Dishwasher Help Needed

[Bobonli]

I'm hoping those with longer tenure as homeowners than I can help me sort through whether I'm getting BS'd by the appliance repair guys. I have an approx 4 year old Kitchenaid dishwasher that has been healthy up until about 2 months ago when it stopped drying the dishes. The dishes were clean but came out cold and wet. So we called the chain appliance store we bought from and they sent out a repairman. He said the water in our home was not hot enough to run the washer through its entire cycle and, since the water was too cool, the heating element to dry the dishes was turning itself off as a protective mechanism. Apparently it "would have to work too hard" to heat the cabinet, so it shut itself off. He opened up the circuit board, hit a reset button and left. The drying cycle worked for two days and then quit again.

Sidebar: I live in a 50's era house with no hot water heater. Water gets hot by passing through a circuit in the oil burner. We do indeed have limited hot water (it usually becomes a problem when all 4 people want to take showers back to back but we run the dishwasher at bedtime). What I don't understand: if the water is not hot enough.....why did it take 4 years to cause an issue, or is this just nonsense? My other appliances work fine, BTW.

Fast forward two weeks after the initial repair visit and now the washer doesn't even deliver water. The spray heads will not work because the pump (to pump water out) is broken, thereby telling the circuit board to withhold water. Repair guy insinuating that it's ALL related to the water temp.

Appreciate your thoughts and feedback. I've tried asking a plumber and he clammed up; doesn't want to get in the middle of an argument with the repair guys from a pretty big named appliance dealer in my part of NY.

[fastupslowdown]

i had something similar with a kitchen aide dishwasher. after 8 years i simply said good by kitchen aide and bought a miele. not that its a consolation but dishwashers are a relatively cheaper appliance. you might wind up spending more money on repairs. i'd go with sunk cost theory and move on.

my kitchen aide worked ok in the beginning but much happier with the miele. a few years ago i tried to save money when my subzero wine frig failed after over a decade of use and bought a kitchen aide unit. the thing wouldn't accommodate wine bottles. suffice it to say i'm no longer a fan of the company. i only grudgingly bought another kitchen aide refrigerator when the other alternatives weren't looking very appealing based on my situation. so far so good but if this unit fails before its expected to i'm done.

i used to have a link to the national association of home builders for the life expectancy of common home items but i just checked and the link is now dead. sorry i couldn't be of more help -mike g

[caleb]

i had something similar with a kitchen aide dishwasher. after 8 years i simply said good by kitchen aide and bought a miele. not that its a consolation but dishwashers are a relatively cheaper appliance. you might wind up spending more money on repairs. i'd go with sunk cost theory and move on.

my kitchen aide worked ok in the beginning but much happier with the miele.

Any longer-term thoughts about the Miele?

We need an 18-incher, and the major options seem to be Miele, Bosch, Whirlpool, GE, and Frigidaire.

It'll get used pretty much every day, so quality, reliability, and design are important.

[Will Neide]

've got a Bosch, maybe 1 yr old, and haven't had any issues and no complaints. Very quiet, cleans the dishes well, and looks good. Highly recommend using a rinse aid (Seventh Generation). Without it, the dishes never really dried. All the higher end units don't have a heat coil and rely on condensation on the steel wall. This works great on metal and glass dishes, but does leave plastic bowls, cups, etc, a little wet.

[j44ke]

Any longer-term thoughts about the Miele?

We need an 18-incher, and the major options seem to be Miele, Bosch, Whirlpool, GE, and Frigidaire.

It'll get used pretty much every day, so quality, reliability, and design are important.

I like our Bosch. Especially because I can get all the parts for it at http://www.appliancepartspros.com and similar online outlets. It came with our apartment, so it had some issues as a result of a departing four year old demon child who lived there before us. Replaced a hinge and the handle plus a couple thread inserts that were stripped. Beyond that, nothing. Load and go.

