Our washing machine stopped working at the weekend. It did everything that is was supposed to, the water ran in and out again, but the clothes never got washed.
A washing machine doesn’t look dangerous so I felt that I should be able to mend it. I carefully laid it on its front and unscrewed the back. Inside there were wires and pipes, an electronic thing, a big wheel and a little wheel. The big wheel was attached to the drum where my wife puts the washing and there was a large elastic band between it and the little wheel. The little wheel was on the front of a complicated thing. The complicated thing had electrical wires going it to it but no pipes. Everything inside the washing machine was covered in black dust.
I could tell that the complicated thing (I call it the convertor) must be the device that caused the washing to happen because it had the most black dust. I removed it from the machine by undoing some big bolts.
When I had it on the kitchen table I discovered how washing machines work. The convertor has two channels leading into it, each containing a stick of very, very concentrated dirty black stuff which is driven by a spring into the mechanism. Obviously the black dust corresponds to the cleanness that the machine imparts to the clothes. The convertor uses the rotation of the washing to change the dirtyness of the black stuff into electrical cleanness which is then fed into the clothes by the rest of the machine. I’m surprised that the manufacturer doesn’t provide a receptacle in which the dirtiness can be collected, it must be a cost-saving measure.
I looked on the interweb and found a shop that sells suitable sticks of black stuff. They only cost £15 for a pair! They describe them as brushes because they ‘brush’ the clothes clean. I suppose they have to use these quaint old-fashoned names because most of their customers don’t have my technical bent.
The washing machine is now working perfectly. My next project will be the microwave oven, which seems to have nearly used up all its microwaves. I have a plan to replenish them using some tin-foil, a load of old batteries and the buzzer from a Goblin Teasmade.
Great post.
You said wife. Did I miss something?
Thanks, Westy! I felt that the person writing the post would be the sort of person who wouldn’t do his own washing and that suggested to me that he would have a wife, which probably reflects my prejudices towards marriage more than anything else. He would probably refer to her as SWMBO if he was a computer geek instead of a 1940’s style geek.
If the person who wrote the post was ever in this neck of the woods, he would be most welcome to come and fix the machine with which my husband attempts to mow the lawn. It neither flys, nor mo’s.