What maintenance does a washing machine need, and how often?

Washing machine maintenance is unusually well rewarded, because the jobs are short, the intervals are long, and the failures they prevent are the expensive kind: a machine that stops mid-cycle full of water, a smell that will not go, a hose that lets go while the house is empty. What follows is separated by interval so it can go straight into a calendar.

Safety

What you'll need

• Shallow tray and towels
• White vinegar or a washing machine cleaner
• An old toothbrush and a cloth
• An adjustable spanner, for the feet and hoses (optional)
• A spirit level (optional)

Step by step

1. After every wash: leave the door and the drawer ajar.It takes no time and prevents most of what the rest of this list is about. A sealed warm damp drum is where the smell comes from.
2. After every wash: take the load out promptly.Damp washing left in a closed drum sours within hours and needs a hot wash to recover. It also transfers the smell into the machine.
3. Monthly: run a hot maintenance cycle on an empty machine.The hottest cycle available, or the machine's own drum clean programme, with a machine cleaner or two cups of white vinegar. Monthly if you mostly wash at 30 and 40; quarterly if you regularly run 60. Nothing in a normal wash gets hot enough to break down the greasy residue in the drum, hoses and pump.
4. Monthly: wipe the door seal, folding it back all the way round.The channel under the lip of the rubber is where the black slime grows, and where socks go. A cloth and a household cleaner, right round the circumference.
5. Monthly: pull the detergent drawer out and wash it.It releases with a catch inside the recess on most machines. Wash it in hot water, brush the conditioner compartment and its siphon, and brush out the roof of the empty recess with a torch on it.
6. Every three months: clean the pump filter.Switch off at the socket. Tray and towels down at the bottom front, open the hatch, and unscrew the filter slowly in stages — several litres will come out over a few minutes. Clean the filter, feel carefully in the housing for coins and wires, and check the impeller behind it turns freely. Refit hand tight and fully seated, then run a short cycle and check for leaks.
7. Every three months: check behind the machine.A torch behind and underneath. You are looking for damp patches, limescale trails on hose connections, a kinked hose, and a waste hose that has sagged into a low point holding standing water.
8. Annually: inspect the fill hoses properly.Bulges, cracking near the ends, corrosion or green staining at the nuts, and any weeping at the connections. A fill hose is under mains pressure permanently, including when the machine is off, so a failure floods until someone finds it.
9. Annually: clean the inlet gauze filter.Close the tap, switch off at the socket, undo the fill hose at the machine end with a bowl underneath, and lift out the fine mesh disc inside the connection. Rinse and brush it, and refit it. Silting here is the commonest cause of a slow fill.
10. Annually: recheck level and feet.Push each top corner in turn — any rock at all means a foot is off the floor. Adjust so all four sit firmly, then tighten the locknuts hard up against the body. Unlocked feet vibrate loose within months, which is why a levelling problem that was fixed comes back.
11. Annually: exercise the isolating tap.Close it and open it once. Valves that sit untouched for a decade seize exactly when you need to shut the water off in a hurry.
12. Every five years or so: replace rubber fill hoses.Or fit braided stainless hoses, ideally with an anti-burst device. Rubber perishes from the inside where you cannot see it, and this is the single most consequential preventive job on the machine.
13. In a hard water area: descale as well.A descaling product suitable for washing machines a couple of times a year, in addition to the maintenance wash. Scale on the heating element makes it work harder and shortens its life.

Tips

• Put the pump filter clean in a calendar. It is the job that gets skipped and then produces a machine stopped mid-cycle full of water on a Sunday evening.
• Cutting back or stopping fabric conditioner reduces drawer, seal and filter residue more than any cleaning product adds.
• If the machine lives in a fitted kitchen and is awkward to pull out, do the behind-the-machine checks at the same time as the annual hose inspection so it only comes out once.
• Turning the water taps off when you go away for more than a few days removes the fill-hose flood risk entirely for the period you are not there to notice it.

Common mistakes

• Never cleaning the pump filter — It is designed to be cleaned by the owner, which is why it is behind an accessible hatch. Left alone it eventually blocks and the machine stops mid-cycle, full of water, with the door locked.
• Ignoring the fill hoses because they look fine — They perish internally. A burst fill hose is at mains pressure and does not stop until someone closes the tap, which is why it is the appliance failure that causes the largest insurance claims.
• Running only cool cycles and never a hot one — Nothing in a 30 degree wash is hot enough to break down the greasy residue that grows into biofilm. A monthly empty hot cycle is what keeps the machine from smelling.

Keeping on top of it

• Leave the door and drawer ajar; unload promptly (every wash)
• Hot maintenance cycle on an empty machine (monthly)
• Wipe the door seal channel and wash the drawer (monthly)
• Clean the pump filter and check the impeller (every 3 months)
• Check behind for damp, kinks and a sagging waste hose (every 3 months)
• Inspect fill hoses; clean the inlet gauze filter (annually)
• Recheck level, tighten foot locknuts, exercise the tap (annually)
• Replace rubber fill hoses, or fit braided ones (every ~5 years)

Checklist

• Door and drawer left ajar after every wash
• Monthly hot maintenance cycle run
• Door seal channel wiped, drawer and recess cleaned
• Pump filter cleaned and impeller checked
• Behind the machine checked for damp and kinks
• Fill hoses inspected for bulges and weeping
• Inlet gauze filter cleaned
• Machine level, no rock, foot locknuts tight
• Isolating tap opened and closed
• Fill hoses replaced if more than about five years old

Questions people ask