Dishwashers: Five Most Common Problems Blog
Just wanted to through a bunch of things today on dishwashers.
1) Clogged Float Cup Switch 0:22
2) Water Shooting from Air Gap. 1:42
3) Dishwasher not Draining 2:31
4) Soap Dispenser Door Not Latching Properly 4:00
5) Stuck Impeller 4:47
00:22 If you ever see water coming from right here running down. You can see like a calcium deposit or you see water dripping from that side. Usually what it is is a stuck float switch.
Now these float switches on this particular model have a little phillips screw back here that comes off. It is usually just soap scum. Soap scum just builds up inside there and it will look a lot worse than it actually is but it is actually just soap residue left behind.
So let me show you here. I’m not sure. This one is not leaking like I was saying but oh yeah! You can see all the soap residue inside there.
Well this little cup floats up as the water fills and engages this little switch here. Releases that little switch and that’s how the water knows. Well that’s how the dishwasher is told to shut the water off. So anyway we gotta clean all this stuff out here and that is how you fix that problem.
So I’m gonna clean this one all out since I am turning the unit. That way when someone moves in they don’t have a surprise the first time they use the dishwasher.
01:42 Up here on the dishwasher this is your air gap. Now if you ever see water spit out of this air gap it’s an indication of the garbage disposal drain line being clogged.
From the dishwasher air gap under here you can see this line going into the garbage disposal. This is our disposal to drain line and this gets built up with gunk and food so you got to undo the clamp here and clear this line out or replace the line. One of the two of and for stubborn ones you can hook it up to a hose bibb and just flush it out, clean it out. There’s another way to do it also where you can take a brush and run it down inside here
remove this cap here.
Now if your dishwasher wasn’t draining that would be a good time to check inside this cap. Also often there is a, set this down so I can get my other hand on it. Anyways you just squeeze these two clips in and than just pull the cap right out.
Whoa!
02:47 I don’t know if you saw that but there is like a chicken bone down there. Sometimes if you’re disposal drain is not draining it’s time to check this here. In order to get that chicken bone to float back up what I’m gonna try and do is dump some water down inside there and see if it will float up to the top for me. Sometimes it will float right up when the line is filled.
If it’s light enough. I’ve seen it with pieces of plastic and such. It’s full now
but nope it’s not going to float up there for me but if it was like a plastic toothpick or something like that sometimes you can get it to float up.
So what I will have to do is just run this through the drain cycle for just a second and its gonna shoot water up and all but I’ve got to shoot that out of there.
Anyway I will come back to that later I just wanted to show you guys a bunch of stuff with dishwashers. Sometimes these 04:02 the spring for this gets broken off, often they come off and you can separate the two halves of the door and than reset the spring, it’s a little tricky but you just gotta get a place, to find, to reset that spring latch to. Sometimes it takes a little bit of an adjustment to get it.
Let’s see. This one’s working ok. Well it is not very strong so this one looks like possibly the spring has come off because it should only open automatically when it gets to the right point. Yeah this one is definitely broken. So that needs to be reworked to reset the spring.
What else can I show you?
04:47 Sometimes the impeller will get stuck. Dishwashers, there is four screws that hold the bottom trim plate on and each type of impeller is a little bit different. This particular model has like a fan connected to it and you can just turn the fan blades to unstick the impeller.
Let me remove these four screws. Other kinds you will have to use like a screwdriver,like two screwdrivers, and kind of wedge it against the
motor impeller in order to free up the impeller. You just kind of keep turning it until it gives. You’ll feel it be like really tough for a bit
and than all of a sudden it will move really easy.
This is probably going to be a little nasty in here. Got our sound insulation here keeping the noise out or in.
The impeller, if you had turned the dishwasher on and you hear like a humming but it’s not kicking on, that’s usually your impeller stuck.
Make sure you turn the power off and than reach right back here. And I don’t know if you can really see it that well but let me see if I can get my
flashlight going here to give you guys a lookie loo.
Put you inside there a little bit and I don’t know if you can see the fan blades there but I’m going to turn them with my other hand. Anyway sometimes if they were like really hard to turn at first and than it will just give and it will spin freely. It should spin nice and freely and that is how you can unstick those if it was stuck.
Other kinds you’ll see the impeller shaft right here and you’ll be able to turn it.
Anyway that is a little bit about dishwashers there. Some of the most common things you will come across maintenance wise!