Change Maytag MLG31 Dryer Belt

If you need to change a belt on a Maytag MLG31 dryer or a dryer with a similar system where the belt goes around the tub of the dryer, here is a started video on how to do this:

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

Change Maytag Dryer Belt

Problem with Hard Piped Washers

 

Many laundry equipment installs involve taking the large chassis washers and instead of draining them into a drain trough that is built in the ground or an above ground manufactured drain trough, they are hard piped from the machine drain directly into the drain system. This method is not to code in all areas of the country as some areas do require large chassis washers to drain into a trough. There are advantages to hard piping:
1. saves the cost of digging a trough into concrete or buying a manufactured trough
2. don't have to try and retrofit a drain trough inside a narrow bulkhead
3. you can "hide" all the pipes inside a bulkhead unlike some situations where a drain trough might be in the open
4. no moldy smell of an unclean trough wafting in the store
5. there is nothing to clean out like an in ground or manufactured trough...

-OR IS THERE?

The disadvantages of hard piping are:
1. possibly illegal in your area to hard pipe machines into a drain line as local requirements might state that gravity drained machines have to dump into a "holding container" like a drain trough
2. hard pipes are usually hidden inside the bulkhead and an "out of sight-out of mind" situation develops so the pipes are rarely inspected for leaks or blockages until something breaks
3. all of the debris that gets caught in the pipes and stops the flow of water away from the machine and potentially keeping debris in the drain valve area longer resulting in stuck drain valves
4. debris can also cause the washer to drain slower leading to potential machine errors that could stop the cycle and cause an upset customer  

If you hard pipe your machines you still need to clean them on a regular basis. As you can see in the pictures below there are tons of coins, nails, hair pins, etc. in these pipes and it combines together to form big chunks after a time. How often you have to clean them depends on your usage, however make sure you install clean out plugs and don't glue or "permanently attach" the hard pipes to the washer drains so you can easily detach them and clean out the pipes.
At this store this is only four of the 24 hard pipe connections.
If these had been cleaned more often not only would the owner have not had the service issues and customer issues he had, but all of the money could have been saved because it would have been in usable condition. That is a few hundred bucks from this store easily.

Clean your pipes!
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

WASH Open House May 16, 2025 Featuring Huebsch

After a several year hiatus, it is back! Smaller than before...think of the open houses from 2012-2013 not the gigantic hotel shows of 2014-2016, but still promising to be a fun and informative time. Heck, you might even get to see me present something if the schedule is desperate enough (LOL). Contact me to reserve your spot. See you there!
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy 

Leaking Front Load Washer Fix

Have a front loading washer with a leak?

Are you sure it is mechanical?

If it is, here is a great place to start looking:

If this is what you are seeing, you need to read the articles in this post now!

fixing-front-loading-washer-leak.html

https://everetclean-your-washer-doors

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

Check Water Pressure

An interesting situation happened at a couple of laundry rooms at hotels and gyms lately that were a mystery with an easy solution.

In all cases they ordered new equipment. 

In all cases the laundry rooms were remodeled and the plumbing was changed in some way to reflect the new room layout.

After initial tests it was noticed that all of the washers had spray coming out of the back vents.

They were filling with water faster than the normal fill time.

When the washers would switch from wash to rinse there would be a loud banging sound.

Everything was working properly with the washers and chemical machines so the mystery remained about why there was spray coming out and what the banging noise was.

The answer was simple but could easily be overlooked; the water pressure to the room was too high.

The banging noise was the hoses moving and the high pressure water going through the water valves. 

The water pressure was temporarily adjusted by moving the shut off lever towards the closed position until the spray from the back of the washers stopped. The washers filled in normal time and there was no more loud bangs. The customer called plumbers and the long term solution was installed.

An interesting FYI if this ever happens to your laundry room

Ev

A Heck of A Nice Guy

 

 

Wascomat Dryer Vent Slide & Reset Button

While this article concerns Wascomat equipment, other brands might have some similar solutions so if you have encountered the error I'm about to explain maybe this will give you a starting point for a repair.

I was recently involved in an installation of Wascomat dryers for an on-premise laundry room.. We kept getting the error below after the dryer would run for a few seconds:

At first we thought we needed to hit the gas reset button.

