Washing machine smoking

Sparksa

Hi all

Does anyone know if there is an official independent safety tester of home appliances? Not sure if is Trading Standards, but I think was someone else.

The other day my washing machine (8 years old) gave a loud bang and loads of rattling whilst on the last spin, then started fuming, unplugged it and called the fire brigade to be on the safe side. They condemned it. I was lucky I was at home or could have set the flat on fire, no more leaving the washing machine on when we leave the flat.

Spoke to the manufacturer who sent around an engineer to assess it, I was not at home, but a neighbour helped to give access to the engineer. I spoke to him on the phone and he tried to spin a story how there is a cut in the gasket and water leaked from there onto the door locking mechanism and that's what burned and from where was the smoke.

Now, the problem with that is, the smoke was contained within the drum (smoking coming out the detergent drawer and when the fire crew opened the door) and was rubber smell, not plastic smell.
His explanation doesn't make sense and I didn't buy it. I opened the machine myself, took a lovely picture of the intact door locking mechanism, you know, the one he said was fried. Opened the door again and had a better look at the gasket, looks like the drum came too close to the frame and rubbed into the gasket, there is melted rubber from the gasket on the drum edge and the gasket is all melted on the edge, also there is a cut at the bottom of the door's glass. The cut in the gasket is right at the top next to the counter-weight and can be explained by the counter-weight hitting in the edge of the machine.

I want this looked into, as it could happen to someone else.

thescouselander

No, that doesn't make sense. A water escape shouldn't cause anything to catch fire. Sounds to me like the drum bearing has failed causing the moving parts of the machine to come into contact with other parts of the machine.

Not ideal obviously but not quite possible in an old machine - sounds like you just wore it out.

missile

After eight years, it is not worth repairing ................. buy a replacement.

Jonesya

It has happened to other people.

There's only a small clearance (gap) between the drum and the rubber seals, if the bearing which supports the drum fails, or if the metal spider which holds the back of the drum fails, then this allows the drum to move outside it's normal running position.

So when it turns, it can make contact with the rubber seal, at slow speeds it's not always noticeable, but if it's spinning then it can get hot from friction, melting the rubber and giving off some smoke.

I'd replace it - suggest having a look at the Samsung Ecobubble range, I say that because they seem quite reasonably priced and many of the models come with 5 year manufacturers guarantee.