Another Kenmore Elite Dishwasher Follow-Up
This is really the a follow-up to my initial review and my first follow-up on our wonderful Kenmore Elite Dishwasher. Why am I doing this? Not just because those are the two most hit entries on this blog (who would have guessed that??) but we also had our first problem with our dishwasher.
A week or so before Christmas, the dishwasher stopped cleaning the top rack. The bottom rack was fine, but the top rack barely got touched. Obviously, not enough water was getting to the top rack dishes. But why?
The first thing I checked was to make sure that the sprayer underneath the top rack connected to the supply at the back of the dishwasher. And it seemed like it. Remember that — it becomes important later on.
A few googles said to clean out the chopper section of the dishwasher. So I got on my hands and knees and dismantled the screen and chopper section on the bottom. The screen was clean, but I rinsed it anyway. I did take a chicken bone and plastic straw out of the chopper. I was hoping that would solve it, but alas it did not. A few pages said to replace the check valve but it looked like it was in great shape.
Now I was at a bit of a loss. So yesterday I decided to take the sprayer under the top rack off and make sure it wasn’t clogged. It wasn’t clogged and it shouldn’t have been — the dishwasher is not quite three years old and we have soft water. But when I was taking the sprayer off, I noticed that the tube that connects the sprayer to the supply in the back was quite loose. After checking for clogs, I decided I needed to make sure that they would fit tightly. I messed around with a few things, when I noticed one side of the clamp holding the tube was also loose. The clamp is at the back of the top rack and looks like a guide between the supply at the back and the tube to the sprayer. I had to push real hard, but I got the clamp to fit securely on the top rack again. This made the tube to the sprayer much tighter. So I ran another test load. And guess what? It works! The top rack now washes clean.
My guess is that the loose tube connected fine to the supply, but the tube moved too much when high-pressured water came from the supply. That water spilled out into the basin, and the sprayer didn’t have enough water.
I’m kicking myself for not seeing it earlier, but it was still an easy fix that didn’t cost me anything. It’s the only hiccup with this dishwasher that we have ever had. And now it’s working fine. If we have this problem again, though, I will know what to look at first.
[...] Our dishwasher has been given us fits again. I found Sundberg Appliance by my house and they told me to clean out under the screen — that something was probably blocking the pump. Sure enough, I took about five orange seeds out. But it still wasn’t working right. It took a couple of weeks to make it back there, but I asked their advice again. They said it sounded like too much soap stuck in it. They advised running a load with no soap and no dishes, except 1 ½ cups of white vinegar in the top rack. And what do you know? It’s working great now . . [...]
stumbled on this entry today. Your model is probably a tad different than my Kenmore, purchased about 3 years ago, but I am having top rack problems, too, and so is a friend in town with the identical model. At first I thought it was the connection of supply tube on the rack with the supply running up the back of the dishwashwer: and I am sure that was partly it: the upper rack supply tube had been somehow jammed a bit toward the front and was not connecting. That probably does not make sense to the reader. Let me describe it differently: there is a grooved “ring” that holds the tube in place at the back of the rack. The problem was that insstead of that grooved ring sitting square on one of the rack wires, which makes for proper tube placement and spacing with the fixed supply line running down the back of the dishwasher, it was in fact pushed toward the front a bit, off of the rack wire, so that there would have been a gap between the two supply tube parts (rack and back wall). What tipped me off was that the sprayer arm was not moving during the cycle. Now, for the most part, it DOES move, but it still seems that we have MANY dishes not cleaned properly (yes, the infamous fruit smoothie cups are one major problem). Sometimes they seem to be, often they are not. I will look more at some of the things you suggest to see if there is an associated problem with my model, even if it differs a bit from yours. thanks for your insight.
I just happened to come across this again because I was looking at something on my site that talked about this.
We had a Kenmore just before we moved here – nice dishwasher. When we moved in here, it was a very cheap GE – really bottom of the line. Noisy, didn’t wash well. We put up with it for quite a while but then we learned my nephews even worse dishwasher broke a year ago and as they had no money, they’d been washing dishes for a family of 4 by hand!
I took that opportunity to give them the GE and we bought a new Bosch, which we absolutely love – so quiet!
My wife kept fretting about giving my nephew “junk”. His wife called and explained at length that compared to washing by hand, this “junk” was incredibly wonderful. That made my wife feel a little better