Washing Machine Repairs - Faulty Water Heater Element

If your washing machine does not heat the water during its wash cycle, it is likely to need some kind repair, a faulty water heater element is the most likely cause for this type of problem, here are a few checks that you can use that will indicate to you whether you have a likely faulty water heater element.

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There are a few ways to tell if the water heater element in your washing machine might not be working and only one way to know for sure, I will go over some of the ways you can use to tell if your washing machine water heater element might not be working and also explain the 1 method you can use to to tell for sure if your element has developed a fault or not.

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If your washing machine blows a fuse or circuit breaker within a few minutes of turning it on, this could be many things and would need further testing but one of the things that could be causing the fuse to blow is a faulty water heater element. If your wash is not coming out as clean as it used to, this again could be a indicator of a faulty element as the clothes could be washing in cold water. If you touch the glass on multiple occasions throughout the wash and the glass feels cold every time, this again is another indicator of a faulty element as on most washing machines the glass section of the door will become at least warm during the hot wash cycle. If the wash seems to go on and on and takes much longer than usual and with some machines the wash cycle may even just go on and on until you stop it, this again is a indicator that the element may have a fault, on some washing machine the wash cycle will not stop or move on to the next cycle until a certain preset temperature has been reached, so the machine would just go on and on waiting for the element to heat the water to the preset temperature, but be warned there are other problems that can show very similar symptoms to all the above. The only sure way to tell if a element is faulty, even if all the above faults are present, is to use whats called a ohmmeter, a ohmmeter is a device used for testing all types of electrical values, including resistance between 2 conductive device. To test if a element is working or not a engineer would connect a ohmmeters live and neutral wires to the corresponding connectors on the element and check for a positive reading, no reading would mean a faulty element, the engineer would also use the ohmmeter to read across both terminals again and the earth terminal on the element but in this case a positive reading would mean a faulty element and a negative reading would mean no fault on the earth to live and earth to neutral connectors

You should be competent with electrics with a degree of experience to do the above test has it involves opening your appliance and removing and replacing wires inside the machine that will become live once the wires are replaced and the washing machine is turned on, there is no "zero" place for mistakes on this job, if you do not fully understand house hold electrics you should not attempt the test.

Washing Machine Repairs - Faulty Water Heater Element

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