LG Washing machine vibration

[admin]

Having recently put my 15yr old Indesit washing machine out to graze in the garden (mainly due to it no longer heating the water…only replaced the brushes on it before that…… it did well!!) I decided to buy a large drum machine. The theory being that when I needed to put extra clothes into the machine it would be big enough to handle it. It certainly is big enough 7.5 Kg, and on the wash cycle it’s very quiet 😀 …….The it spins. Anything above 800rpm and it’s very noisy 🙁 I have had one machine replaced by Comet and now have this 2nd machine WM14220…max spin 1400 rpm. I have gone to the bother now of pulling up the flooring below the machine and screwing down all floor boards with 2″x10 screws 36 were used in this extensive floor board program. It’s made it a “bit” better but the machine is still very noisy on spins above 800rpm. I read on this site that LG have a dampening kit especially to tackle the vibration problems with wooden floors. Has anyone fitted/had one fitted and what were the results? Anyone with any other thoughts on this excluding the obvious like poorly distributed washing in the machine…..this happens all the time so it’s not that. I hope you can help…Thank you. Martin.

[gegsy]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

The kits are bulls@@it. Most vibrate, dont know why but a plastic base isnt gonna help considering load (7kg). Bearings are inadequate for load.
For same price or around a Miele or a Bosch are far better a buy.

Greg

[admin]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

Hi,

We’ve used the kit many times to cure this problem. Its usually a success and seeing as what you’ve done to secure your floor its worth a try. If you are in the guarantee period, call 0870 156 5550, to call out your local LG repairer. We carry the kit as van stock, you should ask the local guy to fetch the “wooden” kit with him.

Kevin

[admin]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

Thank you for your reply. The thing I cannot get my head around is why should I have to start getting kits for wooden floors? 9/10 houses in the UK are wooden.

I would expect the machine to be relatively vibration free in any case or just as it advertises. If you have to spend more money to have a machine quiet enough that you can turn it on with a wooden floored house then perhaps they should advertise the machine “Not for Wooden floored houses” or “This washing machine may vibrate violently on wooden floors unless an additional pack is fitted”. Oh, when I say spen more money that includes having to take days off work to facilitate the engineer to view LG machine. Imagine the outcry if people bought VCR only to find that if you wanted to record programs longer than 1 hour then you had to have an additional kit fitted! P.S. thank you for your reply.

[Dave_Conway]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

Klumbo wrote:The thing I cannot get my head around is why should I have to start getting kits for wooden floors? 9/10 houses in the UK are wooden.

They’re made in Korea and they don’t think about these things before releasing them on to the UK market 😉

Dave.

[Penguin45]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

Also worth bearing in mind that the “suspended” floor on the ground floor, especially in a modern house, is almost unique to Britain. The whole world builds houses with concrete ground floors – except here. I can’t see why manufacturers should make an exception for our failure to move with the times.

Regards,
Penguin45.

[admin]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

I have an indesit with exactly te same problem, exaberated by the fact that my machine is located in a loft kitchen. Is there an indesit kit, or some generick kit I could use that will fix this?

[kwatt]

Not that I’m aware of Decki. 🙁

K.

[admin]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

Interesting thought but if what you are saying is accurate then the machine was meant for another part of the world! I am starting to wish LG hadn’t inflicted this upon the UK, or more specifically me!

We also have to remember that there are plenty of other washing machines that work perfectly quietly and vibration free so I wouldn’t accept that the noise is purely wooden floor related.

I have always had great distain for companies who follow up problems with add on packs etc particularly if the possible problem is not highlighted when buying the product.

I shall do some reserach into this and find out if this is simply another rogue machine or if the vibration is caused by inferior parts/design. I helped a friend recently to plumb in their washing machine – wooden floor – yes you guessed – quieter than my LG and approx almost half the price! Thank you for your interest in the LG Intellowash machine. Klumbo.

[kwatt]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

Anonymous wrote:Interesting thought but if what you are saying is accurate then the machine was meant for another part of the world! I am starting to wish LG hadn’t inflicted this upon the UK, or more specifically me!

In so far as I am aware they were designed for the European market, see comments below.

Anonymous wrote:We also have to remember that there are plenty of other washing machines that work perfectly quietly and vibration free so I wouldn’t accept that the noise is purely wooden floor related.

Err, actually it is a HUGE problem in the UK! Sadly ignored, but a huge problem nonetheless.

