Story: The Day's a Wash
A short story about how I spent my day with my old friend the broken washing machine. WARNING: Contains lots of swearing and clamping.
-T'was my second official day of vacation and I awoke planning a slow day of overeating, playing N64 games, and doing some Blender exercises. Instead, my morning was interrupted by an error message flashing on our laundry machine: ERR 21, along with a phone number to call.
Now, first of all I'd rather bleed out than have a phone conversation with just about anybody. Secondly, the machine is at least 9 years old (it came with our home) so the number probably goes nowhere anyways, and thirdly fuck you, I'll fix it myself... Right?
Error 21 means the tub isn't draining, which I quickly figured out on account of the tub being half full of underwear water. Most standalone washing machines have a little door on them to access the drain pump trap in case some stupid stuff gets sucked into it, but of course our machine did not fall into that category. Instead, in a wonderful demonstration of modern consumer hostility, it requires being entirely disassembled to access the trap.
It was quite an adventure of discovery, actually: First you need to remove the top plate via screws on the back of the machine, which reveals the screws you need to remove to take off the control panel, which reveals the screws you need to remove the entire front plate and door. Oh, but don't forget to take off the spring that keeps the rubbery floppy seal in place, and definitely don't forget to hike the entire washing machine up high enough that you can access the four screws on the fucking bottom.
With the machine disassembled I could access its soft innards. Innards which had at least five different clamps holding rubber tubes in place. These are horrible clamps that you need to bust out channel locks or pliers to squeeze open, and then you need about 4 arms to get the tubes detached. Oh, and all of this is in a space a foot deep into the machine, beneath the tub, with about four inches of clearance. Unfortunately I only have two arms, putting me at a significant disadvantage.
So, I'm laying on the dirty floor of the laundry room, elbow deep in the guts of the beast, three or four "are you fucking kidding me"'s and bleeding fingers into this mess when I finally extracted the goddam pump trap. Inside of that strange shaped bladder I found our culprit: the half-eroded pad of a bra. Neither of us owns a padded bra, so that badboy had probably been in the process of digestion for years.
Satisfied, I began the process of re-clamping everything, which was at least a couple factors worse than the un-clamping bit. I put back on the faceplate, the control panel, the top. Re-sprung the floopy flaps, un-hoisted the thing down back to level and smashed that rinse button to make sure everything was good.
It wasn't -- I returned to the laundry room 5 minutes later to find a few millimeters of water covering the floor. Those fucking clamps. I had to tear the whole thing back down, toss water into the tub (which immediately pissed all over the inside of the washing machine), and re-clamp everything two or three more times before stuff stopped leaking.
After a total of 5 hours cursing, clamping, re-clamping, re-re-clamping, and laying on the floor in a laundry water puddle I'm happy to report that my washing machine now works. In theory. The rinse didn't leak, anyway... I'm hesitant to actually finish that load of laundry, but I'm sure it will be fine when I work up the courage or run out of underwear.
Fuck you, Electrolux.