Yesterday I got a text from my friend Elaine who says:
Dear God woman! DO NOT PAY THAT MONEY!
Unhooking and hooking up your washer and dryer is actually very easy,
even for somebody who thinks that they're not handy.
There are a couple of tools that you might need.
One of which is: you may need a flat head screwdriver, but you might not.
We'll get to that later.
And you will likely need either vice grips or
channel locks, but not both. And if you don't already have any of these in your house,
you really should get one or both of them because they have a lot of great uses.
I'm gonna start with the washer and you will need to pull it out.
As long as it's empty you should be able to just sort of slide it out a little bit by little bit.
A little bit dirty under there
Back here, you've got your power outlet, your drain hose, and then your hot and your cold water.
Now on the outside of your house, you've got your hose, and you can disconnect the
hose pretty easily from the water right? Well, this works just like that.
Except that there's two of them, and these connections are typically very very tight,
which is where your channel locks or vice grips -- either one -- are going to come in handy.
Now the first thing you're going to do is unplug the power, and if
you feel uncomfortable with that, you can turn your power off at the breaker.
There should be a dedicated breaker just for the washer and dryer, or the laundry room.
Then you're gonna turn off your hot water and your cold water.
Your knobs might look a little different. It might be more of a knob like on the outside of your house.
Could be, but mine are like this. So that is off, and it actually says
it right there on the side, and always think righty tighty lefty loosey.
Then pull out your drain hose. Now this might get a little bit messy if you've
been doing laundry lately, so there could be water coming out of here, but don't worry about that.
And then you're gonna take either your channel locks or your
vice grips and again, remember: righty tighty lefty loosey.
Twist them off, and again you know, there might be a little bit of messiness
involved here but it shouldn't really be too bad.
I'm actually having to twist the hose instead of twisting the handle, it's so tight.
But there you go! And that's it! You're disconnected! That's all you got to do then you might just
want to grab maybe a rubber band or a zip tie and get all your cords and your
drainage tube and all that and just kind of attach them all together so that
they're easier to move, but that's it! That's all you got to do!
And then when you get to your new house, you just put everything back in in reverse.
Now you definitely want to make sure when you hook it back up that you're putting the
hot water line into the hot water and the cold water line in the cold water
Otherwise your laundry's gonna get all kinds of messed up.
And that should be actually indicated on the back of your washing machine.
Tighten up both a little bit with your channel locks or your vice grips.
Stick your drain hose down that tube, and it just kind of hangs there loosely.
And then plug your power in and that's it!
Then carefully move it back into place, and make sure that your drain hose
does not come out of its hole, because that is going to get messy.
All right, funny story:
After I filmed this video I had to run some errands,
I came back home, my husband says
"Oh my God, I think the washer is broken! I tried to wash something and it didn't work."
And I went, "Oh....sh*t!
So I came in here I went..."Fixed!"
Don't forget to turn the water back on.
One other thing that I forgot is to make sure that the connection for the drain
pipe is still secure at the back of the washing machine after you move it
otherwise you're gonna have a big mess on your hands.
Now, of course, different washing machines and different ages of houses
or ages of washing machines is gonna be a factor in this, so it may not
be exactly like what I just showed you, but it should be somewhat similar.
And now for the dryer, luckily the dryer is a lot lighter than the washing machine.
And you know, I can completely understand why
a moving company would want to charge you a lot extra to do this.
It's just not worth it in my opinion.
Now I have an electric dryer, which means all I have is
the power cord right here and then the vent line, which in my case
comes off with this little squeezy thing right here. You just squeeze it,
and it gets loose enough to pop right off.
In some cases you might have a compression band on this,
which requires your screwdriver to loosen it up, but it's still very very simple.
Then when you get into your new home, you can just take this vent line
and put it over the hole. And it's a little tricky sometimes to get that on
there perfectly so that it doesn't move when you move your dryer back into place.
So just be forewarned about that takes a little bit of effort on that.
Then, you're gonna plug it back in
A couple of quick notes here about the vent line and the plug.
These vent lines, sometimes they're rigid, sometimes they're flexible
like this one is, but they tend to get damaged over time, especially when you
start moving them around. So it might not be a bad idea to get a new one for your
new house, just so that you don't have hot air or filling up in your laundry
room because that's no fun. And as far as the plugs go...
Older homes might have a three prong plug for a dryer.
Newer homes however -- and this is current building code -- will have a
four prong plug. That extra plug is for an extra grounding line inside this plug.
Luckily though, they still sell either a three-prong or a four-prong plug for all dryers.
So you should be able to order the correct one if this is different from your old house.
You can just buy a new one without having to buy a whole new dryer, which is nice.
And it's an easy change out in the back of the dryer.
As you're moving your dryer into place,
just make sure that the vent line doesn't get crimped or fall off of the
back of that hole because then you're just gonna have to move the whole thing
back out and redo it, so just be careful.
And that is it! It's definitely worth doing it yourself and saving that money.
I mean think of what you could buy with $150.
A bunch of new rugs and towels for your new house.
Two or three gallons of paint.
A new power tool.
Three sets of mani-pedis.
A really nice bottle of champagne to christen your new house.
I could buy 15 bottles of wine with that!