The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Do it Yourself Discussion! => Topic started by: TrMama on December 19, 2013, 09:29:54 AM
-
That is all.
-
Excellent! Congratulations!
-
Good! What was wrong with it and how did you fix it?
-
It wasn't getting the dishes clean. Specifically it was as if there wasn't enough pressure coming out of the sprayers anymore. I'd already started running it periodically with OxyClean laundry detergent, to clean the pipes of any grease and detergent build up, but even that wasn't helping anymore.
With the help of a YouTube video I got over my fear of taking it apart to get at the "guts". Turns out when I broke a wineglass a couple years ago we missed a few shards and they got into the food chopper/garborator part. That part btw, is a poorly built piece of junk since the axis around which the blade spins is plastic. The glass had sliced off the end of the plastic axis (which allowed the blade to fall off) and the perforated part of the food chopper (that allows the water and chopped up bits of food through) was completely blocked with gunk. I took it out, cleaned out the gunk and will be looking for a replacement part this week. In the meantime I put the perforated plate back in (since I think it keeps larger pieces of food from washing into the pump and it works much better.
$500 saved, since I was ready to chuck the dishwasher and buy a new one.
-
Awesome! I love this board for what it has given me the guts to fix / make myself :)
-
Good job. I had to do something similar a few years back, found a toothpick jammed in the chopper with some fruit pits of some kind. Removed this debris and it worked again.
I find I have to clean under the spinner every year or so, it gunks up with pink slime and starts to run inefficiently.
-
I've done the same thing - found the tutorial on wikibooks. Turned out several wine glass stems and a few sippy-cup straws were in that little drain area by the chopper... how they got there I cannot say :) Now I make it a point to do an annual cleaning of the chopper just because!
-
Great job!
-
It is a great feeling when we have the satisfaction of fixing something by yourself that would have otherwise cost a lot of money.
I "grounded" my dishwasher a year ago, after a water leak from our apartment damaged the neighbour's ceiling below while my wife and I were away on vacation and both my son and daughter stayed home. Of course, both of them didn't know anything about the leak and had NEVER used the dishwasher in our absence! I had the water pipes and connections checked by a plumber and everything turned out to be fine. If I were in a single family house, I would not hesitate to check everything myself, but as I am a condo dweller, I am now a bit scared to troubleshoot it myself in case I can't manage a possible leak if it happens again.