The dishwasher is the most self-sacrificing machine in the kitchen: it eats what the plates bring — seeds, labels, toothpicks, the occasional shard of a wine glass — and its most common diseases are simply that diet catching up with it. A remarkable share of the dishwasher complaints that reach the Wendell Ave practice end at the sump: the filter assembly and chopper cleared of debris, the drain loop checked, and a machine everyone had written off running its next cycle like a young one. Those visits close at the from-price with the parts line still blank.
When the fault is genuinely mechanical, the differential stays orderly. Drain pumps and wash pumps announce themselves differently under load; inlet valves weep or stick; float switches lie; door latches and their microswitches gate everything the way a dryer's door switch does. Heating elements fail the drying stage long before anyone suspects them, and control boards — the expensive suspect — get accused last, after measurement, never first. The exam walks the chain in probability order because the links differ in price tenfold.
South Kitsap adds its usual footnotes. Hard well water east and south of town scales spray arms and valves into early old age, so the water question opens every rural dishwasher chart. And the air-gap-and-loop plumbing under local sinks — installed by three generations of different hands — causes a steady trickle of 'dishwasher' complaints that are really drain complaints; when the finding belongs to the plumbing rather than the appliance, the chart says so honestly and refers accordingly.
