A dishwasher seems like a no-fuss kitchen appliance. You put dirty dishes in, you get clean dishes out: simple, right? Actually, your dishwasher should be cleaned regularly, and if it isn’t properly maintained, it could stop cleaning your dishes. (Or just stop working all together. Hopefully if that happens, you have home warranty coverage.) So what happens if you’re reading this article and you realized you haven’t cleaned your dishwasher … ever? Or maybe you’ve noticed that your dishes just aren’t getting clean. Not to worry! In this article Landmark Home Warranty will teach you how to deep clean your dishwasher, and how to maintain it afterward. We’ll also walk you through some of the repairs you might have to make if your dishes still aren’t getting clean after a good deep clean. Let’s get started!
If you want to know how your dishwasher works, go to our next post.
How to Deep Clean your Dishwasher
Have you noticed your dishes aren’t coming out as sparkly clean as they used to? There’s a good chance that you just need to clean it! Unfortunately, a dishwasher isn't self cleaning.
Clean the Sprayer Arms
Your sprayer arms in your dishwasher can get clogged with food particles if you don’t regularly clean your filter and your dishwasher. It’s fairly simple to clean them.
1. First, remove the upper and lower racks.
Most dishwasher models have the lower rack just lift out. The upper rack is usually held on by endcaps. These can easily be removed by pushing in ends and pulling out.
2. Remove the upper sprayer arms.
Some models' sprayer arms simply snap off, while others require you to unscrew a cap. Make sure you know which one is which before pulling off the upper sprayer arms. This dishwasher had a sprayer arm on the top that popped off.
3. Clean the sprayer arm's holes with a toothpick
This sprayer arm had a lot of plastic inside of the holes that was reducing its water pressure. This must have been from tablet wrappings that hadn't altogether disintegrated.
Clean the Filter
When your sprayer arms spray water on your dirty dishes, they dislodge food particles that are removed from the water intake by a filter. When this filter isn’t cleaned it can push food particles into the sprayer arms, reducing cleaning efficiency. The best way to combat this is to remove and clean the filter. For some models, you have to remove the filter casing to get to the bottom sprayer arm too.
Most models will require you to use a Torx Head screwdriver to remove the filter's casing.