Front-loading washer fills up with water overnight

March 17, 2016 9:54 AM

Any idea why our front-loading washer fills up with water overnight? If you do a load of wash the standing water drains. The drum then fills overnight, but never overflows over the open door (we leave the door open to air out the washer). I suspect there is a leak from the water supply but I want to get all my ducks in a row before I yank the washing machine out to attempt a fix.
posted by My Dad to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

Assuming your water supply line has a valve or faucet you can turn off, turn that off and see if it happens. Because I would be worried it was backwashing from the drain.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:57 AM on March 17, 2016 [4 favorites]

Is the water clean or dirty? One of the most common washing machine faults is backfilling caused by drainage problems. Sometimes this is due to a fault with the washer itself, but more usually it's a plumbing issue.
posted by pipeski at 10:03 AM on March 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks... the water *seems* clean although it's difficult to tell. We'll do a load of wash and turn the supply valve off tonight. If it fills up I guess we'll have our answer. I shall report back in 24 hours!
posted by My Dad at 11:02 AM on March 17, 2016

Chiming in to say that I have the same problem. Water is clean and this happens infrequently, i.e. If I do laundry every weekend this happens maybe once every four months. I figured it's an inlet-valve-not-sealing problem. I don't know why it doesn't overflow, unless there's an additional water-level valve stopping things. Kenmore
posted by achrise at 11:10 AM on March 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Actually, yes - it is a machine problem. The value seal is bad. Typical problem with front-loaders, among tons of other issues. Which is why I got rid of ours and went back to top loader.

We were totally puzzled for weeks on why the floor was soaking wet randomly until I figured it out.
posted by rich at 1:07 PM on March 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah you want that addressed, it's very likely a faulty valve in the machine. Anecdata: don't let this rather typical defect of front-loaders happen when you live above a car seller (which my uncle once did, and a bunch of square meters of wet plaster ceiling fell down on a handful of new cars...)
posted by Namlit at 4:39 PM on March 17, 2016

Are the solenoid valves on front-loaders different from top loaders?
posted by werkzeuger at 8:09 AM on March 18, 2016

The drum then fills overnight, but never overflows over the open door

That seems curious, like it started to cycle again. You may want to try unplugging it after using it and see if it happens again.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:38 AM on March 18, 2016