Appliance Spares
Quick answer: How to test a door seal in 30 seconds — close a $5 note in the door, pull it out with a steady even pull. No resistance = seal has lost compression at that spot. Firm grip = seal is fine there. Repeat around the door (8 spots on a fridge, 6 on a dishwasher, 4 on an oven). One failed spot is a real fault. If every spot passes, the seal isn’t your problem — look elsewhere.
Your fridge isn’t cold enough. Or the oven runs hot. Or the washer dripped on the laundry floor this morning. You’ve Googled it, the verdict is the door seal, and the tech’s quote — $220 callout plus $180 for the seal — is sitting in your inbox.
Wait. Before you reply.
There’s a thirty-second test that costs nothing, requires no tools, and tells you whether the seal is actually the problem. Half the seals that get replaced didn’t need replacing — the fault was upstream, the seal got blamed because it was the easy thing to point at. Run the test first.
The bank-note test
This is older than most of us. Appliance techs were doing it before the internet existed. It works because every door seal in your house is designed to compress against the cabinet rim and grip whatever’s between them — including a piece of paper.
Open the appliance. Close a five-dollar note in the door so half of it sits inside, half sticks out. Pull the note out with a steady, even pull. Not a yank.
What happens tells you everything:
- The note slides out with no resistance at all — the seal has lost compression at that spot. Either the rubber is dead or the door hinge has dropped. Either way, there’s a problem.
- The note comes out with steady moderate resistance — the seal is fine there. Move on to the next spot.
- The note doesn’t budge, and tears when you pull harder — the seal at that spot is in excellent condition.
Now repeat it around the door. On a fridge, do at least eight spots — every corner plus the middle of each side. On an oven, four spots covers it. On a dishwasher, six.
If even one spot fails on a fridge, warm humid air is leaking in, the compressor runs longer than it should, and frost will eventually build up on the freezer side. One bad spot is a real fault. On an oven, one bad spot leaks heat — your cake recipes will be off, the cabinet around the oven gets hot to the touch, the power bill creeps up.
If every spot passes, the seal isn’t your problem. Whatever’s wrong with the appliance is somewhere else. Don’t replace the seal.
The torch test (for when the note test is borderline)
If a few spots feel uncertain — the note slides out but with some friction, you can’t tell if that’s pass or fail — try this one. It’s better than the dollar bill test for finding tiny gaps and air leaks the note misses.
Get a bright torch. The brighter the better. A phone torch works but a proper LED handheld is better.
Turn off the lights in the room. Put the torch inside the appliance, pointing at the closed door from the inside. Close the door. Walk around the appliance slowly in the dark.
If you can see torch-light bleeding out through the seal anywhere — there’s an air gap. The seal has a tear or a perished section there. Even a small bright spot means it’s no longer airtight.
If you see no light at all from any angle, the seal is genuinely intact and your real problem is elsewhere.
This works particularly well on dishwashers (usually installed in cabinetry, you can’t see the back or sides easily) and on top-mount fridges where the seal damage might be at the top edge you’d never notice in normal use.
What “fail” actually means by appliance
Fridge. Compressor runs constantly trying to maintain temperature. Frost forming on the freezer side because warm humid air is sneaking in. Inconsistent temperature between zones. Your power bill goes up by $50-150 a year on the seal alone. If you replace it, the fridge door seal replacement guide walks the process — about an hour, hand tools.
Oven. Temperatures wander up to twenty degrees off setpoint. Cakes burn one side, undercook the other. The outer cabinet feels too hot to touch during cooking — that heat shouldn’t be escaping. Energy bill creep, but the bigger issue is unreliable cooking. Oven seal replacement is twenty to forty minutes once you’ve got the right part — they’re model-specific, so model number through the part finder.
Dishwasher. Water on the floor during the cycle. The kick panel area stays damp. Dishes don’t dry properly because the heated air during the dry phase is escaping. Seal swap is generally easy — but check that the leak isn’t actually from the inlet hose, the sump, or the drain pump first. Water under a dishwasher has five possible sources, only one of which is the door seal.
Washing machine. Water dripping from the bottom of the door during the wash. Mouldy smell on clean laundry. A tear visible at the six-o’clock position of the seal. The washing machine door seal mould guide covers the prevention angle if you’re catching it early; the universal replacement walk-through covers what to do once it’s gone.
The five visual checks worth doing while you’re there
Even if the tests pass, these tell you whether the seal is on its way out:
Run your thumb along the rubber. A healthy seal feels soft and gives slightly under pressure. A failing seal feels hard, dry, or unevenly stiff. The rubber lasts about as long as it stays pliable.
Look at the seal under a torch. Any visible cuts, tears, perforations, or missing chunks — replace. Pinhole leaks don’t show on the bank-note test but they leak air and water continuously.
Check whether you can pull the seal away from the door easily. On fridges, the magnetic strip inside the seal weakens with age. If you can lift the seal off the cabinet rim with no resistance, the magnet is dead.
On washing machines and dishwashers, look for mould patches that won’t clean off. Surface mould lifts with vinegar. Mould that’s bonded into the rubber pores stays. If a bleach test patch doesn’t lighten it, the rubber is colonised through and the seal is past the point of cleaning.
Check the door hinges. A dropped or worn hinge makes the door close slightly off-square — the seal compresses unevenly and one corner leaks. Fix the hinge before you replace the seal.
A reality check before you buy a new seal
A replacement seal that doesn’t fix the problem is the worst possible outcome — you’ve spent the money, done the work, and the symptom is still there.
The dollar bill test is free. The torch test is free. Do both. Find the actual fault. Then buy the right part.
If the seal is the culprit, find your replacement here — washing machine seals across the major Australian brands, fridge and oven seals via the part finder (those are model-specific so we don’t list them as a category). Specifically stocked: the Bosch Series 8 washer seal, the wider Bosch range seal for the older Avantixx and Maxx, the Beko seal, and the Haier seal that cross-fits a chunk of post-2014 Fisher & Paykel front-loaders.
If the test says the seal is fine, don’t buy a seal. Whatever’s wrong is elsewhere — check the diagnostic spokes for fridges, washing machines, or ovens depending on the symptom you started with.
Things people ask us
Do polymer Australian notes work for the test, or do I need an old paper one?
Polymer notes work. They’re slightly slipperier than paper, so adjust your expectations — any spot where a healthy person can pull the note out with no resistance at all is a fail. Steady moderate pull = pass.
The seal passes every test but the fridge still isn’t cold — what now?
The seal isn’t your problem. On a fridge that’s usually the evaporator fan motor (you can hear it failing — whining, grinding, or silent when it should be running), a blocked defrost drain, or the defrost thermostat. The fridge not cold but freezer works spoke walks the diagnostic.
Can I tighten the door hinges instead of replacing the seal?
On older fridges and ovens, yes — a dropped hinge mimics a failed seal because the door doesn’t close flat. Adjust the hinge first, re-test the seal. Sometimes it’s the cheaper fix.
The seal feels stiff but the bank-note test passes — replace?
Probably yes within the next six months. A stiff seal is on its way out — it’s still working but the rubber has lost the give that lets it compress evenly. Order the part now, fit it when the test eventually fails.
Why won’t my washing machine seal close at the top?
Either the door hinge is dropped (heavy front-loader doors do that over years) or the seal lip has rolled inward. Push the lip back into position with your thumb — sometimes that fixes it for a few cycles. If it keeps rolling, the seal has stretched permanently and needs replacing.
Need a replacement seal once you’ve confirmed the test? Send your model number through the part finder — Sydney warehouse, before 12pm Sydney time ships same-day, anywhere in Australia.
