How often should you inspect your washing machine hoses?

Why bother

A burst hose floods the laundry in minutes. This is an essentials-tier job. Skip it and you're inviting the expensive kind of problem, or the dangerous kind.

What the job involves

1. Pull the washer out a foot or two, enough to see both supply hoses where they meet the wall valves and the back of the machine. The hot and cold lines hide back there in the dark, which is exactly why they get away with it.
2. Run a hand and an eye along each hose. You're looking for bulges, blisters, cracks, rust at the fittings, a kink, or any dampness or drip at the connections. A weeping fitting now is a burst one later.
3. Check the connections are snug but not cranked tight, and that the hose isn't rubbing on a sharp edge or kinked hard behind the machine where you can't see it.
4. If a hose shows wear, or it's been back there more than 3 to 5 years, shut the valves, unscrew the old ones, and fit new braided stainless-steel hoses with fresh rubber washers. Two wrenches, twenty minutes, done.

Do it yourself, or pay someone?

Yourself, mostly. It's a one-hour, two-wrench job: shut the valves, swap two hoses, and braided stainless-steel replacements run about $25 the pair. DIY Or Not puts the self-done cost near $25 against roughly $150 for a plumber, an 83% saving; hiring out runs $130 to $250 in most areas. Pay a pro only if the shutoff valves are seized or leaking, which turns a hose swap into a valve job.

What skipping it costs

$5,300 to $10,200 is the average insurance payout per washing-machine water-damage claim: the IBHS multi-insurer study sits at the low end, and State Farm's own data puts its average at $10,200, nearly $30 million paid out across a single year. That's because a failed hose runs unattended at full line pressure, roughly 650 gallons an hour, so a burst over a weekend away pours thousands of gallons through the laundry room and whatever's below it. Supply-hose failures are the single most common cause of these claims. The fix is two hoses and twenty-five dollars.

Signs it's overdue

• A bulge, blister, or bubble in a rubber hose, or frayed wires and exposed inner tubing on a braided steel one. Either way the layer that's meant to hold the pressure has quietly given up.
• Rust or corrosion at the fittings, a kink or crimp, or the hose gone stiff and brittle when it should still flex.
• Any dampness, drip, or chalky mineral crust at the connections or along the hose. Or no fault at all, just hoses more than 3 to 5 years old, which is reason enough on its own.

When to start thinking about it

A few days' warning does it. Grumpty grumbles 5 days out, then leaves you alone. Mark it done and Grumpty sets the next one, every 12 months, so you can go back to forgetting it exists.

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