Appliances in a house that sits empty most of the year

There's a category of call I only get around here, and I didn't see it coming when I started working this patch.

Somebody arrives at the weekender for the first time since Easter. The dishwasher won't drain. The washing machine sounds wrong. There's a smell in the laundry they can't place, and the fridge, which they left running, has gone from an unremarkable appliance to something they'd rather not open.

None of it is wear. Wear is what happens to appliances that get used. This is the opposite problem, and it's much more common along Shellharbour and Shell Cove than most people would guess.

Things seize when they stop

A pump that runs a few times a week keeps its own seals wet and its own impeller free. A pump that hasn't turned since March has had six weeks for the residue in it to dry into a crust, and the first thing that happens when you press start is that the motor tries to turn something that's glued.

Sometimes it breaks free and you never know. Sometimes it hums, draws current, and trips out. Dishwasher drain pumps are the worst offenders because there's always food residue in a dishwasher no matter how clean you think you left it. Washing machine pumps are close behind.

Same story with solenoid valves. The inlet valve on a washing machine or dishwasher has a rubber diaphragm that spends its life wet. Leave it dry for two months and it hardens, and a hardened diaphragm either won't open or won't close. The won't-close version is how a holiday house floods, which is a considerably worse morning than a dishwasher that won't start.

The smell isn't the appliance

Nine times in ten, the smell in a closed-up laundry or kitchen isn't coming from the machine at all. It's the trap.

Every drain in the house has a water seal in it, and a water seal is just a bend with water sitting in it. Water evaporates. Six weeks of an empty house in summer is enough to empty a shallow trap, and once it's empty there's nothing between your kitchen and the sewer. People blame the dishwasher because that's the thing near the smell.

Run every tap and flush every toilet when you arrive. Give it a couple of minutes. If the smell goes, that was it.

The other one is a front loader that was shut. A front-loader door seal holds water in the fold at the bottom, and closing the door on a warm, wet, dark drum for six weeks does exactly what you'd expect. That one's genuinely the appliance, and it's entirely preventable.

Ten minutes before you lock up

This is the bit that matters, and it's short.

Run the dishwasher empty on the hottest cycle it has, then leave the door slightly ajar. The hot cycle clears the residue that would otherwise dry solid in the pump. The ajar door lets the inside dry out.

Leave the washing machine door open and pull the detergent drawer out to its stop. Same reasoning.

Turn the water off at the stop tap, or at least at the washing machine taps. This is the one I'd do even if I did nothing else on the list, because a perished inlet hose that lets go while nobody is there is the most expensive thing on this page by an enormous margin. And while you're down there, look at the hoses. If they're more than about ten years old, replace them, they cost very little.

For the fridge, pick one and commit. Either leave it running with the door shut, which is fine and costs a bit of electricity, or empty it, clean it, turn it off and prop the door open. What you must not do is turn it off and shut the door. That's the version that produces the fridge you don't want to open in September. Energy.gov.au has sensible general guidance on running costs if you're weighing up leaving it on.

And close the windows properly, especially on the sea side. A house that's shut up for six weeks with a window on the latch is a house where salt settles on every condenser coil and every stainless panel with nothing to wash it off. That's a slower problem than a seized pump but it's the one that shortens the life of everything.

The short-stay version

If the house is let out rather than kept for yourselves, the calculation changes, because the appliances are being used hard by people who don't own them and then sitting idle between bookings.

Two things I'd say to anyone in that position. First, the turnover cleaner is your early warning system, and it's worth explicitly asking them to report anything that sounds or smells wrong rather than working around it. Most faults announce themselves for weeks before they stop the machine.

Second, get things looked at between bookings rather than during one. A dishwasher that's been noisy for a month becomes an emergency on a Saturday with guests in the house, and a Saturday emergency is a worse outcome for everyone than a Tuesday visit would have been.

We do domestic appliances, so a holiday house with a normal kitchen and laundry is squarely our thing. A commercial kitchen isn't.

When it's already happened

If you've arrived and something won't start, don't keep pressing the button. A pump that's humming and not turning is drawing current and getting hot, and the difference between a seized pump that frees up and a burnt-out one is often just how many times somebody tried.

Turn it off at the wall and ring. The $125 assessment fee covers the callout and the diagnosis, and the repair price comes before any work starts. If it turns out not to be worth repairing I'll tell you that instead, and I've written about how that call gets made.

Book a visit or ring 02 4229 3777. If you're only down for the weekend, say so when you ring and I'll work around it.