Before you begin. This procedure is general reference information, not professional advice. Equipment varies by manufacturer, model, and year. Always follow the documentation supplied with your equipment — where it differs from this page, follow the manufacturer. Verify that you have the tools, the working conditions, and the ability to do this task safely. If anything is unclear, if the equipment is damaged, or if the task exceeds your experience, stop and use a qualified professional. You are responsible for your own safety and for the outcome. This site accepts no liability for any loss, damage, or injury arising from the use of this information.
Specifications marked unverified could not be traced to a manufacturer source. Do not rely on them — obtain the value from your equipment documentation.
A washing machine that walks across the laundry floor, bangs against the wall or shakes the house on the spin is almost never broken. It is standing on four adjustable feet, at least one of them is not carrying its share of the weight, and the drum is doing the rest. On a brand-new machine there is a second suspect that catches thousands of people every year: the shipping bolts that hold the drum still in transit are still fitted, and no amount of levelling will help until they come out.
The work is a wrench, a bubble level and about an hour, and the only genuinely awkward part is that a washing machine is heavy and you need a second pair of hands. This page will not tell you which way to turn the feet on your machine. Only LG publishes a direction, it publishes it for its own front-loaders, and the answer depends on whether your foot is a bolt threaded up into the cabinet or a nut running down a stud. Turn it, watch the corner, and let the machine tell you.
| Item | Note |
|---|---|
| Wrench | LG gives the wrench that comes with the machine. |
| Bubble level | LG tells you to put a level across the top of the machine. |
| Block of wood | GE Appliances gives a piece of wood below the front to hold the machine. |
| Flashlight optional | The space below the machine is dark. |
| Pliers optional | Only if the lock nut is tight and the wrench does not hold it. |
Estimated 10 min to 18 min
DISCONNECT THE WASHING MACHINE FROM THE ELECTRICAL SUPPLY BEFORE YOU MOVE IT.
Contact with the supply can give you an electric shock.
REMOVE THE SHIPPING BOLTS BEFORE YOU OPERATE A NEW MACHINE.
LG says that these bolts can cause severe vibration and permanent damage.
Estimated 7 min to 9 min
DO NOT PULL THE WASHING MACHINE BY ITS HOSES.
Water comes onto the floor from a loose hose.
Estimated 2 min
No tier-1 source was found for this value. Take it from the documentation supplied with your equipment.
Estimated 17 min to 26 min
No tier-1 source was found for this value. Take it from the documentation supplied with your equipment.
ASK A SECOND PERSON TO HELP YOU BEFORE YOU LIFT THE WASHING MACHINE.
A washing machine is heavy. It can fall and crush your foot.
DO NOT PUT YOUR HAND BELOW THE WASHING MACHINE WHILE A PERSON HOLDS IT.
A machine that falls can crush your hand.
Estimated 6 min to 10 min
No tier-1 source was found for this value. Take it from the documentation supplied with your equipment.
Estimated 16 min
MAKE SURE THAT ALL FOUR FEET TOUCH THE FLOOR BEFORE YOU START A PROGRAM.
A machine that moves on the spin can cause damage to itself and to the floor.
This page uses one term for each item and holds it throughout, as ASD-STE100 requires. Equipment sellers and other guides use the names below for the same parts.
Stop if the floor flexes or sags below the machine. Whirlpool says that the machine must not go on a raised wooden platform. A floor that moves is work for a builder.
Stop if the machine moves a large amount after all four feet are correct and tight. The cause is then inside the machine. Worn bearings, a broken spring and a loose counterweight all give this result. None of them is a fault of the feet. Speak to an appliance technician.
Stop if a foot turns but the corner does not move. Stop if a foot comes out of the cabinet. The thread in the base has damage. Do not put a shim below a bad foot.
Do not put the machine on a pedestal that came with a different machine. The feet must not stay on the machine for a pedestal installation. The machine then bolts to the pedestal. The installation instructions for your model give that procedure.
Because at least one of its four feet is not carrying weight, so the drum's out-of-balance force gets to lift a corner instead of being fed into the floor. Whirlpool puts it plainly: front and rear feet must be in firm contact with the floor and the washer must be level to operate correctly. The other three usual suspects are shipping bolts still fitted on a new machine, a soft or springy floor, and a single heavy item like a bath mat washed on its own.
Shipping bolts, and they must come out before the first wash. LG explains that they are fastened at the rear to fix the tub in place during transport, and warns that failure to remove them can cause severe vibration and noise leading to permanent damage. Take them out with a wrench and fit the supplied caps into the holes. Keep the bolts somewhere safe: you need them again if you ever move house.
This page will not tell you, and that is deliberate. LG is the only one of the four manufacturer sources here that publishes a direction, and it publishes it for its own front-load machines: clockwise to raise, counterclockwise to lower. Whirlpool and GE publish the procedure without a direction at all. Whether the foot is a bolt threaded up into the cabinet or a nut running down a fixed stud changes the answer, and so does whether you are looking at it from above or from the floor. Turn it a little, watch the corner, and reverse if it went the wrong way.
None of the four manufacturer sources on this page publishes a tolerance in degrees, millimetres or bubble widths, so this page does not print one either. What they publish is a test instead of a number: Whirlpool says rock it diagonally corner to corner and adjust if it teeters, LG says get the bubble to stay in the middle and then run a rinse and spin with about six pounds of laundry. Pass both and the machine is level enough for the machine that has to live with it.
A little, yes. GE Appliances is the only source here that puts a figure on it and says movement up to a quarter of an inch can be normal on occasion. Anything you would describe as walking, banging or shaking the room is not normal, and it is what this procedure is for.
No, and Whirlpool is specific about the bigger version of this idea: do not install the appliance on a raised wooden platform. A shim under one foot is worse than a badly adjusted foot, because it can shift, and the machine will find it during the spin. The feet exist precisely so that no shim is ever needed. If a foot will not adjust, the thread is damaged and that is a repair, not a levelling problem.
Level it first, because a machine that is out of level will shake any floor. If it is level, all four feet are tight and it still shakes the room, the problem is the floor rather than the washer. Whirlpool tells you to check the floor for flexing or sagging. Stiffening a suspended timber floor is a builder's job, and no amount of adjustment at the feet substitutes for it.
Every specification on this page is traced to one of these sources. Tier 1 is a manufacturer document, a published standard, or a government safety authority. See Standards for the full tiering rule.
Current version 1 · updated 2026-07-29 · next review due 2027-07-29
Corrections to this page are listed in the public corrections log. Reports that are credible and not yet verified are listed in the public errata register, and an open one renders above the step it concerns.
Found an error? A correction with a manufacturer source is applied and logged publicly. You can also write to corrections@fixchecklist.com.
Every step above carries its own report control, which tags the report with that step so a correction reaches the right place. For anything about the procedure as a whole — the order of the sections, a step that is missing, something that did not match your equipment — use this: report something about this whole procedure.