My God, I still can't get over what almost happened last night.
So the washing machine is back on the fritz. I think. I decided that the washer was strong enough to take in this huge load of laundry that needed to be washed cold. Didn't work. When I checked it out the load was still in standing water. I think there was a "uL" code on the display, meaning the load was uneven.
Didn't think too much of it to rearrange the clothes so that it seemed level on all sides and put the washing machine on the quick rinse-and-spin cycle. I assume the detergent is all used up, so it's beyond the wash cycle. Just need it to drain the tub of water and to spin the excess water out of the clothes. So I did that and forgot about it. Oh, by the way, this was Sunday, I think.
When I next checked it, the next day, the water was all gone, but when I touched the clothes it was obvious it did not go through the spin cycle. And there was no way I could dry clothes that were this waterlogged. So after giving it a day to "dry out" (as much as waterlogged clothes could dry out inside a closed washer) I did the rinse-and-spin cycle again yesterday/Tuesday (after watching The Hateful Eight), this time with only half the clothes because I thought that a source of the recurring problem was that there simply were too many clothes. And I then went upstairs to finish the blog post previous to this one.
The cycle was supposed to run for 15 and 20 minutes. I got caught up in writing and looking at porn. An hour passed, and I then I heard something from the basement. There shouldn't be any sound coming from downstairs. So I went downstairs.
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I guess this is where I have to talk about another problem, if I haven't spoken about it before. The drain leading from what I think is called the standpipe outside the house to the septic tank is clogged. Somewhere. I don't know where, but it's bad enough that for every wash, after the machine shoots out the used water, it backs up. In the laundry room there is a drain, and the water seeps up through this drain and floods the bottom floor. (The washer, dryer and sink are a step up from this bottom floor, which I think is customary in all laundry rooms.) The longer the cycle of wash, the more water that ends up flooding up the floor, so the time it takes for the water to get around or through the clog, wherever that is, varies. Eventually it all goes back down the drain, and eventually the floor dries, so I don't worry about it too much.
Not this time, though. I came back down to see water ... well, not everywhere, but in as many places as I've seen it. There was so much water coming up from the emergency drain that there were a couple inches of it. We have a small plastic detergent bucket we use for the trash, where we throw the lint from the dryer's lint trap. It floated halfway down the floor. It was that deep.
There's more. The sink is partitioned in two, and both wells are pretty deep. The water that was chugging out of the washing machine through the hose (I know that the hose is usually shoved into a standpipe, but we are so ghetto that we just point the hose running out of the washer into one of the sink's wells) was filling up the well of the sink it was pointed into -- and it was rising because the washing machine was still churning out water.
When I looked at the display on the washer, it was flashing a different code this time -- "sd," which, in the instruction manual, stands for "suds detection" ... or something. That can happen when you put in too much detergent -- which I remember doing, because I had such a huge load and I figured that I needed more detergent. That "sd" code comes up when the washer detects that too much detergent generates too many suds. What I didn't realize until I read up on it on the Internet (though I don't know this for sure) is that when that happens, it automatically goes into yet another rinse-and-spin cycle in the hopes of losing all those suds. Once (or if) it does, then it can go through the entire cycle and be done, leaving me with relatively dry clothes to put into the dryer. Guess here is that it kept repeating that rinse-and-spin cycle because it still had way too many suds. That's why there was so much water (although it didn't really help that the strainer for that well was clogged up with lint, but if it wasn't, it probably would've wound up on the floor).
By the way, the well on the other half of the sink was filling with water too. But the hose wasn't pointed into that side. I still can't explain it, but it's possible that the clog is so bad that it backed up both sink drains.
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At this point I was in a panic. Water was everywhere, and the fucking washing machine still was giving me more. I grabbed a bucket and pointed the hose into it, but that was filling up fast. I then tried turning off the washing machine so it would abort the rinse-and-spin cycle abruptly. But the damn machine wouldn't turn itself off! It was like HAL in 2001, for God's sake!! But after frantically pushing every button on the display, it finally turned off. It did so after what seemed like it ejaculated a good amount of water, so it might be programmed to not turn itself off until it emptied itself (of water.) Just in case it does have a mind of its own, I unplugged it.
That brings me to Wednesday night. First, I dumped the load in the washing machine and threw it in the dryer because I had nowhere else to put it. (By the way, those clothes were still soaking wet. It didn't reach the spin phase at all in that hour I left that damn machine alone.) There was a possibility the "sd" popped up because there was something wrong with the spinning tub, but it looked like everything is in its place. I also popped open the impeller cap (the thing in the middle) because sometimes come up due to excess lint, but the bolt inside the impeller was pristine. So either there was still too much detergent in these clothes or the washing machine is broken. I'll figure out how to get it to give me the diagnostic codes today (Thursday).
But that is only one part of the problem. What's wrong with getting the clothes properly washed is separate from the inevitable flooding of the floor. I have two problems to deal with. And I tried to tackle the clog by first calling Father and asking for his help, then taking this snake he has and jamming it down the emergency drain. Man, I have no idea if I'm doing it right. I wasn't able to shove that snake down far because I don't know where the drain drains to; it's just one dark ... hole down there. And when I get the motor running, all it did was throw dirty water all over the laundry room. But I did dig up a hell of a lot of lint, and the standing water level did sink after I yanked the snake out of there.
Only a little, however. I can look and still see a level of water indicating that there is a back-up down there somewhere. Everytime I whipped the snake around it got lower, but normally there wouldn't be any standing water I could see. So I'm at a loss. There might be a clog down there so bad that I might need to call someone. Or I just have to put a little more elbow grease into clearing whatever's clogging. All I'm doing is praying that come tomorrow night I look down there and all the water has drained out. Fat chance, probably.
So tonight (after I eat at Hooters) I am going to do the following: 1) Plug the washing machine back in; 2) follow the Internet's instructions on how to run a diagnostic test; 3) troubleshoot depending on what codes it gives me; 4) put half of my soaked clothes back into the washing machine; 5) put it through yet another damn rinse-and-spin cycle and 6) watch the fucking thing like a hawk. Because I can't have the goddamn room full of water again.
And that was my mistake before. I went 40 minutes beyond what I should have before I checked the washer. If I dawdled even further, the washing machine might have been on a never-ending rinse cycle and water literally could have been everywhere. I am still scared that if I was even lazier than I was, I could have done some severe damage to my house. And even now I'm anxious that there might be something seriously wrong, with either the sewer drain or the washing machine, or both.
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