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A couple of days ago we started getting a strange sewage smell from our washing mashine when it is first turned on. Our laundry room is on the 2nd floor. We purchased new front loading machines last summer. Anyone else had a similar experience?

Have you cleaned out your front loader lint materials trap?

I do this a couple times a year...ok maybe once a year

You'd be surpised what you would find in there. Mine is located at the front left corner. Just pull the small cover off, uncork the plug and drain the water in a container and remove all the junk in the trap.

I also leave the washer door open to air it out...front loaders are air tight compaired to top load washers, therefore any water inside doesn't dry out when the door is closed.

My 2 cents.

Tim

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http://spaces.msn.com/greensburg101/ website update...Feb 13, 2009

Hi Tim,
Thanks for the reply! We leave the washer door open all day and night. Maybe this lint trap? I will try to find it!

This is actually quite a common problem with front loaders. If you are using normal soap, this can be the cause. It has a higher fat content than the HE soaps recommended for front loaders and this fat will build up in the washer and create a smell. There are some products out there (internet search needed) that will help clean out the smell. As well, the rubber at the door may have a slight crease built in - the fat and other stuff can collect there and create a smell.

We had the same problem and after we used this one product (wife got at grocery story) to clean the washer inside and switched to HE soap, no problems. As well, we leave the door slightly open after every wash and this helps.

Here are some links. Hope they help:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2117193_front-l ... rfree.html

http://housewares.about.com/od/laundrya ... ngmold.htm

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/44457

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/la ... 10578.html

we had this problem and found that the root cause for us was using liquid fabric softener. We switched to the dryer sheets and haven't had a problem since. Might be worth a shot if you use liquid fs

I've read that what worked for one person was to use powdered detergent into the washer not the dispenser and the use of dryer sheets. Within a few washes, all the smell was gone.

If I consistently leave my washer door open while not in use can I avoid this gross-ness? We've had our front loader for about 5 months now and haven't noticed a smell as of yet, do all front loaders eventually run into this problem??

We've never had a smell in our washer (knock wood), and have used front loaders for about 6 years now. We always leave the door open, and we usually run our towels and bedding loads through with colorfast bleach ... not sure if that makes a difference, but it seems to work for us.

We have an LG frontloading washer/dryer set. We kept getting this damp smell in out towels after they were washed and dryed (used HE detergent and fabric soft. sheets) and could not for the life of me figure out what it was.

By luck one day I caught a report on CTV about the exact problem in the consumer reports set. Turns out that frontload washers do not drain at 100% so after time there will be a mold buildup in the rubber edge near the door of the washer. Sure enough we went and got in there with a towel and lots of buildup came out.

Since we've been doing this we've never had the smell return and like many mentioned above we just started to leave the door open after each use to air it out.

Front loader are horrible for this, I usally put a cup of bleach in the washer and let it run an empty cycle, it works and is cheaper then the tablets.
I also would use a cup of vinager in a load, to remove any smell that found it way into washed clothes.

I had a horrible time with my LG front loader (for 4 years) and now have an old fashion top loader... I love the top loader the regular load wash cycle is done in 20 minutes

Mine does the same - Kenmore Elite model - this is the 2nd set from Kenmore that has this problem.

Ours smells like rotten egg farts ...... AND I use HE Tide detergent and anything else I have to wash with is HE labelled. I have used the washing machine cleaners as well as just running it on the hottest setting with bleach ... I wipe UNDER the rubber regularly AND leave the door open all the time (which is a pain in the ass since our laundry room is also the garage entrance and it's not a very big room) ... BUT after all this I still get the smell if I haven't used the machine in a couple of days ...... trust me .... my machine only gets a few days off each week ...... because of this I have almost been tempted to switch to a top loader .....

Jo

We had this issue but it wasn't our washer, it was the black pipe taking the water away that Mattamy installed.

It had to be extended and the U shape part had to be a bit bigger, what happened is the sewer gas was seeping up the pipe back into our house! It smelled like an outhouse, not pleasant at all, but it's fixed now so i'm happy Might be your issue?

Also, we always wipe the excess water from the rubber parts of our front loader, as they can smell, but we never had that issue with the inside and we've had ours for a year