has to be done. (It always draws from the hot pipe for the wash cycle, even if it's just pulling cold water through.)

BEEX hive advice appreciated

Probably best just to get a replacement hose for the hot feed. They're not going to be expensive, the MEA should sell them or maybe B&Q if it can't wait until tomorrow. I'm going up in a bit actually so could do a reccy for you, let you know if they actually do have them

Thanks flis

It's not mega-urgent as we generally keep on top of the washing so it'll certainly wait until tomorrow, I'm going to try the MEA and B&Q tomorrow myself, but the bit that's puzzling me is that the pipe doesn't look to me as if it could ever have been properly attached, which is weird.

Are they a standard sort of fitment then?

What a nightmare, glad nothing has been too badly damaged. Lucky you went for that cup of tea!
The connection doesn't look good at all, I'd probably just nip over to B and Q and get a replacement part if that's easy enough to do. I don't know what those connections are like but when I come across something and I'm not sure what bits are needed or how it works I find it helps to compare it to a correct bit so can you compare it with the cold water pipe and see if any parts are missing or bent?
Hope you get it fixed easily, I doubt you'd need a plumber.

Yeah, most of them have a 90deg bend on the hose were it enters the washing machine and the pipe size and fitting types should be standard for all machines. It's still probably best to take the old one with you when you go shopping though, just in case!

The fitting between the hose and the part that screws onto the pipe has failed for whatever reason but if it had happened sooner, you'd have had this problem sooner. Sometimes things just break.

I've just had a look in my garage as I have one of those hoses spare and it seems to me that the bit that's come off on yours, shouldn't actually come off at all.

The cream plastic bit above the red turny bit (Technical, I know!) should be inside the metal bit and stuck there fast! I couldn't pull mine out at all.

So in closing... get a new one! It's knackered.

Thanks for the help guys, and thanks for taking a look at your spare pipe Mr Vision too, now I understand what's actually happened it makes more sense

Me and anything even remotely DIY just don't get along at all, I hate it when things break.

B&Q tomorrow it is!

Get a washboard.

He should turn up the counter of B&Q with someone playing some funky 70s guitar in the background - "Need your washing machine repairing?"

Ooh, meant to reply to this again yesterday! AE, if you read this before you go to B&Q, they definitely have them in....they're in the plumbing aisle (shockingly) and they're just under £5 each.

Easy fix mate, good luck!

I'm proud of you all.

My washing machine, does not have a 'hot' connector. So I have a spare cable.

Modern ones don't. They use so little water that the hot feed is redundant.

Hmph FTFY.

(Hot feed is great if you have lots of solar heated water to use up)

I never understood how it was supposed to be more efficient to heat your water in the washing machine, rather than take it in already heated?

Same amount of water that needs heating to the same temperature regardless, non?

That and it's stupidly inefficient to have your boiler heat water to ~60C* only for the washer to mix it back down to 30C. Whether the gas heating of the former versus the leckial of the latter balances it out I don't know.

* Though ours is set to ~35C at the moment due to the shower cubicle being bust; the water pressure's shit enough that if you turn a cold tap on while the bath hot tap is on the boiler shuts down.

Ah, good point, ignore all previous.

In theory it's a great idea - use water that's quickly and cheaply heated with gas, instead of expensive electricity.
The problem comes in practice if your gas boiler is some distance away, by the time the hot gets through the washer is already full of cold..

Out of interest, is gas still cheap compared to electricity?

Boilers should have a third output/setting, in addition to central heating and tap water. But I suppose the added cost would never repay itself. Except in the ongoing (opulent) existence of the human race.

Last I checked it was just slightly cheaper than night rate electricity.



You mean a low temperature output for washing machines?
Wouldn't make a lot of difference - OK you're unnecessarily heating to 60, but you're only making a small amount if the machine mixes it down again. Roughly even in terms of energy use.

Also, the recent machines that *did* have a hot water intake only used it for the 60 and above degree settings so that wasn't a concern anyway.

Yes, because electricity is incredibly inefficient to generate - mainly involving the burning of a lot of gas in the process. You might as well cut out the middle man.

