A washing machine is an indispensable appliance in any household. Without it, we would spend way more time laundering our clothes! And since all of these devices are packed with various smart electronics these days, simple wash turned into an extremely simple task long ago.
However, the owners of washing machines often face the same need of controlling the water level in the washing barrel. But if your appliance has no such option pre-installed, then you might be in trouble. You might, but you are not! Today we will tell you what you can do to bypass your washing machine water level sensor.
How to Trick My HE Washer to Use More Water?
If your he washing machine has no water level switch, then there is one effective way you can cheat on it and make it use more water for washing clothes!
- weigh the load of clothes you are going to launder
- put the load into the washtub and add twice as much water
- let the water soak into the clothing
- Now you can start the washing cycle!
What is the trick, you may wonder? See, let’s say you have two pounds of clothes that need to be laundered. After you soak it with four pounds of water and load the washing barrel with the wet clothes, your washing machine will think that you put a six pounds load into it! And respectfully, it will fill the barrel with the amount of water needed for that weight!
This trick of how to hack a washing machine to use more water works especially well with the washing machines that have no water-control sensors. If your washing machine had a water level switch adjustment, then you could manually select how much water you need for the particular load. For instance, if you needed to launder badly dirty clothes.
But since most of our laundering appliances lack such a setting, we have to go for these kinds of tricks to bypass the water level sensor in our washing machine.
What Else You Can Do to Trick Your Water Level Sensor In a Washing Machine
If you think that the method we described above is the only way you can make your washing appliance use more water, you are wrong. There is another approach, the same effective, that can be used as an alternative. It can be handy if you, for instance, have no time for soaking clothes. So what shall you do?
Since the washer water-level switch will increase the amount of water only when the load in the barrel is bulky, you simply need to make clothes you are going to launder bulkier!
For this purpose, old thin towels will do perfectly. Only make sure that they are already clean, and that their colors will not bleed! Remember, your goal is only to make the load feel bulky, not to wash more clothes!
In addition, such an approach will give you one more benefit. See, when the load is bulky, the laundering machine is way more balanced while spinning which makes the spinning more effective.
Extra Methods Of Hacking Your Washer’s Water Level Sensors
All right, so we can either make our washing machine believe that we put a heavy load into it by pre-soaking the clothes with water, or we can add some thin towels to make the load bulkier. But what if none of these methods suit us for some reason? Is it possible to get more water from our washing smartie somehow?
Fortunately, it is! And we can name you several effective solutions so that you can choose the one that fits you most.
- Consider water level options
- Install a water hose
- Make use of a bulk setting
- Adjust to pressure switch
And now let’s take a closer look at each of these approaches to see how they work in detail.
Water Level Options
What does that mean? Well, in fact, this is not a trick, and not even a hack. To be honest, most of us have this option installed in our washers but for some reason, we tend to forget about it.
So the thing is that many laundering machines have an extra rinse option. If yours is one of them, then check out its control panel. You will see that next to the “extra rinse” button there is a selector that allows you to pick up the desired amount of water. Yep, that simple!
Using a Hose May Help
This method can be used only if you don’t mind spending some time on it. To make it successfully, you will need a splitter, a six-foot hose, and plastic hose caps.
Start with turning the hot and cold water supply off. Then connect the splitter to the temperature you prefer to use for laundering your clothes. For instance, if you prefer using cold water, then the splitter must be connected to the cold water supply, and vice versa.
To make sure the splitter is thoroughly and properly fitted, double check that it has a screw in the main channel. Like this, you will be able to screw it to the water supply.
And after you are done, connect the hose to one of the openings through the splitter.
Then the final stage begins. Now you need to connect the hose you have prepared to the third channel in the splitter, and while the machine is being filled with water, open the valve. It will allow the water to come in through the hose.
Remember the Bulk Setting
No, we are not talking about making the load bulkier here! What we mean is that you can use a bulk setting, but for doing this effectively, you will have to switch to washing smaller loads.
