Did I fix my washing machine or not?

[never give up]

The washing machine displayed an error code. The error code said: low water pressure/supply, check the hose isn’t kinked, clean the filter, check connections. Well my goodness, what a time to go wrong! It had been a long day at my Mum’s completing a variety of tasks, and all I wanted to do having arrived home was put a clothes wash on and have some tea.  This error message on my washing machine had other ideas.

After shaking my fist at kinked hoses everywhere, I gathered my composure and fought valiantly to suppress the urge to call someone competent. Come on, I can do this! Can’t I? Can I? A big part of my FIRE journey is to become more self-sufficient and competent at fixing issues around the home. So, I took a couple of deep breaths and got to work.

Well, to tell a long story short MMMers, I fixed the washing machine. Anyone that knows me wouldn’t believe it, but I did. I had to pause to just take in this extraordinary event and rejoice in the fact that I’m not completely useless.

Look at me being all ERE on my way to FIRE! Firstly I wrestled to get the machine out from below the worktop. I wiggled the pipes, I ensured everything wasn’t kinked and that the connections were tight. I must have looked like a professor huddled over their latest invention. I guess there comes a time in our lives where we need to rise to the challenge, excel where we haven’t excelled before, and reach a new level of competence and dexterity. I had straightened my pipes, I ensured there was flex, I secured everything and carefully put the machine back whence it came. Look at me!

I switched the machine on and it now worked. The error message was banished to just a mere memory. Woohoo! I’m a genius! I can’t tell you, but I felt on top of the world. I hadn’t had this euphoric feeling of competence, of mastering something unaided for years. This easily beat that changing of the light bulb last month. My goodness look at me. I was absolutely over the moon with myself I can tell you. I’m not completely useless after all I told myself. I accomplished all this on my own without anyone’s help.

At that exact moment in time, if someone had told me that all of my neighbours had come outside and stood at the end of their driveways, effectively forming a guard of honour, it wouldn’t have surprised me. If that had of occurred, I don’t think I would have been able to resist sprinting up one side of the road and then the other high-fiving every single one of them. What a moment of accomplishment! I fixed a washing machine! Absolutely thrilling.

I carefully came down from the high and got myself some tea while my washing machine merrily worked through its cycle. Twenty minutes later I got a text from my water provider/supplier, apologising for the low water pressure earlier in the day, but it had since been fixed. Apparently there was a period where there was no water supply at all. My goodness, well that was very kind of them to let me know although I can’t remember experiencing any issues with my taps or anything…

Ah, well, er, ah, no hang on a minute, that’s not on. No, it’s not possible. No, it can’t be surely. Please don’t tell me that all my washing machine fixing efforts made no difference whatsoever and it was this external issue that had caused my problem and then in turn resolved it too! I’m not sure I could bear it. I fixed the washing machine right? This issue was fixed by me wasn’t it MMMers? This is just a coincidence right? If I hadn’t of done anything and had instead just tried my washing machine a couple of hours later, it wouldn’t have worked right? It wouldn’t have worked because in this scenario I hadn’t of taken the necessary steps to fix the problem. Right? It was me that fixed it. Right? Please tell me the washing machine error wasn’t caused because the water supply was cut off without me knowing, and then came back on again during the time that I was “fixing” the washing machine. Please, I need this. Please. Please. PLEASE! I fixed it right?

I think I know the answer, but am hoping fellow MMM DIYers can offer some words of encouragement to a newbie at all of this. Has anyone else got any stories of fixing something but having an element of doubt over how much of it was down to their skill?

[deborah]

I think it was your skill. The washing machine would have continued to display that message until you did something. It’s just possible that turning it off and on again might have done the trick, but what you did obviously worked.

[never give up]

That's kind deborah, thank you. I appreciate the positivity. I didn't know if this was the plumbing equivalent of the tree falling in the forest without anyone around to hear it?

We'll never know of course if I would have still been required to perform a fix even if the water supply had been on. I can't be exactly sure of the time the water supply was off and then returned either. There's been many unanswerable questions in life of course. I've just performed a search for "unanswerable philosophical questions" and it returns the likes of what is the purpose of life and what is consciousness. I'm not sure "Did I fix my washing machine or not?" is quite that deep, but it's certainly something I'm struggling to get my head around :-)

[Green_Tea]

I think you did great and you won either way: you dared working on your washing machine, you know it better now, you got it to work again and you'll have more confidence about trying DIYing repairs next time 👍
Also you got a pretty fun story out of it!

[never give up]

That's a great way of looking at it Green_Tea, thank you. You're right. I hadn't seen behind there for many a year, so I do gain some credit for taking the task on and learning about the connections too. I'm not sure about the ongoing confidence going forward though. I'm going to be a bit paranoid from now on as to whether some external force is actually controlling things or not, and questioning if my efforts are completely futile. Watch out for future threads from me such as:

1. Did I actually pass my driving test or was it just the first (unknown to me) experiment of self-driving cars back in the 90's?

2. Did I actually get hired for my long term career or did an early form of AI pass the interview for me?

3. Did I actually cook my first roast dinner or did the oven do it?

I have a hard enough job of getting my head around my FIRE stash growing passively with it's own free will. Am I actually doing and achieving anything myself?