That didn't work and then we saw the solution! 

There is a damper on the back of the exhaust pipe that needs to be opened.

It is equivalent to the flue in a chimney.

Notice the screw in the middle is above the silver rivet to the left of it:

Loosen the screw and move the damper down and tighten the screw a little bit and the error was solved!

This damper has been on Wascomat dryers for a long time.

Since on other installs we never had a problem there was no need to deal with it.

This reminded me of two important lessons in the laundry industry:

1. Often times the solution is a simple one

2. It is easy to forget the simple solutions when you haven't had to use them in a bit

How many times have you encountered a problem only to slap your forehead in rememberance of an easy solution? At least a few times I'm betting.

We all have done it at one time, and if you haven't, your time is coming!

Ev

A Heck of A Nice Guy

Baseball in Japanese American Concentration Camps

The article below is republished here. To read it in its original form click this link:

the-importance-of-nisei-baseball-in-japanese-internment-camps

Thanks to Sports Collectors Digest for writing this article. My dad always talked about how good the baseball was in the Pacific Coast League back then. 

Ev

From left, in that historic meeting of baseball cultures in Fresno, Calif., in 1927, Johnny Nakagawa, Lou Gehrig, Kenichi Zenimura, Babe Ruth, Fred Yoshikawa and Harvey Iwata.

From left, in that historic meeting of baseball cultures in Fresno, Calif., in 1927, Johnny Nakagawa, Lou Gehrig, Kenichi Zenimura, Babe Ruth, Fred Yoshikawa and Harvey Iwata. - See more at: http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.com/featured/the-importance-of-nisei-baseball-in-japanese-internment-camps#sthash.Foc23RY1.dpuf

From left, in that historic meeting of baseball cultures in Fresno, Calif., in 1927, Johnny Nakagawa, Lou Gehrig, Kenichi Zenimura, Babe Ruth, Fred Yoshikawa and Harvey Iwata. - See more at: http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.com/featured/the-importance-of-nisei-baseball-in-japanese-internment-camps#sthash.Foc23RY1.dpuf

From left, in that historic meeting of baseball cultures in Fresno, Calif., in 1927, Johnny Nakagawa, Lou Gehrig, Kenichi Zenimura, Babe Ruth, Fred Yoshikawa and Harvey Iwata. - See more at: http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.com/featured/the-importance-of-nisei-baseball-in-japanese-internment-camps#sthash.Foc23RY1.dpuf

The Importance of Nisei Baseball in Japanese Internment Camps

For one man, the importance and stories of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II is one that needs to be re-told. And baseball's place in that story is second-to-none. Welcome to Nisei Baseball.

• Tom Bartsch
• Apr 23, 2012

By Kevin Nelson

Question: What is the first (and so far only) movie in which John Kruk has appeared?

Team picture of Japanese Americans in the internment camp in Manzanar, Calif., in 1943.

Answer: American Pastime, a 2007 feature film about baseball in the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, in which the former Phillie and current ESPN broadcaster plays a ballpark announcer. Kruk became involved in the movie after being contacted by its producer, Hollywood veteran Barry Rosenbush, who himself got interested in the project while sitting in a traffic jam on I-405 in west Los Angeles.

Going nowhere fast on one of L.A.’s busiest freeways, the producer of High School Musical was listening to the radio when an interview with Kerry Yo Nakagawa came on. Nakagawa, the grandson of Japanese immigrants, has dedicated the past 20 years of his life telling people about the internment camps and baseball’s important role in them. After escaping from traffic that day, Rosenbush clicked on Nakagawa’s website and dropped him an e-mail. What ultimately became a $3 million independent film and delivered Kruk’s cinematic debut – Kruk’s role is an extended cameo; he shot his scenes in one day on a sound stage – was off and running.

Having known Kerry Yo Nakagawa for close to a decade, meeting him while I was writing a book on California baseball history that covered, in part, the story of Japanese baseball in America, I can understand why a Hollywood producer would want to do business with him.

“Nisei baseball is part of my DNA,” Nakagawa said. And no one is more passionate about the subject – or knows more about it – than he.