Our washing machine only has a cold water feed. We usually wash at low temperatures too so that's good.

Also: when our old washing machine broke we were out all day and it flooded the entire downstairs meaning we had to live upstairs for about 3 months until everything was sorted out. Not fun.

You'd have thought an industrial gas power station would be more efficient than a domestic boiler though.

Why don't they run the generators on electricity then if it's cheaper?

*Waits for Kissyfur*

It's very efficient at making electricity - something like 40%. The remaining 60% of the heat energy in the gas goes out of the cooling stack. Not into your washing machine. A domestic gas boiler gets about 90% of the energy into your washing machine. Well, into the hot water, anyway.

Anyway, use renewable wind & hydro electricity and avoid that. Or make your own solar hot water and then.. Oh.
HTH.

"Where were you when you heard that Zardoz had solved the world's energy supply crisis?"

Woohoo new pipe get!

Was exactly where you said they were flis and cost the princely sum of £4.89p - they even come in a choice of two dashing colours, red or blue.

Got it fitted no problem, washing machine back in action The cold water feed pipe looks a bit raggedy so I might actually replace that one too come to think about it.

As for the 'feed in cold water or hot water' efficiency question I have wondered about that myself.

However, we're on an oil-fired boiler and I'd say that's probably cheaper than leccy.

On top of that, the boiler is often on anyway, so if it's already got a little tank of hot water in it (it's a combi-boiler), surely it makes more sense to feed the already heated water into the washing machine rather than ice cold water that it then has to heat up like a big kettle.

All that said, if the boiler isn't on I don't bother switching it on just to heat the water up to feed into the washing machine.

So you'd be washing in cold water? Or does your washing machine heat up the water if it's only getting cold water through?

No it still heats the water up to where it needs to be, it'll just use the hot water to get it off to a head start.

If you're on a 90C cottons wash for example, it'll never pull in water that hot from the boiler.

There's a thermostat, so it will add electric heat as needed to bring the temperature up. But as said, unless you're doing 60 deg C or above washes it won't bother taking hot water in the first place, on most machines.

All this talk of washing machine cold fill efficiency and no-one has talked about dishwashers? My dishwasher uses something like 15 l of water for a normal cycle, which it heats up to 50-65 deg C (it varies depending on how dirty the plates are, based on an optical sensor on the outlet pipe and a measurement taken during the initial rinse; neat tech). And that's an efficient one. And yet I'm not sure I've ever seen a dishwasher with a hot fill hose.

A more important question regarding dishwashers. Why is it that <certain types of people> can never load them correctly?

I will leave the replacement of <certain types of people> as an exercise for the reader.

Doesn't an average washing machine use about 80l though?

My old dishwasher had a heating element in it. I know this as after I removed most of the stuff, stood in a puddle of water and turned it on at the mains, there was some massive blue flash. Then I decided getting a new one would be a good idea. Washing gets done at 30 degrees at Malitowers, dishwashing gets done on the eco setting.

@Trooper: Racist.

Annoying, isn't it?

See also - stacking the supermarket conveyor belt.

Edit- Nevermind, I misread.

It was, until I decided I was best staying out of the whole process completely

Women can't load dishwashers properly, it's as simple as that.

Is it the Greeks?

Fuckers can't help throwing them in.

Sexist.

I blame Plate-o.

It's not sexist if it's true!

There are 3 males in my house, none of them can do it even slightly right.

So you are wrong. It's men what can't do anything load dishwashers anything. I was right the first time.

Sexist!

The best dishwasher I've ever used was a Grinstead Winterhalter GS15E. It had an 87 second hot cycle, and a 67 colder cycle. It was awesomes.

EIGHTY FUCKING LITERS??? I use 2 sinkfuls. About 10l total. You wasteful, earth burning horrors!

In related news, I have reduced by daily leccy draw by 25% by replacing my totally overpowered media server with a NAS and a tiny old P4 for light duties

You wash your clothes in the sink?

I retract my statement.

Although my washine machine uses nowhere near 80ltr on a normal wash.