A reliable cycle?

Almost without fail, every three or four years, the high water pressure that arrives at my house eventually blows out the flexible hose connecting the cold water feed to my washing machine. Ever since I installed the plumbing 20 years ago, turning off the stop-tap on the washing machine feed has been getting more and more difficult.

Roughly 38 years since buying my first washing machine I have had to shell out for my third. I did consider the alternative of spending a hundred pounds and a day fixing the old one, but I had become a bit bored with its mechanical foibles and fancied a change. The old one, even with refreshed motor brushes, would occasionally refuse to operate (normally aborting a programme after just a few minutes), when asked to rinse it would leak. The killer blow was the disintegration of the drum bearing to the extent that cycles would halt immediately at random times with a loud thump and the whole machine would leap within the confines of its den.

The change of machine necessitated a battle with the stop-taps of course. The hot would slow to a drip, but the cold would not turn off. These tap connector devices are not helped by having levers of plastic all of three quarters of an inch long. Neither does it help that they are installed (rather cunningly I though 20 years back) right against the wall behind the sink unit. So I turned off the kitchen supply entirely and waited for the delivery.

It had occurred to me in the time between ordering a new machine and its arrival that it might be a single cold feed machine, but I hadn't bothered to check, in the hope that ignoring a problem would make it go away. The replacement is of course a single feed machine, so I had to redouble my efforts on the hot tap, eventually reducing the drip to a negligible level (I hesitate to say it has stopped entirely).

On a more cheerful note, my house it returning to a more acceptable level of laundry cleanliness. I even tested the wool setting on a couple of jumpers that hadn't seen soap yet this winter.