[KermitT]

Re: Indesit WIDL126 washer/dryer

Thanks for your various replies.

We do seem to have diverted from my original question – machine stopping mid-cycle – I’ll need to do some more research on this one – since it does rinse & spin successfully when I select “rinse” after it has stopped I may well live with this until it fails entirely.

The issue with drying was really just a side issue. but a few comments:

I hope that you will understand that when common sense told me that there should be a humidity sensor, and Indesit confirmed this in writing, I was more than a little surprised when people who seem to know what they are talking about tell me that there isn’t!

helo_75: Will you really send me the manual? This would be extremely useful – I do like to know how something is supposed to work (yes – I can read a circuit diagram!). And of course it would be of great help if, say, something simple like the pump or the door seal needs replacing. Also if you would like to see a copy of the letter from Indesit I will send it to you.

penguin45: Thanks for the advice, but I don’t think I have this sort of problem – the drying performance is exactly the same as it was on day one. And I did say earlier that my knees start objecting when indulging in this sort of activity! In any event I only use the dryer for my bed linen so this is not a major problem – just a nuisance.

Sadly a washer/dryer is the only possible option – this is a small flat so unless you can point me at a separate dryer that I can fold up & put in my sock drawer the only way I could have one would be to hang it out of the window!

I did look at all the alternatives, but at the time the only machine on the market which more or less met my requirements, regardless of price, was this one. Perhaps there are better options now – I haven’t researched this and will probably put up with this one as long as it – more or less – works.

One last question – as routine maintenance I have tried to take the filter out for cleaning (it still empties fine but I know that it is a good idea to do this from time to time). However I have been completely unable to do so – I can turn it around 1/3 of a turn, it deposits a pint or so of water on the floor (when will any washing machine manufacturer figure out how to prevent this?) but then it comes up against a positive stop and will not come out. I have given it a bit of a tweak with grips, but of course don’t want to force it in case something breaks. Is there a trick to removing it? Incidentally the instructions refer to undoing screws on the panel, but on this machine it is on clips.

[KermitT]

Re: Indesit WIDL126 washer/dryer

I’m not trying to be clever. It is just that if a manufacturer offers a dryer with three settings – to paraphrase damp, slightly damp & bone dry – logic, and my knowledge of physics, electrics & electronics, tells me that this should be controlled by a sensor which measures the humidity of the exhaust air. Being told clearly by the manufacturer that this is in fact the case only reinforces this.

If these settings are really controlled by a thermistor (I assume that when you refer to “ntc” you mean a negative temperature coefficient thermistor) I cannot see that this, which only measures temperature, can give any meaningful indication of the remaining moisture content. Perhaps if there is also a thermistor at the inlet the difference between the two could give an indirect indication via the evaporative cooling, but this would be a rather weird way of going about it given that humidity sensors are cheap & easily obtainable. If Indesit has chosen this method then I can only conclude that the design is even worse than I thought it was!

I am well aware that I cannot expect the reliability from this machine that I would from one costing three times as much (although on the one occasion I bought a supposedly high quality – and expensive – appliance it failed in pretty short order). But this was the only one at the time which claimed to have the features I wanted – at any price. It offered sensor drying so I expected this. After all if you bought a mobile phone claiming to offer GPS you would expect it to be more specific than just telling you that you are in Europe!

I appreciate that you may have been in the business for 23 years. However I started repairing appliances of all sorts in the 60’s, and have only more or less stopped because my knees are no longer up to crawling around the floor trying to get at inaccessible components. My success rate is around 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} – including cases declared by an “engineer” to be beyond repair. So please accept that there may be other people out there who have some idea of what they are talking about.

[KermitT]

Re: Indesit WIDL126 washer/dryer

helo_75

Here is a quote from a letter from Indesit dated 14/2/06:

“In view of your comments we have discussed the matter with our Technical Department. They have confirmed that the appliance does have a humidity sensor. This will detect the dryness of the load, however we should explain that where a mixed load of items are dried, for example towels and shirts, the items that dry to the required level first will trigger the end of a drying cycle.”

OK – I called it a moisture sensor – amounts to the same thing.

Otherwise how could it differentiate between the three drying settings?

It has never worked properly, but that’s another issue.

[KermitT]

Re: Indesit WIDL126 washer/dryer

I did fear as much. I have little confidence in Indesit – shortly after I got this machine I called them in because clothes were still damp on the “cupboard dry” setting – the “engineer” flatly refused to accept that there was a moisture sensor! So I have to use cupboard dry + 40 minutes. Ho hum…

But many thanks for your help.

[KermitT]

Re: Indesit WIDL126 washer/dryer

Thanks for responding.

It does spin on the “spin” setting, also on “rinse ” setting it rinses & spins normally.

It also seems OK on “wool” – but I always select “rinse hold” for this programme.

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