Circuitry failure!

About week ago I came to the dishwasher expecting it to be complete with a wash and saw that it was flashing: ER Clean S Washing Drying

The manual was quite adamant that such an error message meant "Call Frigidaire now". It was a holiday weekend, so I had to wait until Tuesday morning. I did some searching online and found this webpage that suggested that the error was related to steam damage to the main circuit board.

When the service people came on Wednesday (Impressive turnaround) they told me:

1. Not only was the circuit board bad but so was the touch panel.
2. Steam probably was the issue.
3. They would need to order parts
4. I was out of luck in getting the machine to work until the parts come in.

Not surprisingly, upon hearing that I had $250 in parts needed for a $500 dishwasher that has already had $30 in parts replaced (not including all the service fees), I called back Frigidaire to ask about getting a replacement.

They told me that I need to have one of the following:

1. Three major failures.
2. The service people determine that repairs are not cost effective (that's the one I'm shooting for)

We're 8 weeks away from the end of our warranty, so naturally I am a little concerned. After pushing them they decided to consider it to be replaced. I find out tomorrow whether Frigidaire decided to "lemon" my dishwasher.

In the meantime while I wait for their verdict, in the next post I'll expand on this post and explain why potential Frigidaire dishwasher buyers should beware.

Steam Problems

So if you are reading my Frigidaire dishwasher blog entries in order, you know that I purchased a Frigidaire FDBB4365FC3 dishwasher which experienced leaks and eventually died.

After two service visits to replace gaskets that caused the leaks, the problems appeared to die down with the dishwasher. I say "appeared to" because in hindsight some of the new problems we experienced should have served as a warning about a serious design flaw, which I'll explain briefly below.

After the gaskets and leaks had been repaired, we noticed that steam was more prone to escaping out of the top of the dishwasher. By design it is supposed to come out of tiny vents on the side of the door (See attached picture). Unfortunately, like many kitchens, the dishwasher door is flush with adjacent cabinets, so the vents have very little room to do their job.

Steam started to affect the underneath of our (admittedly cheap) kitchen counter. The counter blistered because of the steam - something that it had never done during the previous 15 years with the original dishwasher.

We decided to be careful to allow the dishwasher to cool before opening the door (mistakenly thinking steam was escaping when the door was opened) and thought nothing of it until May 2009.