How to remove mold in a washing machine

Prop­er care of the auto­mat­ic type wash­ing machine and peri­od­ic main­te­nance is a guar­an­tee that the house­hold appli­ance will last a long time and will not require major repairs. Equip­ment must be kept clean and dry. If the inside is con­stant­ly wet, mold may appear on the rub­ber seal, that is, mold may appear on the cuff of the hatch. Because of this, an unpleas­ant odor aris­es, which can also pass to things. The gum becomes cov­ered with dark spots, grad­u­al­ly dete­ri­o­rates and ceas­es to per­form its main func­tion, which leads to con­stant leaks dur­ing wash­ing. There­fore, the fun­gus must be removed as soon as pos­si­ble after its dis­cov­ery. And take steps to ensure that it does not appear again. Experts from the Exper­tol­ogy online pub­li­ca­tion will tell you about how to deal with fun­gus on the sealant of a wash­ing machine.

Preparing to Remove Mold — Necessary Tools and Aids

In order to cope with the task, you will need:

1. 
   clean­ing flu­id. This can be a rem­e­dy pre­pared accord­ing to a folk recipe (we will describe sev­er­al options below) or a spe­cial house­hold chem­i­cal prepa­ra­tion.

2. 
   Rub­ber gloves. Use them regard­less of whether you use a rem­e­dy — pre­pared your­self or bought at a hard­ware store.

3. 
   New sponge or cloth, which is not a pity to use to wipe the seal, and then throw it away. It is not nec­es­sary to store the sponge / fab­ric after remov­ing the mold until the next clean­ing, as there is a risk that the fun­gus will begin to mul­ti­ply on it.

4. 
   hard wash­cloth, which will also need to be dis­posed of after use. Mold can clog into small cracks in the elas­tic, espe­cial­ly if the wash­er is old and the cuff has not been changed for a long time.

5. 
   Res­pi­ra­tor or ban­dage over the mouth and nose. It is not nec­es­sary to use it, but if there is a lot of mold and it emits an unpleas­ant odor, it is bet­ter to pro­tect your­self from it. And just inhal­ing the spores of the fun­gus is not good for health.

Hav­ing pre­pared every­thing you need, you can begin to fight dark spots. Just keep in mind that it is rec­om­mend­ed to process not only the rub­ber of the wash­ing machine, but also the rest of its parts. If the fun­gus appears on the cuff, then it is bet­ter at the same time, at least as a pre­ven­tive mea­sure, to treat oth­er areas — a tray for wash­ing pow­der, a fil­ter, a water out­let hose, and the inter­nal mech­a­nism of the device.

What from improvised means can be used

The fol­low­ing tools will help to cope with the prob­lem:

1. Ordi­nary table vine­gar.

2. Lemon acid.

3. White­ness (it is bet­ter to dilute it slight­ly, by 1/3, with water so that the chlo­rine liq­uid is not so con­cen­trat­ed and does not have a neg­a­tive effect on the rub­ber of the seal).

4. Hydro­gen per­ox­ide.

5. Boric acid dilut­ed with water.

6. Bak­ing soda dilut­ed with water.

The very pro­ce­dure for remov­ing mold is that first the rub­ber must be thor­ough­ly washed with a sponge soaped with laun­dry soap. Leave the foam for 10 min­utes and rinse with clean water. Then pour the select­ed agent onto the sponge, process the sealant, close the door for 15 min­utes, rinse. Make sure that the prod­uct used only gets on the rub­ber of the seal, and not on the enam­el or paint of the rest of the wash­er. This treat­ment is car­ried out twice in a row. A day lat­er, you can repeat the pro­ce­dure for a more con­fi­dent result. The laun­dry deter­gent tray is cleaned in the same way. But to clean the hose, the inter­nal mech­a­nism, you will have to do one “idle” wash, use vine­gar instead of pow­der and con­di­tion­er.

Using Vinegar

Pour 200 ml into the pow­der and con­di­tion­er con­tain­er. vine­gar. We set the longest wash­ing mode and select the high­est tem­per­a­ture. No rins­ing or spin­ning required. After wash­ing, again pour vine­gar or cit­ric acid dilut­ed with water into the con­di­tion­er com­part­ment, which will leave a pleas­ant fresh smell. We start the rinse mode. We do repeat­ed rins­ing with­out the use of any means. At the very end, wipe every­thing inside and out with a dry cloth.

Household chemicals

The choice of such house­hold chem­i­cals is very wide, they are sold in any hard­ware store. For exam­ple, you can use such pop­u­lar drugs:

1. hg. Mold repel­lent, which can be used to treat tiles, rub­ber, sil­i­cone. It costs about 4,5 dol­lars, but you can find cheap­er on the Inter­net. Sold in a spray bot­tle.

2. Tiret flu­id. It is a uni­ver­sal clean­er for the com­plete treat­ment of wash­ing machines both inside and out. It costs about 200–3 dol­lars for 200 ml.

3. Blanidas — 4 dol­lars for 5 liters.

4. Dr. Beck­mann — 5 dol­lars for a bot­tle of 500 ml. with a spray bot­tle.

If house­hold chem­i­cals do not help to remove mold from the rub­ber seal of the wash­ing machine, you will have to con­tact the mas­ter to replace the part. It is bet­ter not to car­ry out such repairs on your own, since improp­er replace­ment of rub­ber can cause con­stant leaks dur­ing wash­ing.

How to Prevent Mold on Washing Machine Rubber

To pre­vent mold from set­tling inside the wash­ing machine, you need to:

1. Peri­od­i­cal­ly clean the drain sys­tem of the wash­ing machine, make sure that it is not clogged with any­thing. If it is dif­fi­cult to drain the water, water may remain inside the drum after wash­ing. This in itself is bad, as rust may appear on the drum. In addi­tion, in con­di­tions of high humid­i­ty, mold just mul­ti­plies.

2. Always keep the wash­ing machine door closed. After wash­ing, wipe the drum inside and the rub­ber of the seal, all acces­si­ble places in con­tact with water, with a dry clean cloth, leave the door open for about half an hour, then close it until the next time. This pre­vents mois­ture from get­ting inside the mech­a­nism and onto the rub­ber.

3. If you have clothes that can be washed at a high tem­per­a­ture, do this peri­od­i­cal­ly, if pos­si­ble, by set­ting 50–60 degrees. Even the most heat-lov­ing fun­gi (ther­mophiles) die at a tem­per­a­ture of 37–45 degrees.

Also, experts rec­om­mend at least once a week to care­ful­ly inspect the wash­ing machine while clean­ing the bath­room, because it is eas­i­er to fight mold at an ear­ly stage of its appear­ance.