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Iadom does a good job here of trying to point you, and me in the right direction, but let me share where I ended up.
F5 Fault code. F5 is number 1 and 3 LEDs flashing and indicates, according to the manual your machine has a blocked filter. The reality is it may not be a blocked filter at all, as was the case with my machine. The filter was always perfect and rinsed out regularly. And it may not be any faulty components either – as was the case for my machine. The trigger for the code is a lack of pressure change at the low pressure switch. The low pressure switch is mounted on the side of the machine frame and connected to the wash chamber by a long rubber tube. After turning on, the machine goes through a drain cycle pumping out any water/fluid that might be in the wash chamber before starting the initial fill. Then the drain pump stops and the solenoid opens to allow the machine to fill. My machine would drain, fill and then stop with LEDs 1 and 3 flashing. I could reset the machine and it would do the start up perfectly as above and get to the same point and stop. I removed the high pressure switch and low pressure switch and both were working fine. I applied air pressure to them and the electrical contacts closed. I put it back together and it still would not get beyond the end of the initial fill stage. I took off the turbine fill chamber and washed it out and checked the electrical signal from the turbine. There is one hell of a lot of unhelpful advice out there ! I wasted many, many hours.
On one site someone stated that they had observed the fitter remove the pressure switch and blow into the tube before charging him for a new switch. I pulled the pipe off the low pressure switch and did the same. The machine now works perfectly. Obviously there was something modest blocking up the pipe. The machine had not been used for a couple of months before the failure so something must dried out and blocked the pipe. The pipe just traps a column of air. As the water level in the chamber rises, so it compresses the air trapped in the pipe. This very small change in pressure causes the switch to throw and informs the control system the wash chamber is now full to a suitable level. Doing the final repair, removing the pipe and blowing into it and then refiting it took me 3 minutes. F5 on the Hotpoint Indesit maintenance system is rarely mentioned and although I visited around 50 sites, the minority that did mention it all just referred to blocked filters. At one site a fitter advised that it could be a faulty pressure switch but did not help by advising which switch and how to identify it – so that is why I ended up testing both. There are some great videos out there detailing all the fault codes, but often they simply waltz past the F5 and ignored the guy asking the question in the comments – what is it. So I am going to post up this comment in a couple of other places as well, so no one else has to waste quite as much of their life as me finding out they don’t need to pay a fitter £70 call out for a new pressure switch when the fix is so easy.
