Last updated on January 3rd, 2024
Do you wonder why your washer will tell you that a wash will be say 60 minutes, but then you come back 3 hours later and there’s still 20 minutes remaining? Why does it gaslight you? Wonder no more! As an appliance repair expert I can tell you why, and better yet – it’s an easy issue for anyone to work out with no tools required or experience needed.
There are a number of reasons your washer can be taking longer than it claims it will, from the temperature you select, water pressure, and how loaded the washer is. Most of the time, especially for a frontloader, it’s because you’re overloading your washer. Sometimes, but more rarely, its because your water pressure is no good or you’re running a two inlet machine on only cold water. Lastly it can be because of the water temperature you’re selecting. It’s really unlikely there’s a fault with your machine.
Overloading The Washing Machine
For frontloaders, and less so for toploaders, overloading can make your wash take much longer. If you’re having big blowouts in time, this is the first place to start.
Frontloader Washing Machines
Modern frontloader washing machines (anything built after around the year 2000) are all controlled by a computer. The Fisher Paykel frontloaders we carry at Whybuy, and that I specialise in, are computer controlled. Before they go into a spin cycle the drum gently starts spinning. The computer then carries out what we can call a clothing distribution test – How many amps is the motor using and how consistent is this use? This test determines how well distributed the clothes are in the bowl and if its likely to be balanced enough for a spin. If the test fails, it restarts again. And it can go on restarting and restarting for 45 minutes before giving up and throwing an out of balance error, requiring human intervention. On the Fisher and Paykel frontloaders you will get an “Out of Bal” message flashing on the screen, at which point you need to remove some clothes and restart a brand new cycle. Hooray! The more clothes you put into the machine, the more likely it is that you’re going to fail the clothing distribution test by going over the amp threshold in any given test. Given there can be up to 4 spin cycles in any given wash, its easy to see how you can have a big blowout in the initial time.
Toploader Washing Machines
Toploaders follow essentially the same procedure in balancing out the clothes as a frontloader but they give up on rebalancing much sooner (usually within 10 minutes) and call for human help. This is because once the water has drained out of the tub ready for a spin, there’s nothing the machine can do to move the clothes around if they’re not properly balanced out. The machine would have to fill with water again to do this, and I’ve never seen that. Towels and sheets are more likely to give you problems as they’re really heavy when wet and need to perfectly situated. If you’re finding your toploader is having a hard time balancing and calling for help often and on smaller loads, it usually means the shock absorbers are worn out and need replacement. In Australia at least, that’s a job that will cost more than the second hand replacement value of the machine and you’re better off just buying another.
It’s really easy to test if overloading your machine is the reason it is taking forever – just run it empty. Start a stopwatch or timer on your phone and come back when the machine says it should be done. If it finishes within 10 minutes of when it says it should, that’s fine, as remember there’s other factors that can slow it down, which we go through below.
Bad Water Pressure
This one is pretty simple. If you have bad water pressure your machine will take longer to fill. If it takes longer to fill the timer will be inaccurate. This is particularly noticeable if you have a gravity fed hot water service on a hot wash. Unless your water pressure is really bad this will generally only add a few minutes to a cycle. Really bad water pressure can also result in the machine throwing a fault. The water inlet solenoids need a certain amount of pressure to open, and if it’s not high enough the machine will not fill at all. For example, the Fisher Paykel frontloader will give you an error on very low water pressure “No Tap”.
If you have good cold water pressure but bad hot water pressure (usually because of a gravity fed hot water service) and your machine is a frontloader, you might try turning off the hot water inlet tap, but that will also lead to a slightly slower machine in a different way as outlined below. Frontloader machines usually have on board heaters that can heat cold water to the temperature selected, so don’t always need both a hot and cold water connection. Some machines will give you the equivalent of a “No tap” error though, and must have both a hot and cold connection. Additionally, turning off the hot water supply tap isn’t a solution for a toploader as they typically do not have any on board heater. At least I’ve never seen one, but I’m sure there is a rare example somewhere. It’s funny because there’s no reason a toploader cannot have an on board heater, they just don’t. I’d guess its because they would have to heat much more water than a frontloader which would significantly slow down the cycle, removing one of two competitive edges a toploader has over a frontloader being that they’re faster than frontloaders, the other being you can put your clothes in from the top which is good for some people with mobility issues.
Running a Two Inlet Washer on Cold Only
Your washing machine might have a connection for both a hot and cold supply, or cold only. If your washer has both hot and cold inlets, but you’ve only connected the cold supply this can slow the wash down by a few minutes. Essentially what happens when you press go on any cycle other than cold is that your machine will call for hot water for a few minutes before it realises, Oh ok there’s no hot water coming, I’ll just use cold water and heat it. Some washers will just refuse to wash even though they are perfectly capable of heating the water themselves, they’ll throw a no tap error if there is no hot water tap connected. It’s also important to note that not every washing machine has an on board heater. Most toploader washing machines do not have a heater, and most frontloader washing machines do. If you run a washer that doesnt have a heater on a hot wash and connect no hot supply, it will usually give an error code.
Hot Washes Can Make Your Washing Machine Slow
Another possibility that might cause your cycle to be slower than the machine is indicating is that you’ve got a frontloader and you’ve selected a hot wash. Lets say for example that you’ve got a machine that only has a cold water supply and you select a 90 degree hot wash cycle. The machine needs to spend time heating that water up before it can start its cycle. Even on a machine with a hot water inlet as well as cold, if your hot water service is far from the machine you’d be lucky if you got 30 degree water in. In Australia all new constructions require hot water to be no more than 50 degrees, so often, even in a best case scenario, the water in will be no hotter than 50 degrees, and it needs to be 90 degrees. While it’s somewhat predictable especially for a cold water inlet machine only, most manufacturers fail to account for this in a fit of optimism and wilful blindness. You won’t lose more than 10 minutes to this though. It can slow down a cycle a bit, but not a heap.
Marketing
The final reason your machine might be giving you optimistic cycle times is that it is actually gaslighting you. Manufacturers want to be able to put short cycle times on their machine and so tend to be optimistic about the conditions of the cycle. If the machine is running empty on a cold cycle and the water pressure is perfect, sure it will come in perfectly on time. But throw one thing out and the estimated time goes out the window. For the most part though its not going to be a significant amount of time.