We are one of the few countries in the EU that use wooden flooring extensively and almost all machines are tested on concrete floors fro maximum stability and minimum noise. Put a lot of them on wooden floors, or even worse suspended flooring (which seems almost unique to the UK) and you get a washer that thinks its a pogo stick on spin.

See this article:

http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/modules.p … age&pid=36

For all the common installation woes we get daily, this is one of them.

And if you think your LG is bad just wait till you try out one that hasn’t got real dampers in it. 😉

It all comes down to build cost and the fact that people want silly spin speeds, higher spin = more vibration, poor loading = more vibration, poor flooring = more vibration. Get all three and it’s a not funny at all.

Anonymous wrote:I have always had great distain for companies who follow up problems with add on packs etc particularly if the possible problem is not highlighted when buying the product.

You mean like BMW do? Seriously, at least there is some recourse, with most appliances there is no cure for vibration other than putting it on the corect surface or buying another one. Whilst I may not particularly like the LG machine at least they are trying to do something about it.

Anonymous wrote:I shall do some reserach into this and find out if this is simply another rogue machine or if the vibration is caused by inferior parts/design. I helped a friend recently to plumb in their washing machine – wooden floor – yes you guessed – quieter than my LG and approx almost half the price! Thank you for your interest in the LG Intellowash machine. Klumbo.

Not all machines are equal, just as not all houses or flooring is. You seldom get two that are identical.

K.

[admin]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

kwatt wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Interesting thought but if what you are saying is accurate then the machine was meant for another part of the world! I am starting to wish LG hadn’t inflicted this upon the UK, or more specifically me!

In so far as I am aware they were designed for the European market, see comments below.

Anonymous wrote:We also have to remember that there are plenty of other washing machines that work perfectly quietly and vibration free so I wouldn’t accept that the noise is purely wooden floor related.

Err, actually it is a HUGE problem in the UK! Sadly ignored, but a huge problem nonetheless.

We are one of the few countries in the EU that use wooden flooring extensively and almost all machines are tested on concrete floors fro maximum stability and minimum noise. Put a lot of them on wooden floors, or even worse suspended flooring (which seems almost unique to the UK) and you get a washer that thinks its a pogo stick on spin.

See this article:

http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/modules.p … age&pid=36

For all the common installation woes we get daily, this is one of them.

And if you think your LG is bad just wait till you try out one that hasn’t got real dampers in it. 😉

It all comes down to build cost and the fact that people want silly spin speeds, higher spin = more vibration, poor loading = more vibration, poor flooring = more vibration. Get all three and it’s a not funny at all.

Anonymous wrote:I have always had great distain for companies who follow up problems with add on packs etc particularly if the possible problem is not highlighted when buying the product.

You mean like BMW do? Seriously, at least there is some recourse, with most appliances there is no cure for vibration other than putting it on the corect surface or buying another one. Whilst I may not particularly like the LG machine at least they are trying to do something about it.

Anonymous wrote:I shall do some reserach into this and find out if this is simply another rogue machine or if the vibration is caused by inferior parts/design. I helped a friend recently to plumb in their washing machine – wooden floor – yes you guessed – quieter than my LG and approx almost half the price! Thank you for your interest in the LG Intellowash machine. Klumbo.

Not all machines are equal, just as not all houses or flooring is. You seldom get two that are identical.

K.

Well the answers to the vibration problem seem to lie somewhere between:
living in the wrong country
“The whole world builds houses with concrete ground floors – except here. I can’t see why manufacturers should make an exception for our failure to move with the times”
There’s even worse yet!
“And if you think your LG is bad just wait till you try out one that hasn’t got real dampers in it. ;)”
The machines are sold on a false premise or it’s the buyers fault for expecting a machine to work properly on high spin speed!
The cost of the machine is not representitive of the quality.
“It all comes down to build cost and the fact that people want silly spin speeds, higher spin = more vibration, poor loading = more vibration, poor flooring = more vibration. Get all three and it’s a not funny at all.
BMW?
The law states ” goods must be fit for the purpose they were designed for”! if evidence shows that this is thee case e.g. other washing machines same situ work well. Excessive vibration compared to other machines. The machine itself is vibrating excessively.
Many thanks.

