Beko washing machine quick element change and reasonable price.

[CambridgeWorks]

We have a 3.5 year old Beko built in automatic washer.
For several weeks it started to smell after use, despite leaving door open and running a wash with a dishwasher tablet only. 
Last time we did this, I touched the glass door and it was cold, when it should have been hot.
Quick google suggested the element had gone and was a fairly common fault it seems.
Even a video showing how easy to change.
So, after withdrawing it from under the worktop ancd confirming the element was o/c, I ordered one from espares ( part of screwfix) at £19.95 + £6.95 next day delivery.
Upon arrival, it had the same markings as the original one but a 2024 year stamp.
It had arrived this morning and due to an innovative design involving one nut to push or pull the element towards the sealing gasket, it was replaced in a few minutes.
Most time was spent removing the washer from the very tight space under the worktop and replacing exactly where doors would line up.
It has been a reliable washer, straightforward to operate, smooth and quiet in operation, even at 1200rpm spin.
Looking around, even the pump looks like a few minutes to replace.
The online video (espares) showed the same element, but in a Bosch machine. That needed a lot of dismantling to do the replacement and cost maybe £100+ more when new!
I feel that this easy replacement and online availability of parts is a very positive step in maybe saving appliances that would otherwise be scrapped.
I realise that the same job carried out by a company could probably be £100-150 plus when callout, travelling, engineers time removing from fitted unit and vat is taken into account.
Rob

[Mark Hennessy]

Well done!

I'm a big believer in repairing white goods where possible, and eSpares have certainly come in handy over the years.

Our original washing machine - a 1999 Bosch - was basically working well, but was starting to get noisy. Probably the main bearings. It had a couple of sets of brushes over the years and a new door seal, and also a door lock mechanism. But that's pretty much it, aside from having to clean out the water distributor mechanism above the detergent tray once or twice when we lived in an area with harder water.

As it was getting on a bit, I was half-researching what to replace it with, then one day my wife spotted someone local offering a Bosch washing machine for only £35. Looking closer, she realised it was an old friend, so they were delighted to sell it to us - even delivered it. It was getting on for 10 years old, and they were having a new kitchen with integrated appliances, so didn't need the Bosch any more.

This machine had the brushless motor, so was considerably quieter than the old one. I decided to hang on to the old faithful, just in case, but had no reason to doubt the younger machine would give us any grief.

Until one day, perhaps a year or two later, I noticed a rubbing noise when spinning the drum by hand. Having spent an age checking everything out, it proved to be the inner drum rubbing on the outer plastic drum, as a result of the aluminium "spider" cracking.

At this point I discovered that many manufacturers weld the two halves of the outer drum together, meaning that there's no sensible way to separate them to replace bearings or the spider (in practice the whole inner drum would be needed).

I've no idea why this broke - people suggest a chemical thing (not enough hot washes, etc) or a mechanical cause (overloading or excess vibration from an unstable base, etc) - but at only 10 years old, this was a shame.

No problem - let's just press the old machine back into service while we think about what to do...

Sadly not. The drum no longer turned, as the main bearing had seized. It was in the kitchen, but had been relocated outside to make space (fair enough).

After a couple of hours of pouring over the exploded diagrams on the Bosch website, I found that the vast majority of the current machines use exactly the same drum arrangement as the 10 year old machine. But by chance, there were 2 that used an alternative, and were serviceable in the traditional way. And John Lewis had one of them on special offer, plus Bosch were offering a 5 year warranty. Part of me didn't want to buy Bosch again because of the sealed drum, but they're mostly all at it now. I considered Meile, but as we know, they are very, very expensive, and I couldn't find any service data on any of them, and the spares situation doesn't appear to be as straightforward. But by buying the model I did, that's a half-hearted attempt to show a bit of consumer power - not that Bosch would notice or care!

Perhaps the spider failure was atypical, but there's not shortage of reports of it. Something to consider when buying, IMO...

Of course, before getting rid of it, I stripped it for parts. I haven't checked to see if any of them would fit the new machine, but some will definitely fit Mum's. The motor controller is interesting - most of the power electronics is integrated into a large IC that is bolted to a decent heat sink. To make it easier to dispose of, we removed the concrete blocks - when throwing the machine into the tip, we probably looked a long stronger than we really are. By the way, I was pleased to find that it was an easy fit into a Ford Focus

As I've never replaced an element before, I was keen to try it on the scrap machine. I'd seen the videos, so knew what to expect with that central nut. Very easy to do. Access will vary - on some machines it is an easy job from the rear panel, but with some you have to remove the front panel, which takes a lot longer and requires the door seal to be disconnected from the front. All doable, and easy enough, but white goods repairs can be a bit stressful when you have a family who want the thing working ASAP. If I ever come into money, I'd build a house with space and plumbing in the utility room for dual-redundant washing machines!

[Radio Fixer]

I like the ease of replacement  Rob but not how long the Beko lasted.  We have a Bosch that is 13 years old, used several times a week, and the only thing I have done is replace the front door seal.

Sympathise on the built in, we have it on a kitchen dishwasher and its a pain getting that back in limited space.  Next time I will put my foot down (well for a few minutes  ) and try to just have a standard white door model.

Gary

[CambridgeWorks]

Other than kettles, I don't recall having an element go o/c since moving here in 1979.
However, ten or so years ago I started getting the main rcd trip occasionally. Might be when switched my pc on in the lounge, or the microwave in the kitchen. 4 or 5 times a week.
Then got to 4 or 5 times a day, so investigated, by checking back from main consumer unit for leakage paths.
Found it after 2 or 3 hours. It was the immersion heater that had never been used as gas c.h. here. Although switched off, it had earth leakage and the neutral was unswitched, so upsetting the rcd. I think the leakage was below normal threshold, but a momentary blip when switching on pc or microwave tripped the rcd.

