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Jules[_2_] Jules[_2_] is offline
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Default Keeping Washing Machine from Freezing

On Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:45:13 -0400, John Grabowski wrote:
*Many years ago when I worked for my father a lot of his work was in dry
cleaning plants and Laundromats. I remember seeing some washing machines
being changed over to gravity discharge instead of using the pump to extract
the dirty water because the drains were in the floor.


Interesting. I had a washing machine freeze on me a couple of years
ago - the water in the pump / outlet froze, pushed the drain hose off, but
had thawed just enough for the pump to be unblocked when we next used it.
Cue water everywhere...

These were commercial
washing machines and a factory conversion kit was used for the
changeover. Perhaps something like that is available for residential
machines.


I think the pump body's normally the lowest part of the plumbing in a
machine - maybe a tap can be put in there (or right at the base of the
drain hose) and a solenoid valve added to completely drain the
system when power's applied to it (a solenoid valve from the inlet on a
junk washer would work, I suspect).

Of course you would still need to drain
the inlet hoses, but it would not be too difficult to just disconnect
them.


I think in most basic systems the external hot/cold inlet hoses merge into
a single hose 'downstream' of the solenoid valves within the machine, and
water in the tub and the 'internal' inlet hose then sits at the same level
as in the drain hose - so in theory if there's nothing in the drain hose
the inlet hose within the machine should drain, too.

Yes, still need to drain the external inlet hose(s) of water (if that's
what you meant) - but that's a separate issue to emptying the machine
itself.

cheers

Jules