[bironi]

Thanks to all the respondents of this thread.
I now know that I'm not the only skeptic of dishwasher technology.
I find myself washing more and more by hand.

Ever seen the movie "Brazil"?

[fastupslowdown]

Any longer-term thoughts about the Miele?

We need an 18-incher, and the major options seem to be Miele, Bosch, Whirlpool, GE, and Frigidaire.

It'll get used pretty much every day, so quality, reliability, and design are important.

My Miele is still going strong. No better dishwasher. My Kitchenaid a high end model was good in the beginning but no where in the league of Miele. Not one repair unless you count the screws holding the unit in place coming loose last year but that's not really dishwasher operation. -Mike G

[ides1056]

My Kitchenaid is now a cabinet. I wash by hand.

We bought a house with a 26 year old clothes dryer. I fixed it when it broke. We had a fifty year old refrigerator that belonged to my grandmother-in-law that worked like a champ. The new GE needed a new motherboard in its first year.

[Scott G.]

When my 10 year old Hi-E washer died,
replaced it with a Speed Queen.
Looks like a laundromat unit, delivered by Tardis from 1960.

[Paul Jacobs]

Any longer-term thoughts about the Miele?

We need an 18-incher, and the major options seem to be Miele, Bosch, Whirlpool, GE, and Frigidaire.

It'll get used pretty much every day, so quality, reliability, and design are important.

I have had two positive experiences with Siemens 18 inch dishwashers, which I only bought because I could not find an 18 inch Miele dishwasher. The first one was problem free for 10 years until I sold the house where it was installed. The second has been in continuous use and working well for seven years.

[htwoopup]

I no longer own it because I sold the house, but I bought a Miele dishwasher when I built the house in 2008 (sold house in 2018) and the dishwasher was one of the best purchase for problem free I have ever made (I had a good collection of stuff in that house that I was also happy with...Thermador cooktop and ovens, LG front load washer and dryer.) On a related note, the Liebherr fridge I had in the NYC apartment was crap and the Miele fridge I bought to replace it is fantastic (although that is not as long term a review). Interestingly, the two fridges are made in the same factory for two different family owned companies but to different designs/ specs/ whatever’s as I understand it.

[fastupslowdown]

https://www.interstatebrick.com/site...components.pdf

[thollandpe]

Babaloonie, dishwashers suck. There is no single appliance I loathe more, as I’ve replaced a dozen in my tenure as a homeowner.

Also, I’ve never used the dry cycle. I let them air dry. But it is very important to have hot water, if only to minimize the soap and fat sludge that eventually coats the nooks and crannies of these crappy appliances.

So I’d replace that indirect heater on your boiler, that’s an inefficient design at best, and at worst (like in summer when you run the boiler only to heat domestic water) it’s miserable.

If your basement can use some dehumidification, consider a heat pump water heater. The Stiebel Eltron is a beaut.

Or how about solar? If you have the roof exposure, and can find a contractor who knows how to do it, the economics of making hot water from sunlight can’t be beat.

And then run the faucet until hot water comes out before starting your shiny new dishwasher. If you don’t do that, the dishwasher has to heat that slug of cold water, regardless of what your water heater is. And run it every once in a while on sanitize/high temp to help dissolve the sludge. Good luck.

[Bobonli]

Thanks Todd.

Yes, my heating system in antiquated. Whole house is! I have an oldie time oil burner AND the exterior walls are not insulated!! We've pushed around the idea of a water heater since buying the house 6 years ago and now it looks like the dishwasher might be the final motivation to act on it. It's just odd that the problem is popping up now and, coupled with the pump failure, my spydee senses tell me the water temp is not so much the cause as the thing is just dead.

Repair guy comes Saturday with a pump. After that it's going to the curb because I'm already half way to the price of a new machine.

