The washing machine is leaking from below — causes and repair of leakage

When buy­ing a new wash­ing machine, peo­ple rely on its long and trou­ble-free oper­a­tion. But any house­hold appli­ances have their own expi­ra­tion date, and it is deter­mined not only by the rep­u­ta­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­er, but also by the cor­rect oper­a­tion. That is why many own­ers soon­er or lat­er face the fact that their wash­ing machine is leak­ing from below.

This is one of the most com­mon faults. If water has flowed onto the floor — it doesn’t mat­ter if it drips or runs in a stream, you need to urgent­ly repair the wash­ing machine on your own or call the mas­ter.

If you pre­fer to trou­bleshoot house­hold appli­ances your­self, this arti­cle will sure­ly come in handy. Let us con­sid­er in detail the caus­es of the leak­age of the wash­ing machine and meth­ods for its repair.

Causes of water leakage

• Wash­ing machine dis­penser bin clogged.
• Not sealed tank (a crack or break­down has appeared).
• One of the hoses (drain or inlet) was dam­aged.
• The pump is leak­ing.
• Dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the tank seal.
• The rub­ber seal on the door is leak­ing.
• One of the pipes has lost its tight­ness.

Identification and elimination of breakdowns

Before pro­ceed­ing with repair work, you need to de-ener­gize the equip­ment by remov­ing the plug from the out­let. Then you need to fig­ure out which of the many ele­ments of the wash­ing machine is leak­ing. To do this, the wash­ing machine must be care­ful­ly inspect­ed.

It is extreme­ly impor­tant to find out the cause of the break­down at what stage of the work­ing cycle the wash­ing machine began to leak from below. This will great­ly facil­i­tate the task of trou­bleshoot­ing and will allow you to find 1 out of 3 pos­si­ble leak loca­tions. Leak loca­tions such as:

• Hoses.
• Door cuffs.
• Dos­ing bin.

Leaking hoses

Drain and inlet hoses for water often leak in the areas of their dock­ing with the unit. To get rid of such a break­down, you need to unscrew the hose for fill­ing or drain­ing water and change the rub­ber gas­ket.

But it also hap­pens that the hose has worn out, or was acci­den­tal­ly dam­aged, then you can use spe­cial glue and a rub­ber patch to restore its integri­ty, although replac­ing it with a new one would be a more reli­able option. But all of these rec­om­men­da­tions apply to the drain hose. If the inlet hose was dam­aged, we do not rec­om­mend repair­ing it with a patch, since the water pres­sure in it can be very high, and then replace­ment becomes the best option. You can buy an inlet hose at any plumb­ing store, more­over, inex­pen­sive­ly.

Leaking dispenser and hopper

The rea­son for the break­down of the dis­penser may be a mal­func­tion of the hop­per (that is, the pow­der com­part­ment). As a rule, it leaks when it is clogged, either due to exces­sive water pres­sure, or due to a failed intake valve. What to do in such a sit­u­a­tion?

If the prob­lem is in the valve, you will see smudges in the area under it. To elim­i­nate the caus­es of leak­age, it is nec­es­sary to remove the dis­penser and thor­ough­ly clean it and the hop­per. It hap­pens that a for­eign object appears in the drain of the bunker, which does not allow it to work nor­mal­ly. If you find such an object, remove it from the pow­der com­part­ment.

After clean­ing, test the per­for­mance of the wash­ing machine. In addi­tion, it is worth try­ing to reduce the water pres­sure by slight­ly turn­ing off the tap. If none of the above helps to cope with the leak from below, it is nec­es­sary to replace the inlet valve, since it is its fail­ure that can cause high water pres­sure dur­ing the rinse stage.