[kwatt]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

Hi Klumbo,

The UK forms a very small part of a global market, in many cases I expect, not enough to engineer appliances specifically for this country as, frankly, there’s not enough money in the market to sustain them. This is borne out by the fact that Hoover is now owned by Candy, Hotpoint by Merloni and Dyson packed up and moved to Malaysia. So there are really only global players, not local ones and, of them, very, very little is even manufactured let alone designed in the UK. The public’s quest for cheaper prices saw to that and now, due to that again, manufacturing is moving East away from the EU as well and the quality of the good is at best debatable. So the chances of you getting an appliance designed just for this little island are practicaly zero in the real world.

I would bet you a pound to a penny that if you sit that machine on concrete it performs flawlessly. What does that tell you? Well, quite simply it tells you that the appliances works fine but your flooring is unsuitable, why don’t you take the matter up with the house builder as I see this almost daily in brand new builds! Yet according to customers it is the appliance at fault, despite evidence that totally disproves that because, well builders don’t make mistakes do they? They don’t cut corners and use shoddy materials or cut the thickness of the wood, reduce the number of joists to save a few quid… no, they’d never do that would they?

You can’t really do that with a concrete floor.

The appliances are not sold on a false premise. People want cheap machines that have an A rating and a high spin speed, little else appears to matter and little research seems to be done by consumers on what they are actually buying. You can see that all through these forums where people are surprised to learn who actually even makes the appliance let alone how it performs or what the issues are with them. So the manufacturers produce what their customers want and, to achieve the price, they have to make sacrifices with the engineering, it’s that simple.

I’d also bet that if you bought a Meile it would be fine there, but then that would cost you at least 20-30{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} more than the LG.

It always astonishes me how people seem to think that, because an appliance does not perform exactly as they expect, that they automatically think that thye are entitled to a refund or a replacement product. If you buy a BMW and it stops or breaks for whatever reason, or if they require to have a recall on it, the customer does not expect a refund or replacement vehicle and, it’s no different in terms of consumer law. The difference is that the BMW costs 500 times more to buy and yet people expect a higher level of service and duty of care on a £400 washing machine, does that make sense to you? It certainly doesn’t to me.

What I would ask is, is your floor “fit for purpose”? Or is the installation correct? There are too many factors other then the washing machine that come into play to blythley blame the washer outright for the problem.

The law does state that the goods must be fit for the purpose, but did you explain that the appliance was going on a wooden floor? Did you research what it was that you were actually buying? Did you test one? Of course a lot of that simply is not available, but again that comes down to cost and customer expectation. And, in my experience, customer expectation and the reality of the product based on what was paid for it are worlds apart in most cases, especially when it all goes South.

As I have often said on here, had a basic washer tracked with inflation from 1980 it would cost you over £800 for the most basic of machines, there’s no way that better production techniques alone account for a machine of that ilk costing less than 25{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of value in real terms. And that machines of today are a different animal to the older generations. But, if you’re prepared to pay the £800, which as I said in real terms is what a basic decent washer should cost now, you get a Meile and you don’t get these problems, I think that answers it all really.

K.

[alexa]

Well said Kwatt.

Precise, and well, concise considering the subject.

I would add that as the repairers we don’t make them and we don’t break em.

That the consumer should take it up with the retailer or the manufacturer.

And remember that you got an unbaised opinion here.

Want the good oils?

Ask a repairer who has to deal with an angry machine and an angry customer

[kwatt]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

Thanks Alexa and it’s true, it is an unbiased opinion.

But just to illustrate the point further, I should doubt that Toyota are about to offer all 880,000 owners a new car due to a recall this morning as per the BBC…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4557839.stm

And get this, a faulty appliance has almost no chance of killing somebdy either! I think that puts this into perspective.

K.

[admin]

Re: LG Washing machine vibration

Hi Kwatt,

I take your point about debatable quality and that is exactly my point. I don’t think it unreasonable for a person to assume that the goods they are buying in a shop in the UK should be of satisfactory quality, fit for their purpose, and meet the standards that any reasonable person would expect to use that appliance in the UK!

The law has no exception, least of all any caveats that you will have to put up with the product as it was designed for another market in another country, this simply is not good enough. A study into where the majority of machines are made and designed for while interesting should not be a prerequisite for a person having a machine that works satisfactory in the UK. I would be one of the first to recognise that Asia has taught the West some pretty hard facts about supply and demand, and at the same time they have managed to supply excellent quality of goods. I see no reason why this should not apply to washing machines. I also think that there are a far larger percentage of wooden floored houses globally than you assume.

