I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it on here or not but last year my wife and I bought our first house.  After being a renter for nearly 20 years, I knew this would be a change and I’d have to learn a lot of new things.  I was right.  There have been a few things which I’ve come across which I would never have dealt with had we remained renters.  I figured these types of things might be fun to post.  Who knows, maybe someone will find the posts useful.

Anyway, when we moved in we had to buy a washer and dryer.  We found a pair which weren’t too old.  They weren’t top of the line or anything but they are Whirlpool and work…or at least they did.  Shortly before Christmas we noticed that that washer wasn’t draining the water.  It would take rerunning the spin cycle a couple of times to get rid of enough water to allow the dryer to do its job.  We kept trying to figure this thing out.  There were crimps in the hose we’d play with to allow the water to drain out…but that really wasn’t the problem.

So, I finally broke down and got a repairman out.  His first reaction was that it was the high speed motor which was out…but he’d never seen a Whirlpool motor go out before.  He didn’t have the part so when he came back a couple days later he’d done something thinking and wanted to see if it was the timer.  It was.

WooHoo, washer spins out the water so the dryer can dry!!!

However, water was coming out too fast for the pipes to handle and we were ending up with water all over the floor!

So, I started with Draino and kept buying stronger pipe cleaner…nothing worked.  I finally broke down and called out a plumber.  Said it was roots and that I would have to put root killer in the clean out….oh, and I needed a new plug for the clean out cuz the one he pulled off was so rusty that the rust was all that was keeping the water in.

So, I did as I was told.  However, now all I got was water coming out the new plug.  But water wasn’t coming out the vent where the hose was anymore.  I got some plumber goo stuff from the hardware store to close the threads.  It work, but water was coming out the vent again!!

I went and bought a snake (what the plumber used to find the roots in the first place) and there was nothing blocking the drain.

Ok, I’m about done now.  I’ve had it.  We haven’t been able to use our washing machine for weeks now without a flooded laundry room.

So I did some thinking.  It occurred to me that the water needed to be slowed down or water needed more space flow.  How can I do this.  I’m playing and I think, ‘if I pull the hose out a bit further (it’s stuffed all the way down) from the vent, then the water will have to travel further to get to the vent.  Also, it will have to arch higher.”  Guess what, it worked!  Yeah, we are talking about half an inch of room to play with but the water stayed in the vent.

Ok, so how to keep things that way?  I got out some duct tape (always handy) and built things up a bit and held the hose as high as I could.  Got three loads done last night without a wet floor!!

So, now I’ve got to have a more permanent solution.  I went to the hardware store and got a rubber something (can you tell I’m not an expert?) with clamps and 6 inches of PVC pipeing to build the vent higher.

Fingers crossed all is solved permanently.

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