The cuff of the hatch in the washing machine is leaking

It is not uncom­mon for many peo­ple to for­get to remove all items from the pock­ets of their clothes before load­ing them into the wash­ing machine, and many of the items can be very sharp. As a result, the cuff on the hatch of the wash­ing machine is dam­aged dur­ing the wash­ing process and starts to leak.
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In such a sit­u­a­tion, you can fix the break­down in one of 2 ways:

1. Repair. If the hole is small, it is worth try­ing to close it with mois­ture-resis­tant glue and a rub­ber patch. You can also pur­chase a spe­cial boat patch from a fish­ing spe­cial­ty store. After clos­ing the hole, the hatch cuff should be installed in such a way that a piece of patch rub­ber is placed on top — this will reduce the pres­sure on it, and there­fore increase its ser­vice life. Since the cuff can also be dam­aged from the inside, we rec­om­mend dis­man­tling it to seal the holes.
2. Replace­ment. If the dam­age caused is too great, a com­plete replace­ment of the cuff of the wash­ing machine hatch will be required, for which you need to do the fol­low­ing: dis­man­tle the faulty cuff and install a new one in its place.

Tank filler pipe leaking

It is like­ly that the rea­son why the water began to flow from the water sup­ply hose is the loos­en­ing of the attach­ment of the pipe to the tank of the machine. To find out if this is the case, you need to care­ful­ly exam­ine the tank. If you see traces of smudges from water, then the prob­lem has been found.

To repair or replace the inlet hose of the wash­ing machine, you need to remove the noz­zle, then clean all the joints from the remain­ing glue and dry them. Then you can fix the pipe again, for fix­ing which you will need epoxy resin or high-qual­i­ty mois­ture-resis­tant glue.

Washing machine tank leak

If you saw that it is the tank that gives the leak, there may be two rea­sons for such a break­down, we will con­sid­er them in detail.

Buck cracked. Tanks in auto­mat­ic machines are most often made of plas­tic, which is why their reli­a­bil­i­ty is rather low. If you for­get to emp­ty the pock­ets of your clothes, one of the items in them could fall out of the pock­ets dur­ing the oper­a­tion of the unit and dam­age the tank.

If the tank is cracked, it will need to be replaced, and this is a very expen­sive and com­pli­cat­ed process. Of course, you can try to fix the crack your­self using water­proof glue, but this is unlike­ly to help you for a long time, because the tank will most like­ly need to be changed, and this will have to be done with the help of a spe­cial­ist.

The con­nec­tion points of the tank parts. As a rule, the tank of the auto­mat­ic machine includes 2 ele­ments attached to each oth­er with met­al brack­ets or screws, and there is a rub­ber gas­ket in the space between them. These gas­kets dry out over the years and begin to leak. To change the gas­ket, you need to almost com­plete­ly dis­as­sem­ble the device.

Leak from the bearing

If the wash­ing machine is leak­ing from the side of the bear­ings, the rea­son is the wear of the oil seal, which means that you can­not do with­out replac­ing it. Most often, with such a mal­func­tion, the main vol­ume of water flows out dur­ing the spin­ning process.

If a seal leak is detect­ed, turn off the machine imme­di­ate­ly, because the water can rust the bear­ings and break too, and this will lead to more seri­ous prob­lems.

Chang­ing the oil seal is not so easy for a non-spe­cial­ist, since the process will also require replac­ing the bear­ings of the wash­ing machine. That is why we advise you to turn to pro­fes­sion­als to repair such a break­down. If you still want to repair the unit on your own, before that you will need to fig­ure out how the bear­ings are replaced.

Tips

If you recent­ly cleaned the drain valve, it is pos­si­ble that after the pro­ce­dure you for­got to screw it in care­ful­ly, and as a result, a leak formed. Take out the bot­tom pan­el and make sure that the valve is screwed on con­science. The main rea­son for the leak­age of the wash­ing machine is the mis­takes made dur­ing its oper­a­tion. There­fore, in order to avoid such break­downs, we rec­om­mend that you always check the pock­ets of clothes before load­ing them into the machine, and car­ry out repairs in a time­ly man­ner at the first dis­cov­ery of any mal­func­tion.

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