How to open the washing machine if it is locked?

At the end of the wash­ing process for about three min­utes, the door lock is removed, after which the own­ers get access to the washed items. How­ev­er, some­times it hap­pens that the wash­ing process is sud­den­ly inter­rupt­ed dur­ing the exe­cu­tion of one of the pro­grams, the machine stops, but the door does not open. If the wash­ing machine does not open three min­utes after stop­ping, it is most like­ly defec­tive. Try­ing to open the hatch by force can only hurt the sit­u­a­tion. Below we will con­sid­er what to do in cas­es where it is impos­si­ble to unlock the car door.

Causes of failure

First of all, let’s find out the main rea­sons that can cause this sit­u­a­tion.

These rea­sons include:

• The door is blocked due to the oper­a­tion of the wash­ing machine;
• hatch han­dle broke;
• the pres­ence of water in the wash­ing drum;
• fail­ure of the intel­li­gent mod­ule UBL;
• bro­ken door lock.

Some of these prob­lems can only be dealt with by a spe­cial­ist, but there are also those that can be elim­i­nat­ed on your own. Let’s take a clos­er look at each spe­cif­ic case.

Breakage of the blocking device

The caus­es of break­downs of the hatch block­ing device (UBL) can be dif­fer­ent. If you encounter such a prob­lem, care­ful­ly study the oper­at­ing instruc­tions for the machine, where it is writ­ten what to do when the door is closed and there is no reac­tion to the sig­nals of the intel­li­gent mod­ule. Minor dam­age can be repaired by your­self.

• Quite often, the cause of the mal­func­tion is inter­rup­tions in the sig­nal sup­ply. Some­times the hatch door does not open if the machine is com­plete­ly de-ener­gized.
• How to open the wash­ing machine if the han­dle is bro­ken or the hatch just does not open? You can try to unlock the hatch door man­u­al­ly using a spe­cial cable. To do this, you need to get to the drain fil­ter, remove its cov­er and find the emer­gency release cable. It is usu­al­ly quite easy to find, as it is col­ored orange. If you pull the cable, then the hatch should be unlocked.
• If the mod­el of your machine does not pro­vide for the pres­ence of such a cable, then you will need to find the UBL lock and turn it off your­self. In order to do this, you need to open the top cov­er and slight­ly tilt the machine back. Then the drum will also move back, and you can get to the latch to turn it off.

Replacing the locking device

Those own­ers who have the skills to repair home appli­ances can inde­pen­dent­ly replace a failed UBL.

To do this, you must per­form the fol­low­ing steps:

1. Remove the fix­ing rim and release the right seg­ment of the door cuff.
2. Unscrew the two screws that secure the UBL and care­ful­ly remove it.
3. Install a new UBL and, fol­low­ing the steps in reverse order, fix it.

It is very impor­tant to remem­ber the order of dis­con­nect­ing the wires from the UBL, so that when you con­nect a new device, you do not vio­late it. After the new UBL is installed and con­nect­ed, the oper­a­tion of the machine should be test­ed.

Presence of water in the drum

The hatch door may not open even if water remains in the drum. This is a pret­ty seri­ous break­down. The rea­sons for this mal­func­tion may be as fol­lows:

• Fail­ure of the con­trol mod­ule;
• Dam­age to the water con­trol sen­sor;
• The for­ma­tion of block­age in the drain sys­tem;
• Fail­ure of the pump (pump).

You should not try to fix the above mal­func­tions on your own, as incor­rect actions can fur­ther aggra­vate the prob­lem.

The door does not open due to the operation of the machine

This case is the sim­plest. Each mod­el of wash­ing machines has its own time dur­ing which the door lock is removed after stop­ping. Some machines do this imme­di­ate­ly at the end of the pro­gram, oth­ers pause for up to 5 min­utes. Quite often, impa­tient own­ers begin to pull the door han­dle even before the sys­tem releas­es the lock. Some­times this leads to break­age of the hatch han­dle. To avoid such a mis­take, care­ful­ly study the oper­at­ing instruc­tions for your mod­el of the machine, which indi­cates exact­ly when the lock is released.

Hatch handle broken

The cause of this mal­func­tion can be both the exces­sive efforts of the own­ers of the wash­ing machine when open­ing the still blocked hatch, and the phys­i­cal wear of the parts. The repair sequence in this case will be as fol­lows:

1. Remove the machine door from the hinges;
2. Unscrew the screws that con­nect the rim of the cov­er, then care­ful­ly dis­as­sem­ble the door;
3. Exam­ine the han­dle mech­a­nism that is on one of the rims. It is impor­tant to make sure that the latch is work­ing prop­er­ly. This should not cause any dif­fi­cul­ties, since the lock mech­a­nism is quite sim­ple. After you under­stand the prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion of the lock, it will not be dif­fi­cult to trou­bleshoot;
4. Reverse the door assem­bly pro­ce­dure and check how it works.

The above rec­om­men­da­tions will tell the own­er what to do in a sit­u­a­tion where the machine door does not open. How­ev­er, if even after the manip­u­la­tions the hatch door still does not open, it is bet­ter to seek help from a qual­i­fied spe­cial­ist.

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