Replace, replace, replace! If your current machine is 20 years old it is inefficient in both how it washes and the electricity and water that it uses.
It is already plumbed for water and electrical hook up, installation should not be expensive.
We were in much the same boat 18 months ago…our current dishwasher had finally got to the point where it wasn’t cleaning our dishes anymore.
Prices have probably jumped a bunch since then, but we found a Maytag on sale at Menard’s for less that 600 bucks. It took me about 90 minutes to remove the old one and install the new one. It’s MUCH quieter and does a good job.
I disagree. I’ve done it twice now and, absent any unusual circumstances*, it’s really not that hard for anyone with average home handyman skills.
There are only three things to disconnect/connect when uninstalling/installing dishwashers: electricity, water supply, and drain water. With a 25-year-old unit, you should definitely use new water hoses, but they generally come with the new unit, or are offered as a kit along with the purchase.
I was about to describe the process in detail, but there’s no shortage of videos showing the steps, so I’ll save myself the typing. If you feel comfortable handling the tasks shown in the videos, go ahead and replace it.
As for hauling away the old one, most sellers will do that for a nominal fee, $25 for our last one, a few weeks ago.
I’ll second the recommendations of Bosch dishwashers.
*When our 50-year-old DW died a few weeks ago, I found to my surprise that its water supply line was not the usual flexible hose, but a copper pipe hard-plumbed up through the floor from the basement. I had to call a plumber to remove it and install a new valve and connection for a standard supply hose. But I installed the new DW myself.
I think we’re just looking at it from a different perspective. I’ve installed dishwashers at least twice in my own homes, and another time helped a friend uninstall and install a new one in his. I guess what I wasn’t clear on is that when one gets older, physical labour gets more difficult. If I’m down on the floor working on plumbing, I need something to support myself just to be able to get up again. It can be correspondingly more difficult to contort oneself into the necessary positions to attack plumbing fixtures. So it’s not that it’s all that incredibly difficult to install a new dishwasher, it’s that at some point you just say fuck it, let someone else do it all, and then you have to figure in the cost of that.
I was shocked by how much quieter new dishwashers are. Replace.
Yeah, if repairs are approaching or passing 50% of replacement value, definitely time for a new dishwasher.
I asked for similar dishwasher advice on the SDMB maybe 6 months ago when ours was on its last legs, got a rec for Bosch, and the Bosch dishwasher we got has been cleaning dishes like a champ. Big thumbs-up for Bosch.
I don’t know that I would replace the dishwasher. It works. Its capacity is reduced by 5 - 10%. That’s not a lot. I’d wait until it actually needed replacing. The amount of water and electricity saved with a current model isn’t going to offset the $1000 price mentioned in the OP.
I get that. I’m 66, and this last install was more complicated and a little trickier than expected. We can just let the OP decide if the skills/effort/expense are all worth it.
Oh, yes. Definitely this. Our new Bosch is not even the quietest model in their line, and it’s vastly quieter than the ancient one it replaced. It’s hard to imagine how it could be much quieter.
One reason modern dishwashers are so quiet is that they take much longer to wash the dishes. Rather than try to blast the food away as quickly as possible, the cleaning cycle has many stages where it wets the dishes and then just lets them soak. This allows the water to soften the food so it comes off easier. Less pressure is needed to ensure the dishes are cleaned, so less noise is produced.
If you often find yourself delaying starting the cycle until you’re gone because you don’t want to hear it while you’re nearby, a new dishwasher may be worthwhile. You can have it running and it’s quiet enough that you can still do stuff nearby like watch TV, eat dinner, etc.
We replaced out 11-year old Maytag dishwasher about a month ago. We knew what was wrong with it. However, the cost of the single part and repair was more than the cost of a new dishwasher.
Here’s what we learned:
- Home major appliances have a working life of about ten years. Any time more than that is borrowed time.
- Buy the most basic dishwasher to meet your needs. Forget the extra crap; they will fail relatively soon.
- Whirlpool has about 65 percent of the US market. Whirlpool is Whirlpool, Maytag, Kenmore, Jenn-Aire, KitchenAid, and Amana.
- Repair techs do not like foreign-made appliances at the moment. Parts takes months to never to arrive. They specifically do not like two foreign made appliance companies because they are not getting paid for warranty work.
Our last dishwasher (Whirlpool) had 4 items fail less than 3.5 years after buying it. Our current dishwasher (Miele), due to some Covid shenanigans was close to $2k. I plan on being buried with it.
On the other hand, if you ever find yourself thinking, “damn, the dishwasher is still running, I should have washed that utensil by hand so I could use it right now”, or if you like to run the dishwasher during your party so you will get more of the dishes done today, and won’t have a house full of dirty dishes overnight, waiting for the next load, consider keep the one you have. Modern dishwashers take something like 2.5 hours to run a load. It’s a huge pain if you have more than a load, or if you have some unique items that you’d like to put in the dishwasher but that you also want to use to prepare your next meal.
The new ones seem to be fine for people who run the dishwasher over night, and don’t ever use it at other times.
Don’t a lot of the new models also have a much shorter (time) cycle ?
I know ours does.
Looks like quite a few do:
Interesting. A quick cycle that requires a pre wash and recently soiled dishes or it doesn’t work… Even so, it might be good enough for the times we most hate the longer cycle time.
I guess I’m not the only consumer who has gotten frustrated with modern dishwashers.
(Once upon a time we had a dishwasher that did a pretty good job in about 40 minutes. Every machine since then had taken longer, and hasn’t washed any better. The latest is quiet, though.)
One point I don’t think has been made - the OP started talking about the racks. If the racks matter that much, pay attention to the racks in any new washer considered. We bought a Bosch and I NEVER cared for how our dishes fit in the racks.
20 years ago when oversized plates were in, my parents gave me a set of dishes as my housewarming gift. While I appreciated the gift (I picked them out), the buggers never fit the dishwasher. I donated them to some college students moving out of the dorms and bought myself a new set.
Same here. We probably use about 10% of the options available on our appliances. We just use the “Normal” setting and I think it runs 30 minutes. It’s really hard to tell because you can’t hear it unless you are in the kitchen. Same with clothes washer. Always use the 'Light" setting, runs about 20 minutes. Dryer I just use the timer on, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on load size.
I’m with the buy a new one crowd. No way would I spend $600 on a 20 year old appliance.
Another recommendation for Bosch. As said by others, it’s much quieter than the one we used to have. It also gets the dishes cleaner. Assuming it’s got rinse aid in the reservoir, it takes 2 hrs, 9 mins for a cycle. We generally start it before we go to bed.
The model we bought has a stainless steel interior. It does not have a heating element. Dishes are fully dry when we open it in the morning. Whenever we run it during the day, the dishes are as dry as they were with our old dishwasher that did have a heating element.
A big plus to no heating element is that we can ignore “top shelf dishwasher safe” instructions and put the article in wherever it fits best.