Appliance Repair
You open the lid at the end of a cycle and the drum is still full of water. Before assuming the machine is finished, know that a washer which fills and agitates normally but will not drain is usually reporting a blockage, and blockages are the cheapest failure a washer has.
Whatever you open next has a drum full of water behind it. Put towels down and have a shallow pan ready. On a front-loader, opening the pump filter with a full drum empties several gallons onto the floor, so drain it in stages by screwing the filter back in between pans.
Start with the easiest thing. Pull the machine out and look at the hose. A kink behind the machine after it was shoved back against the wall is a genuinely common cause. Check the height too: the hose has to rise to the height the manufacturer specifies and then drop into the standpipe. Too low and the machine siphons itself empty; too high and the pump cannot lift the water.
Most front-loading washers hide a screw-in filter behind a panel at the bottom front. This is where coins, hair pins, buttons and the occasional sock end up, and manufacturers expect owners to clean it periodically. If your machine has one and it has never been opened, this is the single highest-yield thing to check. Expect it to be unpleasant.
If the filter is clear but you can hear the pump humming or buzzing without moving any water, an object may be caught in the impeller. A seized pump often hums briefly and then goes quiet.
Many top-loaders will not drain or spin unless the machine believes the lid is shut. A failed lid switch leaves you with a wet drum and a machine that otherwise sounds perfectly healthy. The same logic applies to a front-loader with a faulty door lock.
If water comes back up out of the standpipe and spills onto the floor, the washer is doing its job and the house drain is blocked. That distinction matters, because it changes who you should be calling.
A drain pump is a modest part and a straightforward job for a technician, which makes "will not drain" one of the more repairable washer faults. The guideline most techs use is to replace the machine instead when the repair would cost more than about half the price of a comparable new one and the unit is near the end of its expected life. If the machine is worth saving, the Chicago appliance repair crew we point homeowners to treats drain faults as routine work. If it is not worth saving, ask whether the retailer will haul the old machine away on delivery before you pay anyone separately to move it.
Almost always a blockage or a switch rather than a dead machine: a kinked or badly positioned drain hose, a clogged pump filter, an object jammed in the drain pump, or a failed lid switch or door lock that stops the machine entering the drain and spin phase.
Behind a small access panel at the bottom front of the machine, where it unscrews by hand. Have towels and a shallow pan ready before you open it, because the water still in the drum comes out through that opening.
Yes. If water backs up out of the standpipe and onto the floor, the washer is pumping correctly and the drain line is blocked. That is a plumbing job, not an appliance repair, and it is worth establishing which one you have before you pay anyone to look at the machine.