Wash Cycles Suddenly Taking Longer

[eddiegemail]

Hi, my hoover hpb145 special edition 1400 is about 8 years old and the cycles have started taking longer, e.g. the fast 29 minute cycle takes about and hour and the 40 min cycle takes twice that! Is this a pcb fault? or is there a seperate timer in there? thanks in advance.

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

It's logical to suspect the main pcb when the programme starts to take much longer to complete but doesn't produce an error code. The pcb monitors everything and is supposed to produce error codes if any fault is detected. However, some faults do not trigger error codes on some washing machines. One possible cause is if the toc (thermal overload cut-out) in the motor cuts out during wash but resets itself after cooling down. It can cause the programme to stop but then start again when it cools down.

Other than that, one thing that could lengthen a programme is if the washing machine is struggling to balance the laundry prior to a spin. Some washing machines can spend ages faffing about trying to balance a load and it can really add a lot of time. You need to observe the washing machine throughout one of these programmes and see if you can see any strange behaviour that can account for it such as long periods and lots of unsucessful attempts to spin.