What OVERFILLING Means
WHICH MACHINES THIS APPLIES TO: Asko's professional washers - the WMC-series machines installed in communal laundry rooms, care homes, salons, gyms and small commercial laundries - do not report problems as numbers. They print the problem on the display in words. Two document families stand behind the messages on this site and they are deliberately kept apart, because they are not the same book and they do not use quite the same wording.
THE OLDER PLATFORM: the Asko service documentation for the new generation of washing machines whose circuit diagrams are labeled WMC55. Its problem section states that if a problem occurs during a program cycle it is shown on the display after the program has finished or been interrupted - which is worth knowing, because on this platform the message often appears at the end rather than at the moment something went wrong.
THE LATER PLATFORM: the operating instructions for the WMC64P and the WMC743VS, which both state that a message is shown on the display if an error occurs during the program. The message set in those two books is identical to each other, which is good corroboration of both.
A LIMIT WORTH STATING: no public document could be found under the model numbers WMC6743 or WMC6744. The messages here are attributed to the books they were read in and are not claimed to cover those models.
ONE PRACTICAL NOTE BEFORE ANY CHECK: a professional washer is usually hard-wired rather than plugged in, so isolating it means the breaker or the wall isolator that feeds it, not a plug. And in a communal or commercial room the machine belongs to somebody else. If that is your situation, the checks below are for the person who looks after the machines, and reporting the exact wording on the display is the most useful thing a user can do.
WHY THIS PAGE COVERS TWO MESSAGES: Asko's professional books use two different strings for the same situation and neither should be looked up in isolation. The older WMC55 error list prints "Overfilling". The later WMC64P and WMC743VS books print "Over flow problem". They are the same problem in two vocabularies.
WHAT THE OLDER WMC55 PLATFORM SAYS IT MEANS: "Too much water in the drum due to a problem in the level sensing system or the inlet valve." That is unusually specific about where to look - either the machine has measured the level wrongly, or water has come in when the valve should have been shut.
WHAT THE LATER WMC64P AND WMC743VS BOOKS TELL YOU TO DO: shut off the water tap, and then work through the water-outlet procedure - the drain checks. That order matters. The tap first, because it is the only control over the supply from outside the machine, and the drain second, because water that cannot leave is water that keeps rising.
WHY THE SEVERITY IS HIGH RATHER THAN MEDIUM: a commercial washer holds a lot of water, and it usually stands on a floor with other machines, other people's property and a fair amount of electrical equipment nearby. The problem is not dangerous to the machine so much as to everything around it, and a shared laundry room is exactly the place where an overfill goes unnoticed for an hour.
CLASSIFICATION: problem with a water-escape risk. The first action is a tap, not a program.
Common Causes of OVERFILLING
- Inlet valve passing water when it should be closed
- Level sensing system reporting a level that is not there
- Pressure chamber or its hose blocked, split or disconnected
- Drain restricted, so water cannot leave as fast as it arrives
- Foam from unsuitable or over-dosed detergent confusing the level measurement
🔧 One Safe Check You Can Try
Shut the water tap to the machine, before anything else and before switching anything off. A machine that is overfilling is still connected to its supply, and the tap is the only control over that from outside the cabinet. Leave it closed. Then look at the floor around and under the machine and at the room's drain point - in a commercial room with machines in a run, water travels along the plinth line and shows up two machines away from where it came from. If water needs to come out of the drum, use the machine's own means of emptying rather than a bucket and a hose: the later books have you press Stop to empty the machine of water before the door is opened, and the older platform has an emptying program. If the drum is full and the door is locked, that is the machine behaving correctly and not a second problem. Beyond that, stop. Everything the manuals list - the level sensing system, the pressure chamber and its hose, the inlet valve - is inside a machine that has to be isolated at the breaker or wall isolator before it is opened, standing in water that has reached the same floor as the pump motors and the mains terminals.
⚠ Why You Shouldn't Go Further Than That
- The supply tap comes first because the machine is still connected to mains water, and everything else is secondary to stopping more water arriving.
- Water that has reached the floor of the machine is sitting alongside pump motors and mains terminals, which is why the machine is isolated at its breaker or wall isolator before anything is opened.
- The level sensing system and the inlet valve are inside the cabinet, and on a commercial installation the machine may also be bolted down or plumbed in a run with others, so it is not simply pulled out.
Opening a panel to inspect or repair something yourself doesn't automatically cancel your manufacturer's warranty — but it can risk accidental damage, and some manufacturers do have specific service conditions. Check your product's warranty terms, or ask us, before deciding.