AIBU to ask why the fuck my dishwasher won’t clean anything?

[AlohaMolly]

It’s a Bosch dishwasher, maybe six years old. I have, in no particular order -

• repeatedly rinsed through both dishwasher arms
• cleaned the filter
• filled the dishwasher salt
• filled the rinse aid

Neither the top nor the bottom racks are remotely clean, I put the dishwasher tablet in and it doesn’t clear it away, when I open it at the end of the cycle it’s sitting their looking at me.

It’s been almost a week, I’ve tried everything I can think. I’m going to take a sledgehammer to the bastard thing if I have to open it one more time to find still dirty dishes.

Please help!

We have this periodically and Dh takes out the motor bit that spins the arms. Generally it's seized with hair that's got through the filter and wraps around it .

Dd has vey long hair that moults constantly. I have no idea how it gets in the dishwasher but we had to buy an animal style hoover to deal with it on the upstairs carpets and we regularly find balls of it in the washing machine filter too.

The bath / shower drain is just so gross that I pull clumps out on a weekly basis

check you haven't misthreaded the arms when you put them back on...one of ours the thing was reverse threaded something to do with it not undoing itself as it whizzed around.

Since the children all grew up and we almost never eat sweetcorn anymore I never have to bugger about with poking the dishwasher arms.

The "tipping" works if there's no water coming in- the dishwasher has a 'level' or float like in your toilet cistern which wedges and tells the machine enough water has been taken on. But it hasn;t .

When our old machine ( a Bosch would you believe !) stopped heating I found a horrible waxy orange scum in the filter basket not envy

Is there something stopping the arm from moving ? Sometimes a teaspoon goes through our cutlery rack or a clip from the kilner jars and impedes
L

My clever DH who is skilful at mending these things thinks it sounds like a water supply problem. See if you can find a tap which feeds the dishwasher's water supply; if this has become turned off, insufficient water is getting through, hence it doesn't take the dishwasher tablet.

HTH.

I had this with my Bosch dishwasher and it was the arms. The lower ones had fallen off and I simply had to reconnect them, and the upper ones weren't rotating properly because they were getting caught on plates.

It's perfect now.

Haven’t rtft bit I have to say Smol dishwasher tablets were terrible in my experience. Was completely convinced my dishwasher was done in, changed to Finish tabs and it was back to its original glory (have since downgraded to aldi own brand and it still works fine). Cancelled my smol ones immediately. Still use their washing machine ones but the dishwasher ones just didn’t work. Lovely concept and wish we could have continued but there’s no point here.

Hmmmmm water supply tap problems... I was furtling around in the cupboard for the dishwasher salt/rinse aid a few days ago. How ironic would it be if there was, indeed, a tap, and I knocked it??

I’m so crap at stuff like this. It’s DP’s house from before we met, and he ripped out the old kitchen and put the new one in so he should, in theory, a) know shit and b) do shit but what actually happens is c) I have to do the shit.

The fan heater something or other thing went in the oven last year. We did a month without an oven before I YouTubed, internet shopped and then pulled out an integrated oven and fixed the bastard thing. I suspect it will be me fixing this stupid dishwasher as well.

Do I win a prize for identifying that it was the arms not moving that means nothing is clean?

I was well versed in the poke and retrieve of food from said arms too, until I have the whole lot up as a bad job.

Can't help with the WHY I'm afraid. We scrapped ours.

AlohaMolly

I really want to know if it is a tap issue now !

Really hope you can get it sorted.

My DH is a genius at mending things but there is always a period of denial that there is a problem before he will face up to it and tackle it.

Good luck & tell us how you get on.

I used to get this with a couple of integrated dishwashers I had. One of those was a Hotpoint and it was shit anyway.

I changed to freestanding ones (Bosch for me) and for me they have been much better. I also find that problems similar to yours tend to occur with cheap dishwasher detergent. I no longer use supermarket home brands and find results far better with Finish or Fairy Platinum.

I washed a new mug in d/w and didn't notice a tiny label. It blocked the holes in the rotar arms. If a jar with a label goes in d/w I can imagine it really blocking things up. It took ages to get it all out with a pin, rinsing alone didn't shift it. I have a medium price range d/w and it only works well if I rinse the crockery first and run the longest cycle. It doesn't clean roasting tins at all. My DSis has a top of the range d/w and she never rinses anything and it cleans dirty roasting tins. I'm going for a better one next time.

We dumped our Bosch for the same reason. Useless piece of 💩. Now have a Neff and it is so lovely not to have to redo loads or put half the stuff back in as it's
come out dirty. Get rid.

Put the dishwasher out and top it back by 40 degrees this has worked for me on the past, keep a towel handy it leaks a bit. My last dishwadt I had folded card under the front to keep it slightly tipped lasted another 6 months like that before it died. Tbh modern dishwashers don't last that long

Re the tap problem!

I thought mine broke in March, I had my boiler serviced, the heating engineer said "The water pressure is low"

He looked under the sink, turned the tap on more, all sorted.

2 days later I thought I bet thats why the dishwasher wouldnt work.

Ive used it twice a day since. Saved me a fortune!

I can’t see a tap :( there was just a switch. I’ve woken up very bad tempered this morning, which is not the best way to be facing an entire kitchens worth of crockery that needs hand washing!

I like bosh products but our dish washer is crap. Needs tons and tons of salts and rinse aid etc. I'd never buy another.

20 year old Melie is better than what we re placed it with

Sounds like the water isn't hot enough to dissolve the tablet

Yes agree with pp. I think the water is not heating up so could be an element

If the arms aren't turning then the water won't reach the tablet and that's probably why its not dissolving.

it should still pull out even if it is integrated....once the door is open and down you should be able to see some sort of fixing that is holding the edges to the unit so you could undo them and do the tippy thing as a last resort maybe??

As for the undersink furtleing, the water pipe to the dishwasher should have a on off valve ....iirc it should be inline with the pipe for water to flow and across to stop

My top tip for appliances is never to buy anything dear....they only break your heart when they need replacing or repairing whereas you are eternally grateful when the cheapy one goes on forever, it's a much better feeling :o

We had this. It turned out that the pipe supplying the water was bunged up with limescale (extremely hard water area). I do put on an Oust wash every few weeks but because the pipe was coming from outside, it wasn’t getting to it.

Happened to my Bosch and it stank. I was glad when the bloody thing went bang.

Ours makes everything as hot as molten lava and fills the room with steam when you open it so it should be very obvious if it's getting hot or not

@gildalilly

If you're able to, remove the spinny arms and take a needle to the holes. When this happened to me it was because tiny bits of sweetcorn were stuck in the holes.

My arms clog up with rice grains. I mean my dishwasher arms! Cocktail stick does the job