Indesit Iwdc6105 Jumped Forward

[rachman]

Hello,

Domestic mysteries, one of a series of many thousands.

This morning, while I was in work, my wife put our washing machine on with just a light load and then went in the bath whilst the machine went through an express cycle (programme 13) wash and dry.

As the machine started to wind up for the spin cycle, she heard a loud bang. She got out of the bath to investigate and found that the washing machine -all 40-odd kilos of it- had moved forward by about 6 inches. (see photos attached).

The machine continued to work normally and finished its programme. When i came home from work she showed me exactly what had happened and how events had unfolded. The bang, she thinks, came from the machine bashing against the work-top or housing under the work-top rather than from the machine itself.

Can anyone give a sensible suggestion as to what force might make 40kgs of washing machine move forward by 6 inches all on its own from under its work-top housing? It has me beat. I thought perhaps if the drive belt had snapped then that might provide some energy but surely not enough to move the unit. I moved the unit fully out of the housing and took off the back plate to see if anything obvious was wrong, but the belt was fine and the drum was still happily housed on its suspension mountings and all else that I could see looked normal.

I am at a loss to explain what or how this happened and the event remains a complete mystery to me!.

There were no signs of any leaks or damage, either to the walls surrounding the housing, the work-top or the machine. It was as if a piston had pushed the unit forward, or a car had crashed into the outside wall and pushed it. All most odd!

Happily, the machine is still working normally - but could this happen again?

Best regards

Phil

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

It sounds like a classic case of an unbalanced load (usually when a small but heavy load is washed) or a rare fault causing the motor to surge into spin unexpectedly. What was inside the machine at the time?

Check this article out washing machine jumps and bangs on spin

[rachman]

Hi there - thanks very much for your reply. It certainly seems to be the only explanation but I am still shocked at the forward movement of 6 inches! I have established that she put in a T-shirt, one of my cotton workshirts, some socks and underwear and, crucially, HER DRESSING GOWN, which is an absorbent fluffy type of material, so this sounds like the culprit, having read the excellent article you gave a link to. We'll know to monitor the loading in future and we'll look out for any future occurrence. Hopefully there will be none! The machine is about 8 months old and has given splendid service, as did the Indesit we had before it for 6 years until that became unviable to replace the computerised control unit.

Thanks again for your help.

Phil.

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Yes it sounds like the dressing gown got tangled up and was the cause of the out of balance incident. It's possible she's washed the same load before without incident, or even that future ones may be ok, but clearly that combination of loading is always prone to problems because there isn't enough of the other items to counter-balance the heavy (when wet) dressing gown. The best thing to try is to put more items in with it.

Modern washing machines have out of balance protection which should stop a load going crazy but many aren't too sophisticated - especially on the budget to mid price range machines. A good one shouldn't allow any spin at all unless it's well balanced. In the old days though, such a badly balanced load would have been allowed to spin violently for the full spin cycle potentially causing serious damage to the machine and its surroundings. In the past I've seen them come completely out 2 or 3 feet or smash surrounding cupboards.