Our family loves our stainless steel KitchenAid dishwasher and we use it a lot. Most of our meals are made at home, so between cooking utensils, breakfast and dinner dishes, and the many cups, saucers and pint glasses that we go through each day, it was getting a full workout. All the same, it seemed to be in good shape some six years after we bought it, cleaning dishes well without any pre-rinsing or scrubbing.

Then we noticed that the dish detergent was not getting completely used up. The dishes were suddenly not as clean after a full cycle. Something was definitely wrong, and the dishwasher was well out of its original warranty and the extended warranty. All the same, we like this dishwasher because it fits our kitchen design and always worked well before. A call to River City Appliance was in order!

Josh Comes Up With a Plan!

River City fixed some of our other appliances in the past (a stove and a microwave), so we knew we could trust their repair techs. This time Josh came to work on the dishwasher. Watching Josh work on an appliance is like watching my master mechanic father work on a car engine. Just as my dad would undo wires and loosen bolts and screws like it was second nature, Josh gets to work on a dishwasher without the slightest hesitation.

First, he listened to the dishwasher going through a wash cycle. He heard the slightest little clicking noise, something that we never paid attention to before, and pointed it out to us. “That’s the sound of your pump actuator and it’s failing to turn a disc inside your pump that moves the water from the bottom of the dishwasher to the top.” Sure enough, he stopped the cycle, drained the dishwasher, pulled out the pump motor, and showed us the interior of the pump. There was a disc with a hole in it that was stuck in one position. The upper spray arms of our dishwasher are responsible for dissolving the dish detergent, but they were no longer getting water from the pump. The disc was letting the lower spray arm get plenty of water, but the actuator was no longer rotating to switch the water flow to the upper arms.

Although Josh had a diagnosis, he also had a problem. While he had a lot of dishwasher parts on his truck, our pump was not one of them. So, he came up with a stopgap plan! The pump was still moving water just fine. The actuator motor that transferred the water from top to bottom was the only part that had failed. He trimmed the plastic disc so that water would enter both the upper and lower spray arms simultaneously, and told us that he would order a new pump. Sure enough, his jury-rigged repair worked great, and we were washing dishes once again, albeit a little less efficiently.

Dishwasher Repairs Completed!

The next week, Josh returned to complete our repair. A new pump assembly was installed in our dishwasher in short order. As expected, our dishwasher actually started working more quietly and the dishes were much cleaner than before. Josh left us some detergent samples, and our bill was reasonable and way better than buying a new dishwasher. Once again, River City Appliance had fixed our appliance and treated us right!