Dishwasher Troubles

Water intake valve

Fried Switch

Our Dishwasher went kablooey this weekend. We noticed it part way through the week. Dishes just weren't getting clean. It was barely noticeable at first, but by Friday it was obvious that something was wrong. When the cycle was finished we would open the door to find that the detergent had just spilled out of the cup instead of getting washed around during the cycle. We would start the cycle, and a couple of minutes later open the door to find the inside dry as a bone. No water was getting into the thing at all.

Jenn's dad is a pro at fixing things, so when he was here on Saturday we started taking it apart to find the problem. Jenn and I had noticed that the Heated Dry button wasn't working anymore. When we got behind the button, we found that the whole switch had arced and created a mess of melted plastic. We hoped that replacing the switch might fix the problem. We headed to Lowe's and got a replacement part. The switch worked now, but the water still wasn't coming in. We decided to let it go for the night and start work again the next day.

Sunday we took off the kick-plate and started poking around in the water works. Jenn's dad saw that the circuit had continuity all the way to the solenoid for the water intake valve. At that point, the circuit was dead. We popped the valve out to take a look, and there was no obvious damage. The screen looked clean, and the valve moved without a problem, so we had to assume that the switch wasn't working. I found a site to order a replacement, and it should be here by Wednesday. Hopefully that will do the trick and we will get away with $35 worth of repaired components rather than the $350 - $1000 expense of replacing the unit.