Why won't my washing machine drain?

On most front loaders it is behind a small hatch or the kick panel at the bottom front. Lay a towel down and have a shallow tray ready, because there is usually a quart or two of water still in the machine and it comes out as soon as the cap turns.

What you find there tells you a lot. A coin or an underwire sitting against the impeller is the whole fault and clearing it fixes the machine. A filter that is clean while the tub stays full points further down the line.

Listen at the point in the cycle where it should drain. A pump straining or buzzing without moving water is usually jammed rather than dead, which is the good version of this fault.

Complete silence where the pump should run means it is not being told to run or it has failed electrically. That splits into a failed pump motor, a wiring fault or a control board that never energises it, and telling those apart needs a meter.

That is usually a partial blockage in the drain hose, a kinked hose behind the machine, or a standpipe that is not clearing fast enough. It is worth checking whether the sink next to it also drains slowly, because the answer may not be the washing machine at all.

Hoses pushed too far into a standpipe also siphon, which produces a machine that seems to drain constantly while it fills.

Water standing in a tub starts to smell within a day and the smell gets into the door boot, which is a longer job to clear than the original fault. A jammed pump left to keep trying can overheat and turn a filter clean into a part replacement.

There is also the obvious one. A machine full of water that someone opens on a front loader puts all of it on the floor.