Washing machine water supply valve

In any mod­el of a wash­ing machine, the most impor­tant ele­ment is the inlet valve for the wash­ing machine, some­times referred to as the inlet valve. In this arti­cle, we will tell you how this struc­tur­al ele­ment is arranged, describe the prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion, and what types exist.

Design and principle of operation

When the tank is filled to the required lev­el, the con­trol pro­gram sends a sec­ond sig­nal to the fill­ing valve, after which it clos­es and the liq­uid stops flow­ing into the sys­tem.

In almost all mod­els of wash­ing machines, the valve is locat­ed at the top of the struc­ture, near the back wall. But in those machines where the laun­dry is loaded ver­ti­cal­ly, the valve is locat­ed at the bot­tom of the unit, also near the back wall. In the first case, in order to get to the ele­ment we need, it is nec­es­sary to remove the back cov­er, and in the sec­ond case, the side pan­el is dis­man­tled.

Types of inlet valves for a washing machine

Today fill­ing valve for wash­ing machine has a more com­plex design, where the inter­nal device is divid­ed into many sec­tions, and each of them has its own elec­tro­mag­net. Accord­ing­ly, each sec­tion is con­nect­ed to a spe­cif­ic place where water is required, and as need­ed, the con­trol pro­gram gives sig­nals and acti­vates the coils. There­fore, we can safe­ly dis­tin­guish the fol­low­ing types:

• valves with one coil;
• with two coils;
• with three coils.

Also, now all coils have a com­plete­ly elec­tri­cal struc­ture, they com­plete­ly lack mechan­i­cal com­po­nents.

How to check the valve for performance

To deter­mine the health of the valve, it must be removed. After, con­nect the water sup­ply hose to it, and sup­ply cur­rent to the coils. If the unit is in good con­di­tion, the valve will open and allow water to pass through. After the volt­age sup­ply to the coil is inter­rupt­ed, the lock­ing mech­a­nism should close. This check is very easy and will not cause any spe­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, but it must be car­ried out care­ful­ly, since you are work­ing in high humid­i­ty con­di­tions with an elec­tri­cal appli­ance, in no case should you allow bare wires to come into con­tact with liq­uid.

Also, it is nec­es­sary to check the fol­low­ing units of the unit:

• It is nec­es­sary to check the fil­ter mesh on the valve and clean it of dirt.
• If the valve does not open, you should check if the sole­noid coil has burned out in it, use a mul­ti­me­ter to do this. The resis­tance of the work­ing coil varies from 2 to 4 ohms.
• Check the pres­ence of plas­tic ele­ments in the valve fit­tings, they are designed to con­tain the pres­sure of water. If there are no data inserts, then this struc­tur­al ele­ment must be replaced.

Valve replacement

The inlet valve of the wash­ing machine is a non-sep­a­ra­ble part, so it can­not be repaired. This replace­ment oper­a­tion is car­ried out as fol­lows:

• First, you need to turn off the pow­er to the wash­ing machine, then turn off the water sup­ply and remove the back cov­er.
• We dis­con­nect all hoses from the valve, the main thing is to remem­ber which one was installed where.
• Then unscrew all the fas­ten­ers hold­ing our part.
• Remove the old valve.
• Next, install a new ele­ment, and assem­ble the wash­ing machine in reverse order.

After com­plet­ing all the nec­es­sary points, check the per­for­mance of your unit, whether water is flow­ing and whether every­thing is func­tion­ing cor­rect­ly.

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