A few weeks ago we noticed a foul smell when we opened the door after running the dishwasher. I found some smelly dishwasher gunk built up where the door hinges are, and subsequently scrubbed every place I could access. There was quite a bit of gunk. I also rinsed it several times with vinegar and with baking soda, but the smell keeps getting worse.
Today I removed the hub cap and sprayer - the sprayer arm does not appear to be clogged. There are several screws preventing me from getting below the strainer. When I stuck my head in there, the smell was really bad. Our repair guy charges $70 just to show up, and I can’t get any more detail about what the charges will be. What can I do?!?
Gene, thanks so much for helping me out. The air gap goes to the top of the sink. We pulled off the cap, and tried pouring some water down it, but it doesn’t drain unless we ram a long wire down there.
Remove the toe panel and check for a died animals under the dishwasher.
Disassemble the top of the pump as described in the tech sheets. If there is nothing wrong then remove the dishwasher from the cabinet and check the drain line from one end to another.
Yesterday afternoon my hubby and I bravely took apart the dishwasher. Bottom line, there was soft tan stinky crud all over in there - the sprayer arm, strainer, all the parts we could access had gunk built up wherever there was something to cling to. We cleaned it all off and got it back together and working (yea!). But the smell is not completely gone.
Is it normal for a dishwasher to build up crud, or does this point to something not working right? Could there still be crud in the hoses that we can get at? Or will the smell keep getting better now that we’ve cleaned it out?
By the way, we don’t leave a lot of food particles on our dishes, but we don’t pre-wash them either.
I will try the white vinegar rinse, but the dishwasher cleans well, and there has never been any white deposit left on the glasses. We have a water softener that works real well. We use Electrasol, the same detergent for 12 years and nothing ever smelled before this year.
It smells like boiled celery.
Thanks for your help, but unless you can think of someplace we haven’t cleaned out that we can still try, we’re thinking a new Whirlpool ($350) is a better bet than a service call ($?).
We’ve had this ‘new’ water softener not quite as long as we’ve had the dishwasher, 4 or 5 years. And the water is not hard.
The phosporous in the Electrasol is lower than what your post recommended. Can that result in a build-up of tan gunk everywhere except on the clean dishes?
Yesterday my husband replaced the airgap section, and the bad smell completely disappeared. I won’t go into how many other plumbing problems ensued (it was one of those days), but at least our dishwasher doesn’t smell like garbage anymore!
Gene, thanks for trying to help. Having an experienced person offering ideas and support made a big difference, and I really appreciate it.