Nakagawa runs the Nisei Baseball Research Project, which strives to bring awareness and education about Japanese American internment through the prism of baseball. So far, he has written a book (Through A Diamond: 100 Years of Japanese American Baseball); served as the driving force behind a documentary narrated by the late Pat Morita (Diamonds in the Rough: The Legacy of Japanese American Baseball); curated a traveling museum exhibit that has been shown in the U.S. and Japanese Baseball Halls of Fame (among other places); created an educational curriculum for schools; taught forums for college students across the country; spoken everywhere from San Quentin Prison to the Smithsonian Institution; and, of course, served as the driving force behind the film American Pastime, which was released by Warner Bros. and shown on venues including ESPN Classic Films. Besides his role as associate producer, Nakagawa acted in the film and served, as he says, as “human ball machine” for the baseball scenes.

Intended to be family entertainment, American Pastime was shot on location in the Utah desert at the Topaz internment camp, about a two-hour drive south of Salt Lake City. Topaz was one of 10 camps set up around the West after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and ushered the U.S. into global war. About 120,000 Japanese-Americans – many of whom were born in this country – were regarded as potential security threats to the U.S., and the government forced them to give up their homes and businesses to live behind barbed wire until the war ended in 1945. To keep their morale up in the camps and stay connected to their lives as Americans, they formed teams and played baseball on dirt diamonds of their own making.

Since American Pastime is based on historical fact, I asked Nakagawa why he, Rosenbush and writer-director Desmond Nakano chose to make the movie fictional.

“We wanted to tell the story about camp life from the inside looking out,” he said. “There have been a number of internment films, but they were directed by non-Japanese Americans and told the stories from an outsider’s point of view. Although the film is a dramatic narrative, the characters and events are based on true stories.”

Nakagawa is a “Sansei,” the term used to describe the third-generation of Japanese Americans in this country. His parents were “Nisei,” or second generation, and they were among those sent to the camps.

As a boy, Morita (whose birth name is Noriyuki) stayed in the Gila River, Ariz., camp. Nakano and co-writer Tony Kayden wrote a role especially for Morita, but he died in 2005 before shooting started.

The late Seth Sakai, who appeared on the 1970s TV series Hawaii Five-O, stepped in to fill the role of Nori Morita. Many members of the cast and crew had parents and family who lived in the camps, including Nakano and an extra named John Owata, who was struggling with ill health but refused to take a break during filming despite the scorching Utah heat. “If my mom could take this camp for four years,” he said, “I can handle one day of it.”

One of the central themes of the movie – indeed, of everything Nakagawa does – is how, despite racial, cultural and generational differences, baseball holds American society together. “Historically,” Nakagawa said, “baseball was the game for all diverse immigrants coming to America. They may not have been able to communicate outside the lines, but on the field, baseball was a universal language of sorts. If you could play the game with passion and win as a team, you gained immediate respect, despite your color or religion.”

Baseball was so much a part of American Pastime that a crew member took photos of everyone involved and turned them into Topps-style baseball cards. One of the film’s stars is Gary Cole, known for movie roles in Office Space and The Brady Brunch Movie and roles on TV series including Midnight Caller and The West Wing.”

When Cole received his baseball card, he said, “Now I don’t need a freakin’ Oscar. I have a baseball card.”

As part of ongoing efforts to promote Japanese American baseball history, Nakagawa is developing a line of “Nisei Pioneer” trading cards that includes old-time players unknown to the average baseball fan but who are legends of the Japanese game, such as Kenichi Zenimura. Zenimura, who went to the internment camps, too, was a star player on Japanese-only clubs in Fresno, Calif., in the 1920s and ’30s. The talented Zenimura joined Japanese-only teams because whites would not allow him to play on their teams, let alone the same fields they did. Nevertheless, Zenimura crossed over racial and ethnic barriers of that era by playing with white players and coaching white teams.

In 1927, when Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig came to Fresno on a national barnstorming tour, Zenimura and other Japanese stars (including Kerry’s uncle, Johnny Nakagawa) took the field with the Yankee greats in exhibition games that drew thousands of Japanese immigrants – baseball fans, all – from around the Central Valley.

