On 01/10/2012 14:16, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
Adam Funk writes:
The washer-dryer stopped working this morning & displayed an error
code for which the manual says, "Anti-flooding system has
activated. Disconnect the appliance and contact the service centre."

There's no sign of water leakage anywhere; the towels had gone through
the filling & heating-up stages, but not been fully washed. The
machine is still under warranty, but I'm curious as to how an
"anti-flooding system" works, & whether the technician is just going
to press a secret "reset" button tomorrow.

I've seen two technologies referred to as flood prevention:

A large tray across the bottom of the system with a float in the
middle, which catches any leaks, and the float triggers an
emergency shutdown, which abandons the cycle and pumps out the
water. Reset in this case consists of draining the water out of
the tray using sponges or tipping the machine, so the float drops
back to normal position. (Don't tip the machine to empty the tray
unless you are sure you aren't tipping the water into something
electrical.) If the machine is left unused for some time after
leaking, the tray can dry up by itself, but crud left behind if
the water was dirty can prevent the float dropping down by itself.

Logic which detects water level dropping unexpectedly, or which
detects the machine taking too long to fill. No reset required
in this case - just restart the machine.

I expect there's a variety of different systems in different
manufacturers' machines.

One which I have seen on a dishwasher is a microswitch held closed by a
sponge. If the sponge gets wet it softens and allows the switch to open.
In this case, the sponge had gradually deformed under the pressure of
the microswitch over the years. Simply reversing the sponge solved the
problem for the rest of the life of the dishwasher.

SteveW