[j44ke]

I think you are getting 50% BS. I’d say it is likely that your dishwasher doesn’t actually know what the temperature of the water is and that’s why it is crapping it’s pants. There should be a heating element in the dishwasher that cranks the heat of the water above what the household service temp is. And that’s so the water vaporizes off the dishes and condenses on the walls of the dishwasher, runs down into the bottom and gets pumped out. You’ll hear the pump go like 10 or 15 minutes after the last rinse sound. If the pump is broken, you’ll have water in the bottom of the dishwasher. But if you’ve had bad temp control, your pump can fill with sludge and stop working, because high water temp keeps soap and fats from congealing and clears the pump.

Anyway, the dishwasher should make up the temp difference between its required operating temp and the household service with its own heater. If it isn’t heating, then either the electronic controller is bad, the heater is bad or the temperature sensor is bad. The temp sensor in a dishwasher is called a thermistor. It is basically a switch that reacts to temp. Based on what it is set up to do, it either allows or prevents something from happening. In your case, I assume it allows or prevents the drying cycle based on whether it “sees” the correct temp.

If he’s replacing the pump, before he starts working, ask him about the thermistor. You will already be paying for the pump work and the thermistor is usually in the same general area underneath the dishwasher, so it won’t be extra labor. He can pop one in while there.

The part of his explanation I don’t buy is the temp of your household service being too low. Okay maybe that is causing wear on the heating parts, but I am going to bet it is the simple doinky part that has gone bad. Ask about the thermistor.

This knowledge is courtesy of the plumber who fixed the dishwasher in our rental apartment 10 years ago. He came with the part, flipped the dishwasher on its back, switched it out and presto, fixed. Okay there were wires and hoses involved, but he claimed that was the weak link in most dishwashers and so he replaced that first and then went from there, no matter what any code said.

Good luck!

[davids]

Oh man. Dishwashers.

We had to replace one the moment we bought our (1999) house. It turns out that - just as we suspected - the water-damaged floorboards in the kitchen (that we had just refinished) were caused by the leaking DW! No biggie, it was going to go when we renovated anyways. So I bought a cheap Bosch from Best Buy because, y’know, it was the best price and fastest delivery.

Until the day it was supposed to arrive and didn’t. So lesson learned there: Don’t buy from a big box store.

A year passes and we renovate the kitchen. Another year passes and the new DW stops completing the full cycle. A two year old Bosch? This shouldn’t happen. Anyways, having learned my lesson I call the local high-end appliance store for service. It takes five visits to fix the thing – one to diagnose; one when the part (a new pump) arrives; one for a third-party plumber to re-route the drainage at the service guy’s recommendation; one to review all the work when the re-routing didn’t fix the problem; and one with the service manager to address his guy’s half-assed work. The total cost would have purchased most of a new DW... So lesson two: Service is expensive and hit-and-miss.

And guess what? A year later the DW starts having the same problem! We’ve learned to rinse our dishes, run the disposal, thoroughly clean the pump filter, each of which seems to help. At least for a while. But ultimately the thing will just not reliably complete its cycle. I am so frustrated. My wife is ready to cut bait and just trash this three-year-old Bosch.

Before we do it occurs to me to try one more thing. The DW manual makes a big deal about how the little plastic pump filter cover needs to "click" into place. Ours doesn’t, it just kind of snugs in there. So I go on-line and buy a new little plastic pump filter cover for $8.80. It arrives. I pull out the little plastic pump filter cover that’s in there. It’s a different part, missing the little tab to click in. It’s not broken, it’s wrong. I am sure that the guy from the high-end appliance shop popped it in there when he replaced the pump. Lesson three: Service guys are winging it.

I click in the new one.

s-l300.jpg

The machine is working perfectly now.

[j44ke]

%

No, no, no, that's not true, the family now owns it 100%: https://www.reviewed.com/dishwashers...owned-by-bosch

Robert Bosch GMBH is the name of the corporate entity that is divided up into a charitable org, a board and the ancestors of Robert Bosch.

But whatever.