Back on topic, I marked around the dishwasher fitted door hinge points before removing and also a couple of marks on the wooden frame either side lining up with the dishwasher front. I also removed the adjacent door of the sink unit to gain better access to pipe connections.
It was a very tight fit, maybe2-3mm either side. It went back ok and first wash was at 90C with a dishwasher tablet. A few murky flaky bits were seen in the water. However, the smell is less, but still there to some extent.
Hopefully time will improve matters.
Prior to the element fitting and also afterwards I used white vinegar, maybe 3/4 litre in total. Cheap enough at Lidl, 500ml for 35p.
Nearly 50 years ago I used to repair refrigerators just for 3 or 4 years, Bosch being one brand.
Their compressors were typically 20% more than the common Danfoss ones, but Bosch gave a 40% trade discoun, They could afford to!
Rob

[Radio Fixer]

The immersion is a problem here too Rob. The thermostats only last for what seems a year or less. Maybe hard water. So gave up on it and its just for emergencies. We to have gas CH and so water gets heated by that even in the summer. May not cost much more with the cost of elec / gas. Also you dont get to winter and find the CH isnt working !!

Bosch maybe more pricey but we have had good relaibilty from them: washer, dishwasher and microwave. For me thats worth the extra cost as I dont want to keep fixing domestic stuff.

Gary

[BusyBee]

We usually buy Bosch as they seem a good balance between reliability and price. Beko, on the other hand, I have generally seen experienced as pretty poor quality.

Tracy

[CambridgeWorks]

Kitchen refurb Dec 2020. 4 year 0ld Samsung washer removed and sold locally for reasonable price and bought this one. Really smooth running and quiet, plus easy to understand programmes and individual temperature settings if wanted.
At same time, our 10 year old small Beko dishwasher was removed and given away and replaced with larger Beko one. Only thing I don't like is the membrane prograame switches inside top edge. Feel like they are not man enough.
The  20+ year old Zanussi tumble drier was scrapped as I had repaired the door catch good enough for us but not to sell on.
It was replaced with a Candy heat pump tumble drier with 2 year warranty luckily.
The plastic water container inset into the door cracked, in my opinion because the door was a tighter fit on the same side, as the crack, pinching the rubber gasket slightly.
Engineer said impossible to adjust door but just supplied a new container.
Just over a year old and it started developing condensation around the inner edge of door.
Engineer replaced the door gasket.
It continued just the same.
Next visit, days later he was a while on his phone and announced it was scrap as ber!
Head office said choose a new one, same price. I did, £20 more as the only option  was it had Bluetooth which we didneed.
They agreed to pay this, but to also keep the old one else there would be a disposal charge for it when new one was delivered. This I did and sold it locally with the declared fault for I think £60.
Although looking identical, the new one does seem to perform better than the old one ever did.

I hope straying ot with all this is ok?
Rob

[Radio Fixer]

Quite a lot to go wrong in the future there Rob.  We dont have the tumble drier as my wife is old fashioned and it has to have the outdoor fresh smell:  cant detect it myself     

When I replace the AEG microwave earlier this year and bought the Bosch I took out the 5 year warranty, cost a bit more but not a lot.  By then I reckon I wont have a chance of lifting it out and doing a repair.  Tried on the AEG as the only fault was the plastic buttons with a plastic hinge break off.  Bought a new panel and fitted.  AEG had made fitting very hard necessitating a complete stripdown which I did like working on an old radio to the same degree.  Photos, notes, diagrams the lot.  Put it all back together and it worked for a few days and then blew the £12 internal fuse.  Stripped it again and checked the rebuild and nothing wrong that I could find.  Just the same result as before.  I had managed to find a clone fuse for a couple of quid.

My feeling is that its built in sabotage, hold these 3 buttons down when you first power up.  Only their Eng would know this and which ones.  They stress their Eng only should do anything on it even including changing the light bulb.  That BTW needs the outer cover removed.

My wife said why are you even bothering to try and fix it, just buy a new one.  Cos I'm an engineer and its what we do  

Gary

[Mike Watterson]

The immersion is a problem here too Rob. The thermostats only last for what seems a year or less.

Add a Willis heater and ignore the immersion. Easy to retro-fit. Mount near base of cyl. with input connected to cold feed. Connect output to hot outlet or expansion pipe. Some people fit more than one in parallel, but that needs extra wiring. Instant small amount of HW, leave on longer for bath.

May be imitated & sold by other brands, but Willis invented it and they are still sold.

[CambridgeWorks]

Never heard of the Willis device.
I imagine the only time my immersion was switched on was to test the installation. Gas boiler and tank used for hot water supply.

Our bathroom was modernised first, using the huge airing cupboard the other side of internal wall by converting space to provide a shower cubicle next to landing at one end and fitting a new wall mount boiler on the outer end. The old indirect plus immersion tank (boiler was in kitchen) was replaced and boiler fitted above on the outside wall.
We didn't want a combi boiler, hence the tank.

Kitchen rebuiild was delayed until around a year later due to covid, but wasn't much of a problem.
Only thing, over xmas, we had bare walls and no fully working kitchen. My daughter across town brought us lunch and we had a microwave and preparation table in the conservatory, with eating on lap trays in the lounge. The hiccup was because the wrong colour unit doors had been supplied and had to wait until January 2nd for replacement.
House was built in 1976, we lived here since 1979. First alterations to bathroom and kitchen.
Rob