Oh, oh, oh, I know this one!

Ok, first, yes you do need to clean your intake hose filters once or twice a year. Not because your water is impure, but because your pipes may be shedding some scale or rust that clogs up the filters. (Much better inside the distribution path!) Note that I said filters, plural, because there is one on each end of the intake hose so you need to clean four of them.

The little strainers can be a bear to get out without damaging them, especially the ones on the near end of the hoses. If you mess them up, you can get news ones from Miele and if you are going to do this regularly, you might want to order a couple of spares for future crises.

If your water system is particularly cloggy, one thing you might do is install in-line particulate filters before reconnecting the inlet hoses. These are often sold for irrigation systems and do a great job of collecting all the stuff that would wind up fetched up on the filters. Mine (the irrigation filters) have a bypass/flush arrangement so I can open them and remove the filter and flush out the catch basin, all without disturbing the machines. Very handy and makes it dead easy to do the required cleaning.

However, you said your machines were under a counter. Too bad! First, before you shift the machine even a teensy bit, take the trouble to mark exactly where the feet are so you can get it back right on the same spot. If you don't, it's a crapshoot whether you'll have to go through the whole leveling/evenly weighted feet dance all over again. Then pull the machine out and do the filters from behind. If you can, install a pair of the irrigation filters which will collect stuff before it reaches the machine. But because your machines are under counters you won't be able to easily access the filters for flushing. How about giving some consideration to having your water supply lines raised so they are above the counter? Then you'd have access to them for flushing, and you'd also be able to have quarter-turn shut-offs installed so you can shut your water supply off when not using the machine. This is a good practice to protect your machine's inlet valves, but also protect your house from flooding due to failure of the hoses, etc. Some nsurance companies will give you price break on your homeowner's policy for doing this.

If looks are a concern you can have the exposed plumbing done in beautiful bathroom or kitchen fixture components, so the they'll blend with any look. Or if you have the space, you can go with a sub-counter arrangement that is accessed via a blind faux cabinet next to machines. Or you could have a section of your counter cut out so you can access the water paraphrenalia from above. Some things to think about, anyway.

In any case, cleaning the filters has always solved this particular problem for me. Just remember to treat the filters with extreme care, and remember, too, that there is one at each and of each hose. And don't forget to mark the feet before you move!

HTH

Molly~

Thanks Molly! Guess what? It isn't the hoses or the machine. They didn't have a speck of anything in the filters/screens. The actual cold water line has a clog. After a lot of trial and error we figured it out. The same plumbers who put in this line last year (Pex) are coming back this week to check the furnace, so we should be all set at no cost other than a workout in moving the machine. I built the counter top to be somewhat easily removed so the only real chore was sliding the machine out and hopping back into the small space. It works out pretty well. Oh, and you can bet I marked the feet position after all the time it took to balance that thing out perfectly last year! :-)

Thanks again!