Just so you guys know, I wouldn’t bug you with this if customer service hadn’t reached an all new level of suckdom. Suckdom to the point it has made me wanna take measures into my own hands, unless I am persuaded to be patient and wait for a professional…
I had a handy man instal a brand new Frigidaire dishwasher for me. I do a load and the water pooled up in the bottom and wouldn’t drain. I let one of my handymen know and he said he probably forgot to take some cap off of something or other…so he comes, takes it off and no luck…it STILL doesn’t drain. The original dude who installed it came back and fumbled with it and it still would not drain and started leaking out of the bottom left corner of the dishwasher door.
I’m not a fan of bacterial hotbeds in my kitchen while waiting for some schmuck in a Frigidaire Customer Care cubicle to get around to getting their plumber out.
I’m totally into trial and error at this point as I’d just like use of the dishwasher and to get rid of any kitchen critter breeding grounds…
take the damn drain line aloose from the garbage disposal (or kitchen sink drain) and stick it in a five-gallon bucket. Run the dishwasher. If, during the drain cycle, water does not come out, A) your dishwasher is fracked up, or B) the installer pinched the line (it is just plastic).
Okay, I unscrewed the hose from the garbage disposal, set it up to purge in a 5 gallon bucket…and walked away while the cycle did it’s thing…came back about 10 minutes later to water all over my floor (damn). But water IS draining out of the dishwasher now! Yay!!! So…now what? I set it up so it would drain in the bucket for the rinse, shop-vacced the water off the floor…so do I just put it back on the garbage disposal? But a little looser?
Make sure there isn’t a plug in your garbage disposal connection. If this is a replacement dishwasher, it is a safe bet that the plug has already been removed.
If the disposal connection is clear, check the hose routing. It’s very possible that the hose was kinked during installation, blocking the flow.
Finally, when you re-route and re-install the hose, it is a very good idea to route the hose such that a loop of it is above the level of the sink drain. This prevents water in your sink, from a clogged drain for instance, from siphoning back into the dishwasher. I know most dishwashers now have some device to prevent backflow, but devices fail and gravity doesn’t.
There may be a knockout plug in the back of the nostril on the disposal that the hose goes on to. Or perhaps the thing is clogged or something.
Shove a screwdriver in there and see if it stops, or shine a light in it if you can get your neck in that far.
If the plug hasn’t been knocked out, you can knock it out with a screwdriver and hammer. Unplug the disposal while you do this, and keep it unplugged while you reach in through the sink drain to fish the plastic plug out after the fact.
While disposals have a fitting to connect a dishwasher drain line, one must pop open the blank sealing that fitting. It may be plastic or a scored portion of the metal casting. As indicated, a screwdriver and hammer does the job, but take care to not eff up the disposal mounting to the sink, and also fish out the blank before using the disposal again.
You were right guys. I knocked a little black plastic disc free from the disposal, loaded the dishwasher and voila! You guys are life (and money) savers!
Thank you so much!
*still gonna write an angry letter to Frigidaire customer service for neglecting me and my dirty dishes!
The disposal scenario will forever be in my memory. Shortly after going into business, I was called to check out a dishwasher, and determined the pump to be shot. After replacing the pump, all was good for 3-4 days, after which I received an angry call from the customer, bitching me out for selling him a shitty pump, with threats of lawsuit, kicking my cats, and so forth.
A second visit showed a rather new looking disposal under the sink. I asked the customer when that was installed, and he said his brother had put it in a few days ago, because he wasn’t going to spend any more money on ripoff artists like me. After pointing out in the disposal instructions the need to pop out the blank, doing so, and testing the now functional dishwasher, I charged the sumbitch for another service call.