The only thing that having my washing machine work with less noise would prove is that concrete does not transmit the unwarranted vibrations from a faulty washing machine as much as a wooden floor does.
Do you not accept even the possibility that there is a genuine fault with the machine? Is it not possible for someone with a concrete floor to have a faulty washing machine? Are you seriously saying that people with faulty washing machines ergo vibrations should move if they have wooden floors?

Whether a machine I buy is designed purely for the UK or not is of little concern to me when buying it. I simply trust the manufacturer that they have done their market research correctly and shall supply through reputable dealers the goods to do the job as they were designed to do. Do you think that BMW’s are solely designed for the UK? The cars sold here are simply tailored for the UK market as recognised as one of the finest quality cars you can buy. So using your logic LG and other manufacturers should be taking this into account and modifying their product for the UK market.

An A rating is not all that matters nor high spin speed, although they are factors to base a choice upon. There are certainly faster spin speeds than the machine I bought. In addition, while it probably interests the installers and maintenance men where the machines are built and designed this type of information is really only relevant to the correct audience, yourselves. I think you’ll find what people want and I would imagine that almost everyone would agree is simply value for money. Lets hope that the manufacturer does not decide to sacrifice all the dampers and springs for the people of the UK wanting cheap A rated machines. Your logic would still stand that if you were to put it on a concrete floor it would work perfectly – this would be in comparison to wooden floor. However, this would not prove that the machine was working correctly in the first place! This is simple common sense applied.

I agree with you about buying another washing machine Meile or otherwise and it working fine in the same location, remember I had a rather elderly machine that came away from that same position. So this being the case you are recognising the fact that this would be due to one of two factors (a) The build quality of the LG is poor in comparision not designed for wooden floor installation (b) The specific LG machine is faulty. Either way it is the machine that requires replacing not moving home!

I think your entirely wrong about customer expectations of cars, new cars more so, and particularly high end executive cars. I or other people buying BMW although not 500 times as much as a £400 washing machine (that would be £200,000) would expect the dealership to take the car back if there was a problem they could not repair and/or replace the vehicle. You should watch programs like Watchdog it’s full of people asking for their money back when goods have been misrepresented or faulty. Very often the goods on the program are costing even less than the £400 you mention. Higher level of service and duty of care. I think you are referring to your terms and agreement with warranty sales for white goods? In terms of the consumer law I have already stated it is clear and unambiguous. I expect often the reason for sending an appliance back is that it makes sense all round. The customer does not want to be taking multiple days off work for the engineer to come around trying various fixes. The seller does not want an unhappy customer who may not go back and/or start legal proceedings. If the appliance is faulty or simply a case that the product is of such poor quality that this vibration can be expected from it all the time then the engineer should have the grace to recognise that fact and advise the customer honestly. It is a two way dialogue here and too assume that buyers are at fault re having too high expectations might mean that we should revisit our own.

The installation is the same and per manufacturers instructions. As you say if you would expected a Meile to work perfectly well in the same location the floor then by process of simple elimination must be of reasonable construction. Did I explain it was going on a wooden floor? No I did not. Nor would I explain when buying a new car that I should expect it to run on petrol sold in the UK forecourts, and not be dependant on USA fuel grade! Compared washing machine prices via the RPI interesting but this should not affect my fundamental rights as a consumer. I thought I was spending more than most do on machines at £550 there are many that cost a lot less. I did not go out to buy a cheap A rated machine. As detailed earlier, the floor is solid even more so now. An earlier machine worked well in the location so personally there is no careless (blithe) blaming going on here. I think you have stated several times the fact that a Meile would work well in the same position and so trying out the LG on a concrete base what would that be proving? It’s faulty or of inferior quality. My very point from the start.

I agree that Toyota recalling 880,000 cars is excellent recognition that something is wrong with a some of their cars, and they have to be admired for dealing with the problem and not treated with disdain. They aren’t hiding their heads in the sand and blaming it on where we live, nor any other blithe excuse. They simply have dealt with a problem. The result is that all their customers shall have properly working goods, something more than can be expected of the LG machine it seems. Interestingly, did you know of the perentage of the cars being recalled in Europe? Approximately 2{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d}. Would you feel happier if the appliance was more dangerous before you said replace the unit? Take care.

Kulumbo

Noli me vocate. Ego te vocabo.

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