[Green_Tea]

😂

Add in my personal favourite: is my brain "only" a bunch of connected neurones, computing along in their predetermined ways? 🫨

[Morning Glory]

You would need a placebo-controlled trial to find out with reasonable certainty. Next time it happens, fix thirty of your neighbors' washing machines and make sure to spend an equal amout of time fussing around with another thirty but not fixing them. (More is better but 30 is enough to do a t test iirc. Make sure you use a random number generator to select the order in which you do this). The sham treatment should be plausible enough that the owners don't know if you are fixing them are not. I can't think of a  way to double blind this. Now count how many of each work and dig up your old statistics textbook to see how certain you can be that you fixed it. 

[never give up]

Haha I like it Green_Tea.

I appreciate the input Morning Glory. Thank you.  I'll draft a friendly but firm letter to all of my road seeking cooperation and I'll let you know how I get on :-)

[Just Joe]

HAHA - congrats on the repairs everyone.

I've "paused" (mostly hobby) projects for years until I had the confidence to continue.

Mostly though I dive straight into projects and grind away until i learn what i need to know to complete the repair.

[never give up]

Thanks Just Joe. I'm sure everyone will be enthralled to know my washing machine that I fixed continues to work without issue.

Your approach sounds like a good one.

[Omy]

For me, the moral of this brilliant story is to never buy a washing machine that gives me error codes...so I'll never have to fix it.

[never give up]

Hello Omy. That's very true.  I wonder if it is possible to purchase a new one now without error codes. It may need a second hand purchase to meet this aim I feel. Either that or I could put some black tape over the display screen :-)

[Omy]

Black tape would definitely be more Mustachian.

[Morning Glory]

Hello Omy. That's very true.  I wonder if it is possible to purchase a new one now without error codes. It may need a second hand purchase to meet this aim I feel. Either that or I could put some black tape over the display screen :-)

If it beeps you could wad up a bunch of cotton in the speaker.  I did that to my car not too long ago. (passenger seatbelt warning even  when the belt is buckled and there's no passenger in the seat. Alarm is soldered to the control panel. Internet tricks with buckling the seatbelt 30 times while reciting the Lord's prayer did not work. Problem is intermittent but seems to occur more on errands with multiple stops. Cotton makes it hardly noticeable over the radio and much less rage inducing).

[Omy]

Hello Omy. That's very true.  I wonder if it is possible to purchase a new one now without error codes. It may need a second hand purchase to meet this aim I feel. Either that or I could put some black tape over the display screen :-)

If it beeps you could wad up a bunch of cotton in the speaker.  I did that to my car not too long ago. (passenger seatbelt warning even  when the belt is buckled and there's no passenger in the seat. Alarm is soldered to the control panel. Internet tricks with buckling the seatbelt 30 times while reciting the Lord's prayer did not work. Problem is intermittent but seems to occur more on errands with multiple stops. Cotton makes it hardly noticeable over the radio and much less rage inducing).

DH has done that with the speaker of his cell phone which intermittently makes a crazy tapping sound. Of course there are some adverse consequences to blocking the sound coming from your phone...

[Just Joe]

Rip that circuit board out and de-solder whatever is making you crazy. Did that with the dash clock in our old Honda. It would only intermittently display the time. First quarterly, then annually. The time was accurate, just not displaying.

Resoldered all the joints in about ~15 minutes. And it worked. Before reverting to its old behavior a few years later. ;)

It really needed to have all the old solder removed and replaced. A ~30 min 25 cent task. My theory is that was from the era when electronics manufacturers were transitioning to more environmentally sound solder and it just didn't last. I'm an expert on the subject because I've used a soldering iron  before... ;)

[Morning Glory]

Rip that circuit board out and de-solder whatever is making you crazy. Did that with the dash clock in our old Honda. It would only intermittently display the time. First quarterly, then annually. The time was accurate, just not displaying.

Resoldered all the joints in about ~15 minutes. And it worked. Before reverting to its old behavior a few years later. ;)

It really needed to have all the old solder removed and replaced. A ~30 min 25 cent task. My theory is that was from the era when electronics manufacturers were transitioning to more environmentally sound solder and it just didn't last. I'm an expert on the subject because I've used a soldering iron  before... ;)

There I was just patting myself on the back for knowing that solder how it's spelled and solder how it's pronounced are actually the same word and not referring to two separate methods of attaching thing together :)

  I'm leery of messing with it too much because it controls the speedometer and other dash functions  and would cost $600 to replace.  The problem is really with the seat sensors but unhooking them makes the ding continuous. We don't have a upull around here that i know of or I would send dh to get a new seat.

[Just Joe]

Hmmm, plug the beeper hole with epoxy? Can't make sound if it can't vibrate - right? (Beware, not sure if this is a useful bodge or not).

[never give up]

The households of OMY, Morning Glory and Just Joe sound fairly handy and innovative. Putting air in my tyres is as far as I've got with car maintenance. Although having said that, I did once successfully change my right rear brake light-bulb in a moment of skill and inspiration that I will forever think of as my light-bulb moment.

The washing machine is still working.

[Just Joe]

Wahoo! You go you!

[never give up]

I know! Sometimes I astonish myself Just Joe! Thanks  :-)

[oneday]

...I will forever think of as my light-bulb moment.

I'm cackling :)

[never give up]

Haha hi oneday (waves)

[oneday]

Haha hi oneday (waves)

(waves vigorously and big grin)

[FrugalShrew]

I think your water company was trying to steal credit for fixing the washing machine, when it was clearly all you.

[never give up]

That's so kind of you to say FrugalShrew,  thank you :-)