Traveling Nisei baseball teams starring Zenimura and Johnny Nakagawa also played games against another group of outsiders barred from organized baseball at the time: black players from the Negro leagues.

Recently, at the home of the Fresno Grizzlies, the Triple-A franchise of the San Francisco Giants, Grizzly players donned the uniforms of Zenimura’s 1927 Fresno Athletic Club in tribute to him and others on that squad. Ten living Nisei pioneers were honored before the game. Nakagawa was on hand, along with his wife Jeri (an uncle of hers played with Jackie Robinson in junior college ball) and their two children, who are fourth-generation Japanese-Americans, or “Yonsei.” Two more Yonsei are Don Wakamatsu, manager of the Seattle Mariners, and ex-Oriole second baseman Len Sakata, a former Fresno manager who is now a minor league hitting coach. Perhaps the best-known Japanese American player in the majors today is catcher Kurt Suzuki of the Oakland Athletics, a fourth-generation “Nikkei.”

Besides working on his Nisei trading cards and promoting American Pastime, Nakagawa is collaborating with the SFO Museum, which curates a variety of exhibits inside the San Francisco International Airport. The Nisei baseball exhibit is tentatively scheduled for 2014, according to museum officials.

For now, though, Nakagawa is trying to figure out what to do with a historical artifact of the most rare and wonderful kind: 21 seconds of 16 mm film shot by an amateur photographer that shows Zenimura, Johnny Nakagawa and other Nisei stars chatting with Ruth and Gehrig before that fabled 1927 meeting of cultures.

“I’m exploring finding a national venue to show this never-before-seen footage,” Nakagawa says with typical enthusiasm.

Contact Kerry Yo Nakagawa at nbrp@comcast.net for more information on his Japanese American baseball projects. Kevin Nelson, the author of "Operation Bullpen: The Inside Story of The Biggest Forgery Scam in American History," can be reached at KevinNelsonWriter.com.

More Laundry Room Notes

More actual notes from customers left at real laundromats.

Please note that all of these were written by the customers and several have additional notes written on them by other customers. None of the "extra comments" were written by staff. These are how the laundromat owners found them.

Thanks to T at CL for letting me use these!
Ev

A Heck of A Nice Guy

So a customer wrote a note and then it was crossed off by another customer:

 

Love me an additional "do" I do:

I love the banter on this one. I wouldn't personally use profanity or break the 2nd commandment but their sentiment is fun:

A Nice Note to End this entry on:

Creative Signs

 One of the things that is great about what I do is the chance to work with new laundry owners and see what talents they bring to the industry. One of the new owners has a great creative outlet and is bringing their talent to the forefront by the signage in their store.
These signs are one example. All were created at home using standard images that you can get for free.

-Neat

-Easy to Read

-Looks Professional

-Colorful

-Not Wordy
-Multiple Colors

-Eye Catching

-Not Expensive

-Flexible to Change Often

If you are going to print your own signs follow the tips above and let your creativity reign!
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

Clean Drain Valves

Have you had a large chassis washer that water was pouring into the tub and either the water ran out through the drain,
or water kept filling the tub until it looked like the door would burst open?
In either case one area to check is your drain valve.

-TURN OFF THE POWER TO THE WASHER BEFORE CHECKING DRAIN VALVE-
-THE HIGH VOLTAGE CAN KILL YOU!-

Turn off the washer power and open the front panel of your washer. Sometimes you have to take off the whole panel and sometimes there is a small panel on the bottom front that can be removed.
The drain valve sits either directly beneath the tub on some brands, or it sits a few inches below the tub as there is a short hose to the drain valve on other brands. 

Typically there is a pipe clamp holding the drain valve on the hose or basket.
Loosen the clamp and either remove the hose or remove the drain valve.
Sometimes just removing the hose on certain models will allow you to see a bunch of junk sticking out.
Inside you can see a bunch of junk. It might be lint, mop strings, bra underwires, pens, and coins.
Clean out the debris and reconnect the drain valve or hoses and give the washer a try.
Taking out the debris will allow the drain valve to open or close appropriately and solve the water problem you are having. If the problem persists then you probably need a new valve. 

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy