Washing Machine Tearing or Eating Clothes in Delhi? Why It Happens

What to check first, before you call anyone

Every check here is free and needs nothing but a torch and ten minutes with an empty machine.

• Empty the drum completely and shine a torch inside. Turn the drum slowly by hand through a full revolution, looking at the whole surface. You are hunting for a snagged thread, a chip in the coating, a raised edge or something poking through a hole.
• Run a stocking round the drum. This is the best home test there is. Take an old nylon stocking or a pair of tights, bunch it over your hand, and run it firmly over every part of the inside of the drum — the barrel, the lifters, the back wall, the door rim. Nylon snags on anything sharp that cloth would snag on. Wherever it catches, you have found your burr.
• Check the paddles and lifters. The raised fins inside the drum sometimes crack or come loose. Push each one and look for a split edge or a gap where cloth can be dragged in.
• Feel inside the door seal. On a front loader, pull the rubber gasket back gently all the way round. Coins, hairpins, buttons and bra wires collect in that fold and sit there tearing things for weeks.
• Look under and around the agitator. On a top loader, small items work their way under the central agitator or down between the inner and outer tubs. Wiggle it and look into the gap.
• Clean the drain pump filter. Whatever has gone missing often ends up there, and finding a hairpin or a bra wire confirms the diagnosis. Put a towel and a shallow tray down first.
• Look at how full you load it. If clothes are pressed up against the top of the drum before the machine starts, that alone can explain the damage.
• Check pockets. Every time, on every garment. Coins, keys, screws, pins, safety pins and hair clips are the single most common cause.

Are you overloading it, or using too harsh a cycle?

This is the most common cause and the easiest to fix. Clothes are not damaged by water — they are damaged by being rubbed against each other and against metal under pressure. An overpacked drum does exactly that.

• Leave room at the top. A good guide is a hand’s width of space above the clothes in a front loader before the cycle starts, and enough room in a top loader for the clothes to move freely around the agitator. If the drum is packed solid, nothing tumbles and everything grinds.
• Overloading also strains the machine. The same habit causes rebalancing, longer cycles and earlier bearing wear. It is worth breaking regardless of the clothes.
• Match the programme to the fabric. A cotton or heavy-duty programme uses fast tumbling and a hard spin. Running shirts, kurtas, synthetics and anything knitted on that programme wears them out fast. Most of what a household washes belongs on a normal or synthetics programme.
• Drop the spin speed for delicate items. A very high spin flings clothes against the drum wall with real force. Lowering it costs a little more drying time and saves a lot of fabric.
• Do not mix heavy and light. Jeans, towels and bedsheets washing alongside thin cotton kurtas or a chiffon dupatta will chew the light items. Sort by weight, not only by colour.
• Wash embellished clothes inside out. Sequins, mirror work, embroidery and metal buttons on one garment will damage everything else in the load. Delhi wardrobes are full of these. Turn them inside out or bag them.

Small items and loose fastenings that catch

If the damage is small holes and pulled threads rather than torn seams, something is riding around loose in the drum, or something on one garment is catching the others.

• Zips left open. An open metal zip is a row of small teeth being dragged across everything else for an hour. Close every zip before washing.
• Hooks and clasps. Bra hooks, salwar hooks, saree blouse hooks and dress clasps are the classic cause of small holes in thin cotton. Fasten them, or put the item in a laundry bag.
• Underwired bras. When a wire works out through the fabric, it becomes a metal spike loose in the drum, and it also finds its way between the drum and the tub where it can do real damage. Always wash bras in a mesh laundry bag.
• Coins, keys, pins and hair clips. These come out of pockets and out of hair, get flung around at spin speed, and punch small holes. They also end up jammed in the drum holes or the pump.
• Velcro. One strip of open velcro on a bag or a child’s shoe will pull threads out of half a load of knitwear. Close it or keep it out.
• Small items escaping. Socks, handkerchiefs, baby clothes and thin dupattas slip under the agitator of a top loader or through the gap between the drum and the door seal on a front loader. They come back shredded, or they do not come back at all and block the pump instead.
• Use laundry bags for anything delicate. A mesh laundry bag costs very little, lasts years, and solves most of this list at once. Use it for bras, socks, baby clothes, dupattas, thin synthetics and anything with hooks. It is the single most useful thing you can buy for a washing machine.

A rough spot, a broken lifter or a damaged seal

If clothes are being damaged even when the load is small, properly sorted and free of loose items, the drum itself is catching them. The stocking test in the first section is how you find it, and what you find decides whether it is a home fix.

• A burr or rough spot on the drum. Usually caused by a coin or a wire that has been trapped and worked its way through, leaving a raised lip around a drum hole. The stocking will snag on it every time. Sometimes the object is still there, poking through from the outside — if you can see and remove it, the snag may stop.
• A chipped or worn coating. Older drums with a coated finish can chip, and the exposed edge acts like sandpaper. This is not something to file or sand yourself; a technician will tell you whether the drum can stay in service.
• A cracked or loose lifter. The raised paddles inside the drum take a lot of force. When one cracks, cloth is dragged into the split. Some lifters can be replaced on their own, which is a much smaller job than a drum.
• A torn door gasket. A split in the rubber boot on a front loader traps and tears clothing, and it will eventually leak too. If you are seeing damage plus damp on the floor, look at our guide on a washing machine leaking water.
• Something wedged between the drum and the tub. A wire or coin sitting in that gap grinds every time the drum turns. You often hear it — a scraping or rattling that changes with drum speed. Our washing machine noise guide covers how to identify that sound, and it is worth acting on quickly because it can score the drum and damage the seal.
• Rust marks along with tears. If clothes come out with rust-coloured stains as well as holes, something metal has been corroding inside. Brown or grey marks without holes are usually a detergent or hard-water issue instead — see marks on clothes.

Do not try to smooth a drum with sandpaper, a file or a grinder. You will remove the protective finish and turn a small snag into a permanently rough surface, and on a stainless drum you risk leaving a sharper edge than you started with.

When to call someone, and what to tell them

Stop washing anything you care about and get it looked at when the stocking snags somewhere on the drum, when a lifter is cracked or loose, when you can hear something grinding between the drum and the tub, or when clothes keep getting damaged after you have corrected the load size, closed every fastening and used laundry bags for a few weeks.

Before they arrive, do this much yourself:

• Keep the damaged clothes. The pattern of damage tells a technician more than a description does.
• Mark where the stocking caught. A small piece of tape on the outside of the drum opening pointing at the spot saves a lot of hunting.
• Say what you have already ruled out. Load size, fastenings, pockets, laundry bags, and what came out of the drain filter.
• Note any new noise. Scraping, rattling or grinding that changes with drum speed is important information.
• Give the brand and type. Front loader, top loader or semi-automatic, and the model number from the sticker inside the door or on the back.

Be realistic about the outcome. A trapped object, a cracked lifter or a torn gasket are ordinary repairs. A drum that has to be replaced is one of the larger jobs on a washing machine, and on an old machine it can be worth putting that money towards a new one instead. Our washing machine repair cost guide explains what makes the difference, and how to choose a washing machine helps if you decide to replace.

Two related pages worth reading: if the machine is also shaking and moving, the load habit causing the tearing is probably causing that too, and if cycles have started taking far too long, overloading is a common shared cause. General upkeep is covered in our fridge and washing machine care tips.