Brand new washing machine shakes the whole kitchen

Silvertabby

It depends on the machine as well.  Our Miele barely hums at 1400 spin speed.  

Rodders53

Silvertabby said:

It depends on the machine as well.  Our Miele barely hums at 1400 spin speed.  

+1
Unless there's an odd, uneven load in it, when it whines incessantly and never gets up to full speed.

Albermarle

Rodders53 said:

Silvertabby said:

It depends on the machine as well.  Our Miele barely hums at 1400 spin speed.  

+1
Unless there's an odd, uneven load in it, when it whines incessantly and never gets up to full speed.

We have a Siemens and agree with both comments. It runs quite quietly at 1400 rpm, but seems more sensitive than previous machines to heavy/uneven loads.

BobT36

It's not in too tight, is it? If it's touching the sides of the cubby then of course the vibration will travel through that. 

bobster2

Sonicimage said:

Thank you all for your comments. The retailer guys who brought the machine removed the transit bolts. 
I always use 1000 rpm, never tried higher anyway. It's an old house, and the floor under washing machine is a bit tilted to the back. I'm surprised that the builders while doing renovations (they changed kitchen cabinets completely, and put new tiles on the floor) didn't even the floor where the washing machine was supposed to reside. I need to contact the agency and have them deal with it as it's not my own house to invest in anything.

Things to try (that are your business not the landlord's)....

 - Using a spirit level check the machine is completely level. Adjust feet if necessary.
- Try an anti-vibration pad. These can be found for much less than £90. E.g. £20-30.
- Make sure the machine is not touching the sides of the cabinets.

Sonicimage

BobT36 said:

It's not in too tight, is it? If it's touching the sides of the cubby then of course the vibration will travel through that. 

Yes, it's quite tight, it's the builders' fault, they made it so tight that I had to ask them to remove an adjacent cabinet door to make a bit of space. They did a lousy job with renovations, on a budget, not only the materials were the cheapest but how they did the job is ridiculous. The grout between the kitchen and bathroom tiles is gone in many places.

bobster2

Sonicimage said:

BobT36 said:

It's not in too tight, is it? If it's touching the sides of the cubby then of course the vibration will travel through that. 

Yes, it's quite tight, it's the builders' fault, they made it so tight that I had to ask them to remove an adjacent cabinet door to make a bit of space. They did a lousy job with renovations, on a budget, not only the materials were the cheapest but how they did the job is ridiculous. The grout between the kitchen and bathroom tiles is gone in many places.

OK - but are you going to try an anti-vibration pad? I've just checked and you can get them for £12 online.

And if the floor is uneven are you absolutely sure the feet have been adjusted correctly to compensate for this? This is what the adjustable feet are for. Maybe through trial and error but sometimes tiny adjustments can make a huge difference to the amount of noise.

Bigphil1474

OP, we had loads of issues with our old 9kg load LG machine on our suspended kitchen floor. I spent days trying to get it level. I got so annoyed about it that I even read the manual it came with and read that it wasn't well suited to suspended floors. In the end we just put half loads in and had the spin on low until the computer finally gave in and we had to change it. I did find that putting some sticky back anti slip pads under the feet of the machine reduced the noise a bit as it stopped them moving around, as did clearing the counter above when it was on.

We now have a Bosch machine which is much less violent. I still use the anti slip pads (a bit like really thick sand paper that sticks to the floor, the sand paper side facing up). We still don't put full loads in, but do use the highest spin.

As above, triple check the machine is level. It needs to be levelled where it is being used, not pulled out, levelled, then pushed back in. 

Albermarle

We still don't put full loads in, but do use the highest spin.

Normally most of the available wash cycles recommend you put in less than the max load anyway.

Section62

Sonicimage said:

Thank you all for your comments. The retailer guys who brought the machine removed the transit bolts. 
I always use 1000 rpm, never tried higher anyway. It's an old house, and the floor under washing machine is a bit tilted to the back. I'm surprised that the builders while doing renovations (they changed kitchen cabinets completely, and put new tiles on the floor) didn't even the floor where the washing machine was supposed to reside. I need to contact the agency and have them deal with it as it's not my own house to invest in anything.

Anything other than a solid floor will have a degree of springiness to it.  It is this, in conjunction with the feet not being adjusted properly, which tends to be the main cause of excessive vibration.

It is more or less impossible to lay a floor so all four points where the feet on a washing machine will sit will be at the same level, and if the washing machine moves slightly away from the spot where you have managed to level the floor then it will be unlevel again.  So getting the feet correctly adjusted and making sure the washing machine can't move around very much is one of the most important things.

Extreme vibration often happens where a non-solid floor has a resonant frequency close to the frequency of vibration produced by the washing machine - you can get a positive feedback situation in which the washing machine makes the floor vibrate and the vibrating floor in turn makes the washing machine vibrate more.  The solution to that (after adjusting the feet properly) is typically to either change the frequency of vibration created by the washing machine (i.e. avoid the spin speed which is problematic) or else use a dampening system which interrupts the positive feedback process (i.e. an anti-vibration mat)

The other option of making the floor stiffer isn't realistic in most cases.

If you always use 1000 rpm then also try a higher speed - anything to aviod a situation where the floor and washing machine are resonant.