reducing vibration from the washing machine

[mrbigstuff]

I have a washer and dryer on the second floor of my victorian wood frame house. it shakes up a storm in here (the screen on my old G4 imac wiggles) and I'd like to make a remedy to this. any ideas? foam pads are the only thing i've come up with..

[space-time]

is this a new washer? who installed it? were there any retainer rods? were they removed?

the idiots from Lowe's forgot to remove two rods from my front loader. Those were used to secure the drum during tranportation. Yes, they tested it during installation, but the washer was empty and the drum was well balanced, of course. So they left and next day we were doing laundry and at the end of the cycle during spinning the washer started to shake so bad and bounce between the two walls (6 inches clearance in each side) that I jumped on it and my wife turned it off. Really, true story. It was a weekend, I didn't feel like calling Lowe's to complain, so I started reading the manual and found those two rods, took them out, and it's been very silent even since.

[space-time]

another thought: move the appliances to the basement?

or, if the house were built of stone like in the good old times, you wouldn't have these problems.

[lafinfil]

First you need to make sure that it is level (there are adjustable feet)

If that doesn't solve the problem check for broken stabilizer springs
They absorb the force between the tub and the cabinet

Those are the most common reasons for excess vibration

[mrbigstuff]

It's not doing a salsa dance, but it is vibrating through the walls, enough so that I feel it about 25 feet away on the other side of the house. So, no "excessive" vibration but I do need something of a solution to this as this is an old house and I don't want to cause problems over the long term.

And, no, I can not move to the basement....

[blooz]

If this is happening all the time i can't help. But I know that sometimes i throw in some stuff without making sure the load is balanced and my machine shakes like crazy until it turns itself off and I have to move the clothes around,

[RAMd®d]

mbs is probably experiencing normal vibration of a balanced load that all but the most expensive European machines exhibit.

And being on the second floor of a Victorian, that normal vibration is now very annoying.

I think a 3/4"-1" plywood slab on top of some dense foam is your only practical solution. Maybe some dense foam like Sorbothane, with a layer of some slightly less dense foam, covered by the plywood, with the machine on top.

Raise the feet so that the machine sits as flat as possible on the plywood, increasing the surface area to more than four points.

*Maybe* the vibration would be damped enough that it would be tolerable, if not wholly eliminated. But the machine shakes the floor, and the floor shakes the walls, and the walls are connected to the hip bone, etc.

[mrbigstuff]

But the machine shakes the floor, and the floor shakes the walls, and the walls are connected to the hip bone, etc.

exaaaactly. thanks for the sorbothane suggstion. that's what i was hoping to get - a name of a product.

[modelamac]

It's the floor that is transmitting the problem. Isolate the machine from the floor, as RAM'd suggests.

The washer would be fine on a concrete basement floor. That is solid, with no flexibility. Your old second floor was not designed for that use.

[RAMd®d]

mbs, check out this .pdf, particularly pgs 11 and 12.

http://www.sorbothane.com/PDF/StandardProduct.pdf