Miele experts HELP!!!!

[bajaespuma]

Ok, so I've had two delirious weeks using what I can honestly call the most perfect washing machine I've ever used.

 

Then, of course, I had to go and get curious.

 

So, the other day I decided to remove and inspect the "laugenfilter (drain filter)" to see what it looked like and what, if anything, the previous owners left behind. There was a little bit of mold on the rubber gaskets and some schmutz, so I cleaned the thing out carefully by hand and put it back in the cylindrical shaft at the bottom of the machine behind the little trap door.

 

Then, not having consulted the manual for doing any of this, I loaded the detergent dispenser with about 1/2 cup of Persil Color pearls and proceeded to run an "Einweichen (soak)" cycle. The machine started but immediately started to dump all the water out of the bottom of the machine via that little (what I can only conclude must be) relief hose to the left of the pump filter. The machine dumped out water with lots of undissolved detergent all over the basement floor and now I'm all panicked because without this marvel of engineering as my daily driver, life just isn't worth living any more.

 

So, of course, <span style="font-size: 14pt;">NOW</span> I go to the manual, actually the manuals, because the German MONDIA 1300 manual does give instructions on how to remove the laugenfilter and how to drain the machine but gives no hints on how to reverse the procedure. The manual for the US W1918 says something about screwing the filter back into its housing and THEN, pouring about 1/2 gallon of water into the main-wash detergent dispenser to get the ball in some ball valve inside the unit to reposition itself before continuing to use the machine.

 

The machine continues to dump whatever water enters it. I'm hoping there's some way to undo whatever I did without having to pay for a Miele technician visit.

 

I will be grateful for any help here.

 

[foraloysius]

So the water is coming out of that little hose? Your Miele uses a different type of hose than mine, so I'm not sure. But I think there is a mechanism to shut that hose off. If this doesn't work, you could try putting a little clamp on that hose. BTW, is the filter closed good? If not closed well, water will run out of the machine according a German manual.

 

[tomturbomatic]

The little hose does not open automatically when you open the door. You have to partially unscrew the filter to let water get to the hose. The ball valve is important because it keeps water up in the tub and out of the path to the pump until the pump turns on and pulls the ball down to admit water to the fluff filter and the pump. Unscrew the plug again, wash it off and make sure that none of the mating surfaces have any detergent residue. Then screw it tightly back in place. Add the two quarts of water and see if it stays in the machine. Then try starting a fill with no clothes or detergent AND WITH A PAN UNDER THE LITTLE SPOUT. If water is running out of the little bleed hose, you might have lost one of the rubber rings off the twist out filter assembly because when it is sealed tightly, no water can come out of the little hose to the side of it. I guess this is self evident, but it is the only reason I can think of that yours is doing what it is doing.

I am glad that you love your Miele. I love mine, too, but have found that I can get washers almost as hot in less time in my Speed Queen FL. I have a 6 or 8 quart stainless steel teakettle I can use on the 3500 watt induction range downstairs. I fill it with 140F water from the water heater next to the induction range and turn it to full power. By the time I get the load in the machine, the detergent added and the hot water line over by the front loaders bled to where it is delivering 140F water, the water in the teakettle is just about at a boil. I carefully pour it into the SQ FL and start it. The window feels ALMOST as hot as the Miele's when set to a 190F wash. I'm sure it is not 190F, but it is very hot.

 

[bajaespuma]

Thank you both.

 

I have tightened and re-tightened the filter assembly as far as my hand is able to. I also checked the pump impeller on the bottom of the internal housing and it is turning freely.

 

I removed and examined the entire filter assembly. All of the little gaskets are in good shape and it seems to be assembled properly unless something I wasn't aware of fell out when I first removed it. Is there a ball that is supposed to be in that core that runs down the center of the filter assembly? As far as I can tell, there are many disks fixed up and down the assembly; one small one at the machine end is removable. I took it off to clean it and then snapped it back on and it seemed to be fine and in position. There are a pair of large disks with gaskets on the opposite end that are mounted on a spring which, I presume, helps seal the whole thing when the assembly is re-inserted into the housing and tightened. In total, the assembly seems to comprise two parts that are separate-able by the user.

 

I'm going to try the procedure you outlined again later on today or tomorrow to see if it works. If it doesn't I suppose I'll try putting some kind of stopper on that relief hose and just go on using the machine. At this point I'm thinking that what happened when I put the filter back in without priming the pump with the recommended 2 liters of water was when the machine started, it pushed a lot of that undissolved detergent down that hose into a valve where the flotation ball is positioned and jammed it into its "OPEN" position and maybe I have to keep flushing the machine with water until the detergent residue dissolves completely and frees up the ball.

