The Saga of Hubby and the Dishwasher

Part One
About a decade ago, my friend R was redoing his kitchen, and we bought his dishwasher from him for $100. It had served R well for about ten years already, but it's grinder was no longer functioning, and R and his wife C were upgrading. Our old dishwasher, going on twenty, was noisy, didn't hold much, and had only the top and bottom sprayers, not like R's newer model which had a third sprayer arm in between the two levels.

This was in the days when we had 3 kids at home, 2 of whom were mildly cooperative, and 1 of whom was not particularly. We explained rinsing, we demonstrated scraping, at least once a week. Every second week the holes in one of the arms would plug up and I'd go at it with tweezers and get something huge out - usually the clipped-off corner of a milk bag, or the plastice tie used to hold bread bags closed. Large seeds, string, entire pieces of saran wrap... There seemed to be precious little cooperation from the crew concerning getting the crap off the plates before putting them in the dishwasher.

But the dishwasher was quiet - for it's time - and it had electronic controls and adjustable height on the top rack, and we were thrilled to have it.

Well, a couple of months ago, Hubby reported that it was making an awful grinding noise. He knew he should have dug it out, opened it up and cleaned it out, but he was dreading doing that, so he let it make it's noise, till one day, predictably, it quit altogether.

The last time I spent the night at Hubby's was, in fact, the evening of the very day it had quit. So the next morning began with the attempt to clean out the dishwasher and see if he could get it running again. I yawned and scratched and padded to the kitchen only to see both racks of (dirty) dishes sitting on the counters, with Hubby on his knees surrounded by his drill and various other tools, holding a flashlight in his mouth while straining to reach the innards of the machine.

A couple of hours later, the first-aid attempt having failed, the work began in earnest to disconnect the hoses, turn off the power, remove the trim from the countertop so he could slide the dishwasher out of its hole and lay it on its back. Whereupon he began to pull out the motor so he could then lay it on the diningroom table and open it up. All sorts of fiddling and lubing went on. I went home. I received a report two days later that he had rebuilt the motor, re-inserted it into the dishwasher, re-attached the plumbing and the electricity, righted the machine and put it back in place, only to discover that it was toast.

Part Two
So, Hubby's brother had had an accident with HIS dishwasher - a very expensive, hoity-toity dishwasher. There had been water leaking on Brother's counter, which had leaked into the electronic controls of his upscale machine and fried the electronics. Two weeks after Hubby's dishwasher had first been laid on its back, Hubby picked up the fried dishwasher from his Brother and hauled it home to see if he could repair it.

Hubby hunted online and found that the fried controls for this very posh brand was a common complaint. Now, he COULD have ordered a new control box for it, for around $400, but he opted instead to order a $24 controller and attempt to program and wire it himself.

This would also entail, should he prove successful, cutting through the face of the machine, as the new controller was a different size and shape than the one that came with it.

Hey, Hubby is a real do-it-yourself-er! This held no fears for him!

Then he discovered he needed an electronic clock mechanism as well, and had to wait for that to arrive. That's so he didn't have to tell the computer chip to do forty million nanoseconds per cycle. A clock meant all he had to tell it was "wash ten minutes, then rinse." Much easier than coding nanoseconds. He got the controller to display "Good Morning Deb" successfully and was thoroughly enjoying tinkering with his new toy.

And in the meantime, his hands were getting nice and soft, too!

(Still no cooperation from the other member of the family, who refused to stick his hands in the sink.)

Oh, and so now there were TWO dishwashers apart in the kitchen/dining/livingroom, and the upper dishwasher rack was being used to hold the hand-washed dishes on top of the diningroom table.

Part Three
Hubby went to Future Shop's scratch-and-dent section, looking for something else, and guess what? There was a brand-new dishwasher - same Exclusive Brand as Brother's - on sale for $400! It had been returned by a customer. So he bought it. (This was a telltale sign that even Hubby was beginning to tire of the Dishwasher Marathon.)

He got the other dishwashers out of the way. He moved the plumbing, got everything attached, rolled his new baby into place.

It didn't work.

Apparently, the controller was fried.

However, this time, it was under warranty.

So today the technician came and fiddled and poked and got it partly working, then realized it was never going to succeed and ordered a new controller.

So, it'll be a couple of weeks...