Does anyone know how badly designed the conical LG washer/dryer drain filter unit is?

All LG ideas are bad, sort of like their products.

You already said the pump failed. What's the question here?

As with many other products, modern residential washers need maintenance on a fairly regular basis. We have a 15 year old LG front-loader at our summe r house, we just replaced our 12 year old (purchased reconditioned) LG at o ur main house. We replaced it because the fill valve and the drain valve fa iled together, and the parts and time involved for a machine that heavily u sed (7+ loads per week) mitigated towards a new unit that was more efficien t, and has a few more features.

At the beginning of each quarter at home, we clean the drain sump. Takes te n (10) minutes at the outside. And we have pulled all sorts of *stuff* out of it. At the summer house, we do it at the end of each season as part of t he winterizing process. That one gets, perhaps, one load per week.

Unlike the bad old days, when a washer used 40 gallons of water, and lasted very nearly forever if not seriously abused, a modern washer will use mayb e 5 gallons of water, and needs a bit of care and feeding, or it will not l ast very long at all. That is not the fault of the device, but of the user not understanding their obligations towards achieve that efficiency.

As John Muir wrote about VWs - "Come to kindly terms with your ass, for it bears you.". Come to terms with your machine and it will treat you well.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

'cos everyone is trying to convince me that buzzing/grinding is a sign that the pump is OK but blocked, - the problem might be a blockage behind the pump which would stay there after pump replacement. Also, there is a video out there which says that a failed pump has an impeller which moves freely. And that there being pressure between quadrants as you turn the impeller i s a sign that the pump is actually OK.

But YOUR point is more valid. If the pump starts to buzz/grind for anything more than a few seconds and water stops being pumped through, the game is up! Especially if there really isnt much in the filter area and I can move the impeller between quadrants, indicating that no BLOCKAGE is stopping th e impeller from moving.

An LG washer pump is about $25. The entire assembly may be had for $60 or l ess. Takes about an hour to replace - ask me how I know that. As compared t o +/- $700 for a new machine, or a service-call of about $150 + parts. No s pecial tools required, and at least half-a-dozen YouTube tutorials on how-t o.

These pumps fail from:

a) Pump impeller blockage - takes a lot to get to that, but it is possible if the drain sump is never cleaned. b) Running too much suction - far more common. Clean the sump! Regularly. c) Age - these are cheap little things. And very easily replaced.

If you were to direct all that energy expressed as anger at addressing the actual cause, then fixing the cause, your life would be better.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

e actual cause, then fixing the cause, your life would be better.

Any anger only arises as a result of having to spend so much time and money on a machine which is so badly designed that it WILL fail again within 2-3 years and need an extraordinary amount of work cleaning it out!

I have seen the videos and the work for this pump looks easy but is VERY ex tended. Also, there is a metal ring around the door seal which looks like a real pig to re-fit! Even for me, where i get a real rush out of taking int ricate things which dont work apart and fixing them!

I keep a pair of hollow-nose slip-joint pliers that manages that ring very nicely (among many other uses). I have no idea of the technical name of tha t plier, but it does the trick.

As I previously noted, took me about an hour from start-to-finish. But I ha d good light and lots of room.

The part that gripes me about the older LG machines is that they rust, badl y. After about 2015 or so, they seem to have fixed that. And the reconditio ned unit that we replaced a bit ago cost us about $0.14 per load (machine o nly) or so, so it owed us nothing at all. Were it not for the rust, I proba bly would have done the necessary repairs....

I admit to not fixing dish washers. I do deal with other machinery with similar sized centrifugal pumps. Blockage seems to be the #1 problem. It doesn't really take much to stop a small pump either. All it takes is a piece of cellophane or tape to really mess things up. Complete blockage isn't needed. I've fished out junk with wires and it's not uncommonon to have to completely disassemble the wet side of even primo ceramic shaft, magnetic drive Iwaki pumps to fish out trash in system.

The motor spinning at all is a good sign though. Seized motors burn out real fast, and a burned out motor doesn't usually buzz or do anything.

Can you remove the pump and check the entire path the water takes?

I call bullshit on this. While folks on usenet, in a repair group can probably figure out preventative maintenance it's not listed in any consumer product manual. There's no way LG user manual mentions anything other than don't run a pump dry and contact a service professional for anything else. modern appliances are pure junk, plain and simple. My favorite is clogged codensate lines on fridges, moldy side load washing machines and the $400 parts and labor "computer board" for anything else.

1) it's a tube, operated by gravity. Manufacturers somehow mess this up, it has to be on purpose. 2) wow, a big old V shaped gasket might trap water. Sure, I'll run two loads, the second with vinegar or bleach to keep the machine from rotting. Really saves water now, right?

There really isn't much maintenance the end user can perform on appliances these days.

Remember when the only thing to go out on a stove was the oven light and hot element ignitor, maybe once every 10 years? I've seen multiple stove failures that resulted in the entire unit being scrapped due to electronic problems. It's rediculous. Stoves don't need maintenance, don't have pumps and still fail at a very high rate due to unnecessary electronics and awful design practives what serve to only rip off the consumer.

Warning: This is a bit of a rant....

I would not accuse you of being a Luddite, but I do question your understan ding of basic care-and-feeding of appliances. You admit to doing tear-down maintenance of a microwave oven (surely not in any operations manual), yet will not admit to the most basic understanding of the car-and-feeding of ot her, larger appliances.