 

[miele_ge]

half cup of Persil Perls???

That seems like a lot!  I usually used a coffee measure of the Perls  (which I think is 1/8 cup) in the 1918.  I have had the coin trap out on both the 1918 when I had it and the current 1986 and don't ever remember adding water after reinstalling it.  Even when a pillow Scott was washing ripped and we had feathers everywhere, I don't think we added water.  We just put a pan under it, opened it to let the water flow, clean the thing, screw it back in and run the next load.

 

You could try calling Miele tech support's # in Princeton, NJ.  They have been helpful with us in the past trying to diagnose problems over the phone without a visit or charge. 

 

I hope you get it sorted out.  Did you get to play with the dryer yet?

 

Alan

 

 

 

[tomturbomatic]

I think the half cup he was talking about was the little measure with the detergent.

 

[bajaespuma]

I think it was all that undissolved detergent that did it.

No, it was about 1/2 a cup; I was about to wash a large load of very dirty T-shirts and I was using a cycle with "Wasser Plus" so I added twice the amount I use normally. Most of it ended up on the basement floor in a large puddle.

 

Thanks for the tip about calling Miele in NJ. I have a feeling, though, that when I tell them I'm using a German model they're going to do what they did before and claim general ignorance. I haven't connected the dryer yet; the weather's been nice enough for the past couple of weeks that I've dried most of my stuff out on the line.

 

And thank you for the recommendation of that wonderful farm with the ice cream(Ferrel?)! We stopped and had chocolate cherry ice cream under a tree in the company of heifers (actual cows). A very pretty corner of our state.

 

[miele_ge]

Ferris Farm or Ferris Family Farm I think

Glad you liked it.  I thought it would be more fun than Dr. Mikes, especially on a nice Summer day.  Did they have all the cats and kittens roaming around?  They had a bunch of cats (all very friendly) the first time we went there, but that was some years ago.

 

If you think Miele would give you trouble about the German model here in the US, you could always say you have a 1918 (it's not a lie) and not mention the German one at all. 

 

Have you compared the coin trap on the 1918 to the German model?  I would expect, but am in no way an expert, that they would be similar if not identical.  I don't remember much, if any, difference between them in the 1918 and the 1988.

 

 

 

[bajaespuma]

Does anyone out there have any service literature for these machines? I'd love to see a diagram of the unit showing all the internal waterworks, ball-valves, etc. I have a feeling that this ball-valve in question is stuck in the "OPEN" position and that, if I could get to it, I might be able to free it up. I've run the machine a couple of times with the relief hose plugged up but it's not something I want to keep that way.  I suppose I should check the Ephemera library to see if there's anything there that's relevant.

 

[tomturbomatic]

The owner's manual says the 2 quarts of water in the pump chamber holds the ball in place. The manual for my 1986 says to run a Fine Rinse after removing the pump protector to recharge the chamber. It is not the ball valve that is letting the water out IF there is water in the pump chamber. There is water in the pump chamber all the time. The instructions for removing the protector tell you that there will be two quarts of water in there.

 

If you remove the stopper from the little drain hose and the machine is off and empty, does the water run out? If it does, there is a fault with the seal between the plug and the housing because there is not supposed to be water in the portion of the chamber where the opening for the hose is located.

[this post was last edited: 8/6/2016-15:14]

 

[launderess]

Issue isn't the ball/pump valve, but that something isn't sealing correctly.

All front loading washing machines with a removable "lint filter" will leak or gush water if that system is not closed and sealed property after being opened.

Basically the area is part of the sump and thus there is always some water. This helps keep the seals from drying out for one thing. However it means once water enters after the system has been drained it will leak out unless things are sealed tightly.

Since the thing was previously water tight until now some sort of user/owner (not pointing a finger) error is the likely cause of this problem.

Best to sit down calmly and carefully and think what was done, how things were put back together and look at directions/diagrams (again when calm) to determine what is going wrong.

As for contacting Miele USA, it would be a crap shoot. Sometimes you can reach a very helpful customer service rep who will go beyond the corporate line "we don't provide information to products not sold in the USA"; others won't give up anything.

 

[bajaespuma]

I appreciate everybody's help and input here

Accepting the probability that this was User (my) error isn't an issue; that would make this easier. I think I'm going to take some step by step pictures and post them with my best recollection of what I did that is the possible cause to this flooding.

