Dishwasher -- repair of heater/thermostat?
 

Hello all,

I have a five-year-old Whirlpool dishwasher. Model GU1500, in case it
matters significantly.

Of late, its performance has dropped significantly. The post-cycle
dishes are often not, in fact, clean. It's not uncommon to find grit on
some items. Cycles now take well over double the indicated time to
complete -- just tonight, a "Normal" cycle claimed it would complete in
70 minutes, and it ran 2.5 *hours*.

While it runs, it spends a great deal of time with the "heating water"
light on, and during that time it's LOUD. Loud enough that it keeps me
awake, where I used to celebrate the quiet dishwasher and happily set
loads to run in the wee hours.

A while back we had the home warranty guy out, but they were useless.
Apparently they can't "fix" unless it's "broken", where "broken" is
defined as a cycle which never advances, or takes many hours to complete.

After reading the included diagnostic sheet, I suspect that something in
the water heating system is kaput. Perhaps the thermostat, thermister
or the heating element itself? Or the fuse?

I'm curious if anyone has tackled this, and can advise on the viability
of attempting a home repair. I'm not opposed to buying a new
dishwasher, but geez louise I was figuring on a lot more than five years
out of this one.

Thanks,
Andrew

--
Andrew Laurence
Central Computing & Security http://www.nacs.uci.edu/~atlauren/
Network & Academic Computing Svcs.
University of California, Irvine

Dishwasher -- repair of heater/thermostat?
 

On Dec 7, 1:34 am, Andrew Laurence wrote:
Hello all,

I have a five-year-old Whirlpool dishwasher. Model GU1500, in case it
matters significantly.

Of late, its performance has dropped significantly. The post-cycle
dishes are often not, in fact, clean. It's not uncommon to find grit on
some items. Cycles now take well over double the indicated time to
complete -- just tonight, a "Normal" cycle claimed it would complete in
70 minutes, and it ran 2.5 *hours*.

While it runs, it spends a great deal of time with the "heating water"
light on, and during that time it's LOUD. Loud enough that it keeps me
awake, where I used to celebrate the quiet dishwasher and happily set
loads to run in the wee hours.

A while back we had the home warranty guy out, but they were useless.
Apparently they can't "fix" unless it's "broken", where "broken" is
defined as a cycle which never advances, or takes many hours to complete.

After reading the included diagnostic sheet, I suspect that something in
the water heating system is kaput. Perhaps the thermostat, thermister
or the heating element itself? Or the fuse?

I'm curious if anyone has tackled this, and can advise on the viability
of attempting a home repair. I'm not opposed to buying a new
dishwasher, but geez louise I was figuring on a lot more than five years
out of this one.

Thanks,
Andrew

Depends on your skill set. There are parts diagrams online that show
lblowups of the unit at most of the places that sell parts. Also,
there are service manuals available that cover groups of models.

It should be easy to check the heater element with a multimeter. If
it's open or a high resistance, you will know it's bad. An even easier
test is to put in on the heated dry mode. If the dishes get dry
compared to a wash where it's off, you know the heating element is
good. From the symptoms, that's where I would start. And you can
replace a heating element easily and a new one should be reasonable.
If you have to call someone to diagnose and fix it, then it gets very
questionable, vs buying a new one.

Also, it's possible it's something entirely different and this is just
a symptom, not the cause. For example, some of the new ones measure
dirt in the water and will keep cycling to get it clean. So, if
something else is wrong, it could still be running longer heating
cycles.










--
Andrew Laurence
Central Computing & Security http://www.nacs.uci.edu/~atlauren/
Network & Academic Computing Svcs.
University of California, Irvine