Hey guys,

This dishwasher was installed just prior to us buying the house so it's probably about 9 years old. It's a nice dishwasher and has always worked well but lately it has not been cleaning well at all, and these last couple weeks it's reached the point of being unacceptable.

It started off where we'd get a bit of grime on the top of any cups on the top shelfs, then the glasses started to get a milky look to them. Now it's at the point where it isn't cleaning anything decently at all.

I had bought a bottle of CLR to run through it, although all the jets looked clear on the arm and when I was about to dump it in I noticed some white sludge (soap?) along the bottom where I assume the water drains.

http://img.photobucket.c.../twitch1977/IMG_9057.jpg
http://img.photobucket.c.../twitch1977/IMG_9058.jpg

What you see there is only a sample of the plugged jets, there seems to be plugging intermittently at least all the way along the front half, I'd assume in back as well but I can't really see there.

What you see dug out is from me digging around with a toothpick, lots of the holes seem to be plugged or plugging.

I guess my question is; is this a cause or a symptom? Should I just clean it out and run a few cycles and it'll be good or is there a deeper issue here? I saw some threads about a plugged screen somewhere that might cause that only I'm not sure where to locate that screen on my model.

It's our anniversary this weekend and we were hoping to buy a new tv for the failing one in the bedroom but I guess if it's a dishwasher problem we're probably going to be stuck buying that instead. :P

Anyways any help would be very appreciated!
T

Edit: The arm at the bottom seems to be turning at least when I stopped the cycle and opened the door it was in a different spot every time. Also I'm pretty sure the heating coil is working fine since the dishes are still too hot to touch at the end of a cycle.

Thank you for your advice and I'm going to follow those directions in that post and run through it a few times starting tonight.

Just to be clear though in the close up picture what you're seeing is a very mushy substance that I take to be soap build-up, maybe I'm mistaken, I always thought calcium buildup was very hard.

In the close up picture all of what you see including the stuff on the upper lip is a very soft sludge that could be wiped away if I could get in there better to clean it. (I tried to get in best I could after those pictures were taken.)

I did some more looking last night and it turns out the top sprayer arm isn't turning at all for the top rack, I'm going to try and take it off completely and soak it overnight in vinegar or CLR.

Thanks again for your help, I hope the vinegar does the trick!
Kurt

I can't thank you enough for the advice on this. I sprayed the upper spinning arm with CLR, lots of the holes were clogged, then let it soak in about 1/2 vinegar 1/2 water bath last night and today there are tons of flecks of calcium (I assume) in the water and lots of the holes are cleared up and I was able to easily clean out the others.

It's a little harder to see how the progress is with the water/vinegar inside the dishwasher itself but I assume progress is being made there. I'm going to flush it tonight and let it run a cycle through and hope the hot water blasts some more of the gunk down the drain, then I'll do another round of vinegar tomorrow.