 

The machine was working perfectly until I decided to remove the coin trap (which I did without consulting the operator's manual first because I missed some of the preparatory steps and the recommendations for putting the thing back in the sump). I decided to  try a "Soak" cycle on some particularly soiled clothes after I did the filter trap clean-out and after I screwed the thing back in and hand-tightened it in place, I loaded the clothes in the drum, added about a 1/2 cup of Persil color-pearls into the main-wash dispenser and started the cycle. Water and detergent pearls started to flood out of the relief/bleeder hose immediately and hasn't stopped. I will take pictures of the sump, the filter assembly and anything else seems to be relevant but it sounds like Laundress is right and there's some internal seal that either got damaged by my actions or maybe it's time had just come.

 

Oy.

 

If any of you have any pictures of the interiors of these machines I'd sure like to see them.

 

Viel Danke

 

[super32]

Forgive me in advance if i missed it, but shouldn't there be some sort of "plug" in the end of that hose? I thought most manufactures put a plastic plug in the end of the hose.

 

[brisnat81]

There should be a plug or a tap on the end of the drain hose that's behind the filter door. The hose shouldn't have an open end. Do you remember pulling something off or twisting something there when you drained it. Are there any spare parts lying on the floor?

 

[launderess]

I screwed the thing back in and hand-tightened it in place,

On most all European front loaders draining the sump/water is a two part process.

There is a hose with some sort of plug, then you have the actual filter/pump fitting.

To remove water before opening the pump you unplug the hose and lower it into a pan. Once all water has flowed out you then open the pump housing by unscrewing the filter. This procedure is used both before cleaning the pump filter *and* for emergency draining of the machine in case of a power cut(first part only).

If water is coming out of the hose you either have not placed the plug back in properly, or not at all. That or it somehow became damaged (the plug or hose).

Again go back and think what you did and look to see if everything is the way it is supposed to be/look according to the owner's manual.

Water will gush out of the pump housing if the filter is not replaced properly (well sealed), but you are saying the water is coming from the hose IIRC.

 

[bajaespuma]

Honestly,

I don't know if there was or wasn't. When I loosened the goddam "Laugenfilter" the first time there was initially a flood of water that came from that general area. By the time I had completely loosened the filter enough to pull it out of the sump, the water was mostly spent. There's an object lesson here and I swear I'm never going to learn it.

 

Because I'm a nitwit and I wasn't wearing my glasses at the time and doing this in a dark basement I didn't even see exactly where the water was coming from or whether a plug or a ball bounced out of my fancy expensive German washing machine (notice that I refrained from using the word "@nal" where I had ample opportunity).

 

The bleeder/relief hose is black rubber and it ends in a gray hard plastic "T" nozzle. The "T" is fitted into a spring clip attached to the inside of the little access door.  Both ends of this plastic "T" have holes in them but no water seems to be able to flow out of the upper end when you plug the lower one. When you swing open the access door, the spring clip pulls the bleeder hose and the attached nozzle out slightly beyond the front panel of the machine, about 1/2". When the door is shut, the nozzle end is positioned right above a circular drain hole bored into the housing that conducts what water may come out of that relief hose to end up on the floor right in front of the machine rather than back-washing into the works. It wouldn't make sense for the relief hose nozzle to be plugged closed, because if there's a problem, the general idea of a relief bleeder is to have the water flow out of and away from the machine.

 

The good news is that when the bleeder hose is plugged, currently, with the Sharpie pen, the machine works just fine. I'm working hard to fix this because I have never, in my entire life, used a washing machine that is so close to perfect that I'm really intending to use this as my daily driver until the bitter end, its or mine.

 

If I were the King of the Forest, I would have Miele make this EXACT machine but make one for the American customer that was 50% larger in capacity and whatever components necessary to feature the same maximum water temperature and spin speed. THAT would be a perfect machine because then I could launder pillows, blankets and comforters in it as I could in my LG. Oh, and Achtung!!! Meinen Herren: a chlorine bleach dispenser would be nice while y'all are at it; don't give me this neo-Green,  Euro-priss "Oh, nobody needs to use Chlorine Bleach EVER" crap. I'm not going to boil wash (read: melt, destroy)some items that I'd like to have the ability to sanitize with sodium hypoclorite once in a blue moon, thank you very much.

 

Outta my cold-dead hand.

 

I bet a mouse got into the works.

 

[foraloysius]

Miele used several different systems for this. The system on my Miele uses a plug, but that hose isn't attached to the lint filter door. The one that is, like in your machine, doesn't have a plug.

I remembered this has been discussed before, more information in this thread with some pictures too.

http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?42269

 

[bajaespuma]

Thank you for posting that! It was very enlightening and I tried to resurrect the thread by asking "Askemmy" what happened finally. Sounds exactly what happened to me.

 

[foraloysius]

Askemmy never posted after that last message again, so I doubt you will get an answer, but who knows. In the meantime I hope that thread has information enough for you to solve the problem. Basically you're looking at something that prevents the filter from closing tight.