The rule of thumb is to add a maximum of ten or fifteen items of clothing into the barrel to be washed at a time using a bulk setting. It will allow the machine to launder the garments more thoroughly. The only issue to take into consideration about this method is that jumbo items, such as comforters or blankets, can not be laundered using this approach.
Adjust the Pressure Switch
Finally, you can opt for adjusting the pressure switch. Nevertheless, remember that this approach will not be useful for everyone! If your drain is lower than the highest water level mark, then all the water will waste into the drain!
For adjusting the washer water level pressure switch, open the front control panel of the laundering appliance (or check its back since some machines have their switchers there). The switch you are looking for is situated right behind the water level switch. To open it, you might need a screwdriver to lighten the screw and thus press the disc inside.
And here is an extra suggestion for you just in case. To trick your washing machine water level sensor, you can opt for using the combination of the two methods we started with. Let us remind you.
If you need to launder a jumbo load of really dirty clothes, and you know your washing appliance will decide to make use of less water than obviously needed to cope with the dirt, here is a solution for you. Pre-soak the whole load first making sure that the clothes are totally drenched with water. And then add some wet thin towels. Like that, the total weight of the wet load will increase making the machine “think” that more water is needed!
As an option, you can, of course, simply add soaked thin towels (if they are clean, of course!) to the dry load, or dump two or three cups of water on your dry clothes and leave it for ten or fifteen minutes before starting the wash. Since water holds a lot of weight, the load will feel heavier than it really is, and the machine will give more water to wash it.
Why Would Anyone Need to Hack a Washing Machine Water Level Sensor At All?
Indeed, have you ever asked yourself such a question? If we take a look at all the modern washing machines, we will notice that these appliances are usually equipped with all sorts of sensors that are meant for controlling the water level. It is done to make the washing process as eco and environment-friendly as possible which means that normally the amount of water used will be reduced.
And this is when most of us face the biggest issue. In case we need to launder, let’s say, two pounds of clothes just to refresh them, that is fine. But what if we need to wash the same amount of garments that are badly soiled and dirty?
In this situation, we will surely need way more water to cope with the dirt! However, most washing machines will not be able to recognize how dirty our clothes are, and thus they keep on using the same reduced amount of water! Naturally, clothes will not be washed properly when lacking water.
This is why the only possible way to have our clothing properly cleaned is to bypass the washing machine water sensor.
How Does Washing Machine Water Level Control Work?
All right, so now you are aware of what to do to make your washing machine think that you loaded it to the fullest and thus make use of more water – exactly what you may need for the extremely soiled loads!
But have you ever wondered how in fact your laundering appliance defines how much water needs to be used for each particular wash? In fact, the whole scheme is pretty simple, and you need not be a technician to understand it.
To begin with, modern laundering machines are equipped with different sensors, especially high-efficiency machines. These sensors detect the weight of each load of clothes and thus determine the amount of water needed for both washing and rinsing cycles. And since high-efficiency washing machines are designed to be eco-friendly, they will also do their best to use as little water as possible to avoid the excessive use of electric energy.
How does your appliance define the weight of a load?
Simply by using its pressure switches in the control panel that tell the washing machine sensors how heavy the load is. And those pressure switches in turn measure and control the level of water in a barrel.
How to Check Whether Your Water Level Switch Is Working Properly
To check whether your washing machine sensor has any problems, you might want to test it for any possible electrical failures. To do that, you will need to make use of a multimeter set at OHMS X 1.
See, your water level switch has three terminals. We recommend you test them in pairs by locating and disconnecting them. To begin with, place the probes of the multimeter on terminals one and two, make note of the reading, and keep on testing others also in pairs.
As for the results you may get, the reading should be either infinity (which means no continuity), or have meaning close to 0.0 (which means continuity). If your washing machine water level is in a proper state and it is functioning as it should be, then it will have two pairs of terminals with no continuity, and one that has it.
So these were the most effective ways of how you can hack your smart washing machine and make it give more water than needed to launder the extremely dirty load of clothes. Since none of these methods can harm the appliance, feel free to use any of them or combine those that can be combined.
Like this, you will always have properly washed clothes even though your machine has no pre-installed option of choosing the amount of water needed.
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