Sticking mid-cycle just filling with water but level doesn't rise

[johnkavanagh]

Hi guys,

Totally new the forums. I've just come across you whilst trying to work out whether the behaviour of our brand new, supplier-installed Hotpoint washer/dryer is normal or not..

It seems as though the machine frequently gets stuck in this cycle of filling, rotating the drum a few times, pausing, and starting filling with water again to repeat. You never actually see much in the way of water inside the drum, and it seems as though it will quite merrily do this for hours at a time. It also doesn't seem to take the fabric softener from the tray.

I've taken a short video here:

For context, this is on the 40° cotton cycle, about 150 minutes (two-and-a-half hours or thereabouts) into the cycle. It had been doing this on repeat more-or-less the entire time.

The machine was installed just a few days ago, and is totally new to us (our old one must have been 20+ years old) so I've no idea if this is normal behaviour or not.. It has managed to complete a couple of washes on the 'wool' setting successfully, although at much longer times than the instruction manual suggests they would take, and the clothes came out again really creased and soaking. On one occasion it felt as though the water had been really a lot hotter than the 40° I had set it to..

I don't know whether this is normal and I'm just being impatient, or whether these are symptoms of something not quite right.

I would be thrilled to get your thoughts/opinions?

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Hello Check this article which explains siphoning when water goes into the machine but the level never rises, which is what I suspect.

[johnkavanagh]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your input. I wanted to leave a follow-up here just to give some closure, and to help anyone else who might stumble across this thread with similar issues in the future.

As it turns out, the washing machine had indeed been installed incorrectly. The drain pipe was not raised high enough at the back which meant that it did not retain enough water in the drum.

Simultaneously, the installers had also managed to connect the machine to the our hot water supply rather than cold, which meant that at the start of a cycle, it was drawing water at around 65°C, recognising that this was much too hot, dumping it, and drawing (the same hot) water again.. It seems likely that this was the reason for the 'draw water - rotate - dump water - draw water again' cycle we were seeing.

This does also explain why it would occasionally manage to complete a load - assumedly when it was a bigger load that retained more water in the fabric, and the hot water was depleted.

Funnily enough, it also explains why we thought our boiler was broken!

Frustratingly the engineers that installed it (from a UK chain who you would have thought would Know How to install a washing machine) returned twice to look at it. Even after Indesit telephone support suggested that it was likely an installation problem they managed to miss these issues both times. They simply claimed that if water went in and water went out again, then as far as they were concerned it was installed correctly.

It took a call-out from an Indesit engineer to sort it - which took him less than fifteen minutes..