WASH Milwaukee Open House May 2025

 

A big THANK YOU to everyone that attended WASH Milwaukee's first open house and service school this past May 16. It was the first time since 2017 that WASH put on an event and it was well received with 38 laundromat owners and some members of their staffs attending throughout the day. There were also partner companies like Presso, SpyderWash, and Kiosoft attending onsite and representation from High Mark, Laundroworks, and PayRange also in house.

It was fun to see everyone and some great prizes were given away.
 I hope everyone learned something valuable to take back to your mat or laundry room regarding washer and dryer maintenance courtesy of Alliance and their staff technicians.

 I even got to do a brief presentation and play emcee! 
That alone was worth the price of admission...in my humble opinion...but I might be a little bit biased.

Ev

A Heck of A Nice Guy

LG Tech Line

 

If you need help from LG here is their new tech line numbers:

Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

New Equipment Purchase Check List

Before you buy new equipment for your laundry room or laundromat, here are some questions to go over and answer in order to make sure you can do the project you think you are going to do.
Your equipment distributor should ask the same questions, but if you can have as many of these answers as possible it will help the process.
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

Company

Ship To:

Address

City/St/Zip

Phone

Email

Existing Machines
please list size or model numbers if possible, including electrical requirements

Washers

Dryers

Current Pounds of Laundry per day

Future Pounds of Laundry per day

best to plan for busiest time

Notes include things like hours/day, turns/day with existing, goals, etc

Rooms Specifications

Room x

Height of Room

Ground Floor?

Door Width

1.

2.

3.

Removable Door Jams?

Max width removed

Door Height

1.

2.

3.

Any Steps and how many?

YES   NO

Washer Installation

Concrete Pad

YES    NO

Base Details how thick of concrete

height, condition

Steel Base

YES    NO

floor thickness?

Water/Drain Service

Ozone installed or of interest?

YES    NO

Direct drain

or

Drain Trough

please list number of hot/cold water lines including size 1/2", 3/4", etc

please list drain size, trough information, drain height requirement

Gas Service

Is it hard piped or flex lines? Number of Shutoffs? Can it be shut off?

Gas    Propane

Electrical Service

please list existing electrical capabilities, 1 or 3ph washer? 1 or 3 ph dryer? Hard wired? Cords?

Notes

Notes

Venting/Makeup Air

please list number of vents, size, make up air? How big? Condition of vent, how long is vent run?

Notes

Change Maytag MHN33 or MHN30 Door Lock Assembly

 

Below is a video and picture by picture instructions on how to change a broken door lock assembly for Maytag small chassis washers like the MHN33 and MHN30.
Ev
A Heck of A Nice Guy

If you can't watch the video follow the steps below:

When a customer can't close and latch the door and you see the door latch looking like this you know you'll have to replace the door lock assembly.

Start by removing the spring around the door boot with a pliers or screw driver

Remove the door boot so you can place your hand inside the cabinet to reach the assembly


Unscrew the two screws above and below the door strike. If the assembly is broken you might need to hold it tight to the inside of the cabinet to get the screw out

Reach inside and grab the assembly. Lift UPWARDS first and then pull the whole assembly to the door opening. There is not much slack

There are four plugs to undo. The top plug with black wires

Blue wire in middle is hardest because it is the smallest and has a catch you need to push out of the way in order to get the plug out as it is very easy to pull the wires out of the plug

Pink wire in middle
Big white plug on bottom

Most common areas for these to break

A complete unit

Reattach wires and place back inside cabinet.
This time angle the assembly so the catch inside the cabinet grabs on to the assembly to hold it in place. Remember this is why when you removed the broken assembly you had to lift the assembly UP first

If you can't get the assembly to hook onto the catch just hold it so the door strike is through the cabinet

Screw assembly in

Move door boot back over the edge of the door opening ad place the door spring back around it to hold it in place. VERY IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER

Door lock assembly replaced and ready to wash

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