Sure, our range has as much computing power as the Space Shuttle ((but so d id the Commodore VIC20), and as such probably should be on a circuit protec ted by a surge-suppressor (and it is). It is now 12 years old and doing fin e. The oven gets used very nearly every day, so it does need cleaning (main tenance), and every so often, beyond just the self-clean feature - and that is not in any manual either.

As to the clothes washer - cleaning the sump quarterly is no big deal, is i t? If the alternative is replacing the pump, probably annually (with heavy use)? Now:

a) The typical old-style top-loader used between 35 and 45 gallons of water per full load. The average washer is used 400 times per year (family of fo ur(4)). Splitting the difference, that is 16,000 gallons of water per year. That is 44 gallons per day, just for washing clothes. Which is, typically, also heated at least in part. b) The typical old-style top-loader leaves between one and two gallons of w ater behind in a full load. Which must be dried, either mechanically or on a clothes line. How many here use a clothes line? For everything? c) Our LG uses five (5) gallons of water on the heavy-duty cycle, and seven (7) if we use a pre-rinse (never needed to, at least so far). Giving it a

8:1 advantage over the top-loader. and a 3:1 advantage over even the most e fficient modern top-loader. Making that occasional vinegar douche not so ho rrible - well, we use chlorine bleach often enough that the vinegar is rare ly needed.

At our summer house, where we both make and dispose of our water on-site, a nd we are on a Class A trout-stream, water consumption is a huge factor. Ju st below functionality, but above first-cost and even maintenance - althoug h so far, that has been minimal. We are also exceedingly careful of the mat erials we use such as soaps and detergents.

(Definition of Class A Waters: Streams that support a population of naturally produced trout of sufficient size and abundance to support a long-term and rewarding sport fishery. Management: Natural reproduction, wild populations with no stocking)

And learning what works over the last 30 years upstate has translated into choices we make "at home" to keep to a more gentle footprint - OK, not the "American Way" but so what?

It is a matter of choices made. But it does gripe me when individuals blame the object rather than the caretaker of that object for its failure after years of negligence.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

I have the other problem. The washer just chews up the lint and spits it out. that goes down the drain via a 2-tub laundry sink and about 20' of 60 year old galvanized pipe burried under the cement.

The lint catches about 20' out. I got tired of that non-sense.

Especially when I spent a lot of time using the home depot auger in the wrong direction. Mine was clockwise in, theirs was CCW in.

I made a very nice sock filter using mostly stock parts. Once I had proof of concept, I borrowed a lathe and added some new parts and made the filter super easy to empty.

Expensive, simple and stuff had to come from 3 different suppliers.

As I keep repeating, this site is dedicated to finding out how to do things the hardest possible way, seeking the least satisfactory results, taking the most possible time:

And, if that is too much:

Sadly, this one requires siccors....

And, if you are buying for the ages:

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

I didn't know they made those.

In 12 years doing washes for a family of four we've never had the washer drain plug up though. Perhaps because it's one of those old Maytags that use a lot of water it dilutes the lint enough to flow through.

And....Seeing how much of somebody else's time you can waste because you won't spend a few minutes of your own time to look something up.

--
"I am a river to my people." 
Jeff-1.0 
WA6FWi 
http:foxsmercantile.com

I live in Chicago. We have too much fresh water (yeah, this is really a problem, lake michigan has record high water levels and the bike paths is getting splashed with water). I'm going to run the biggest, oldest most water using washing machine I can get my hands on. They clean better too, there's more space in the drum, you don't get everything all knotted up trying to save the last drops of the cheapest more infinite resource we have in the great lakes. LG appliances will be long shut down, sold, divested or whatever is hot long before the parts supply for even a kenmore washer dries up.

None of those asian appliances brands are meant to be serviced. They are meant to be thrown away, like a cell phone.

Bet it leaves you with nice clean clothes too. Those eco-nonsense side loaders taht use 3 table spoons of water leave so much crud that what's left instantly rots, stinking the machine up.

That's not a problem with a properly designed top loaded that doesn't need goofy bubble free detergent and actually washes the soil from the laundry way, instead of just flopping the clothing around in it for a while.

Do you not comprehend that all you are doing is relocating that water from the fresh water system to the waste-water system? And if you are on municipal water and municipal sewer, you are paying handsomely for that privilege.

I expect that you still use high-phosphate detergent as well. It *does* get things nice and clean, takes lots of water to do it, but nice and clean!

(Not to mention algae blooms.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

Actually if you use lots of water you need hardly any soap. Perhaps none.

This is OT but the lint problem is not on the washer side, the filter works fine or the drain pipes seem to be able to handle it.

The lint problem is on the dryer side, which is where lint builds up in every available physical space or crevasse in the machine. Obviously dryer lint doesn't build up in the drain line area!

We keep a very vintage electric Maytag at the summer house. I recently had occasion to replace the motor and belt - and you are right - the lint remov ed from inside the machine was enough to fill a reasonably sized pillow. At home, we have a gas-fired LG, after 12 years, I did the rollers (front and back) belt and tension roller. Far less lint than the Maytag, but more con centrated anywhere there was a bend or corner in the airway. Overall, the t iming was about the same as I replaced the rollers in the Maytag about 10 y ears ago, but the Maytag sees about 15% of the use of the LG.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA