UKH

Well, not really, but...

I put the missus' mildly grubby GoreTex jacket through the machine yesterday: once with Tech Wash, once with TX Direct.  All appeared well and said jacket is currently hanging up to dry above a radiator.

She put her beloved pale cream Bergans woollen hoody through on a wool wash this morning and it came out spattered with small lumps of black gunk.  We checked the door seals and, though there was a small amount of debris in there, it didn't seem to match the stuff on her hoodie.  We then noticed that the back of the drum had a thin sticky coating on it, which you could easily scratch off with a fingernail.  Further inspection showed the same on the door, though not around the inner circumference of the drum which seemed a bit odd.

All we can deduce at this point is that the TX Direct left a deposit on certain surfaces within the machine, which then got transferred to her cardi during the wool wash.  I just checked the bottle of TX Direct and it says that the best before end date is January 2024, so it maybe was getting towards the end of its usable life, but was still nominally within it.

Has anyone else come across this kind of thing?

I've put the machine on a 60 degree wash cycle with a dose of ordinary detergent, on the basis that we're always warned that detergent will kill DWR so it might shift the deposit in the washing machine as well.

The good news is that she has been able to pick the gunk off her cardi, though it was a time-consuming process that she understandably doesn't want to have to go through again.

being positive, you waterproofed two items, a jacket and a hoody for the price of one.

Not had that exact problem, but modern washing machines cycles use so little water in the name of the environment their rinsing performance is often lacking. Before washing precious garments its worth cleaning the detergent/conditioner drawer and running the machine on a rinse cycle. 

Have you checked the filter recently, our machine rinses much better since I removed the hairball, 5p coin, bobby pins and a 7mm spanner.

No, sounds odd. The penultimate load I did was a wash like that.

The difference is that I machine washed with tech wash and then treat items with tx direct/polar proof in the sink, one item at a time, then spin them in the machine rather than treat in the machine. 

I think that's a better approach as it puts less gunk in the machine, also if you vigorously kneed it with hands (wear gloves) for a bit you can see the water starting to go clear after a while and know if you need to top up the proofing in the water for the next item or not. That means you can get the dosage right.

It does make the sink a bit water repellent, so I'm slightly surprised but not totally amazed about your washing machine misfortune.

If you wash the machine with a biological detergent or a washing machine cleaner (like Dr Beckmann washing machine cleaner available in supermarkets) on 60C, does that de-gunk your machine? Should do...

If you haven't put your washing machine on a cleaning cycle recently, you'll get black mould build up. You can often see this around the detergent draw. It will also build up in places you cant see, such as behind the drum, in pipes etc. Perhaps the TX cleaned or loosened some of this? There will probably be a cleaning cycle; if not put it on the hottest wash, with nothing in it. Let it do its thing. It will also remove some of the TX that is coating every surface.

Chuck a load of Soda Crystals in the drum and run on a hot wash - your machine will be spotless.  

We don't use the detergent/conditioner drawer at all, just liquid detergents in dosing balls, so the drawer gets rinsed out every time we do a a wash.

Missus says she remembers me checking the filter recently and having checked it just now I think she must be right: nothing significant in there beyond a few small, damp clumps of fluff.

Hmm, we don't have any biological detergent and, like a twit, I forgot to look for washing machine cleaner when I was out at the shops this afternoon

We ran it on a 60-minute 60 degree wash (the hottest it will do) with a cup of non-bio in it and that doesn't seem to have done any good.  If anything, judging by the state of the missus' cardi when she put it through a second wash, it made it worse

This machine doesn't seem to have a cleaning cycle.  EDIT: Correction, it does have a cleaning cycle, buried deep in a coupe of paragraphs of small print towards the end of the manual.  Something to keep of our sleeves, then.

We are currently trying Jamie Hagerman's suggestion of a hot wash with soda crystals.  Fingers crossed...

90 degrees with a dishwasher tablet can help.

I do the hot wash with soda crystals before every Tech wash. Looking at the state of the water through the window I'd definitely recommend doing this regularly. There is a huge amount of gunge that gets rinsed out of the machine every time.

Hot wash (I also discovered that it will go up to 90 degrees on some programmes) with soda crystals has cleared all of what I assumed to be the TX Direct residue off the door glass, and most of it off the back of the drum.  It also seems to have loosened a whole bunch of gunk from within the labyrith of the door seal - we'd run an old face flannel round there before and not come out with much, but after the soda treatment a lot more came off.

Now running the official but poorly documented cleaning cycle to see if that will shift the rest.  Then we have a couple of old large towels that we'll try putting through a normal wash to see if they get clarted up or come out clean.

Looks like we're getting there slowly, fingers crossed.  But still somewhat surprised that it seems to have been the TX Direct that set it all off in the first place.

I had something similar happen a few years ago. I washed with Tech Wash and waterproofed with TX Direct in the washing machine. The item being proofed came out with little rubbery blobs attached, maybe 0.5mm or smaller. The TX Direct was out of date, I seem to remember. I subsequently repeated it with a new bottle, which worked fine. 

These days I use the same approach as CantClimbTom, and hand “wash” with TX Direct in the sink. 
 

Better that the TX Direct doesn’t last forever, I suppose.  
 

Cheers

Al
 

Even using a dosing ball the machines never seem to be completely detergent-free so I always do my techwashing in the bath and TXDirecting in a large bucket. Techwash will create 'scum blobs' in a washing machine, it's not just TXDirect that does it.

Top tip - get hold of a tall (20litre) engine oil or swimming pool chemical bucket, it makes it a lot easier than trying to stop TXDirect mix slopping out of a normal bucket as you're agitating your garments.