Me, the Handywoman

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You: What did you do today?
Me: The usual,... Got up, got the kids to school, went to institute, took apart the dishwasher, ate lunch...
You: You took apart your dishwasher?
Me: Yeah.
You: Why on earth would you do that?????

Well, it's like this. Our clothes dryer isn't the only appliance in the house that we've had issues with. A couple weeks ago we had a friend in our ward come over and look at our hot water heater to figure out why we've only been getting about 1 1/2 showers worth of hot water lately. He replaced a pipe, and it's working great now, but he also said something like the heater had a six year warranty and it's about twelve years old now, so we'll probably need to think about replacing it some time soon.

This was how the dishes looked AFTER the wash cycle!
The dishwasher has also had issues. It's only about three years old (how I know), but I go back and forth between washing things in the dishwasher because it's easier, and then washing everything by hand for a few days because the things in the dishwasher didn't seem to get clean. This morning I opened the dishwasher to unload it only to discover that nothing on the top rack looked like it was any cleaner than it had been when it went in! After some experimenting, I realized that when the dishwasher was running, it sounded like water was "dribbling" rather than spraying, and further, items on the top rack were steamy, but not actually getting wet at all. Hence the desire to take apart the dishwasher - to figure out what was going on.

Eeeew! Gross!!!!!
I have to say I'm very grateful for the internet. Without it, I don't know if I'd even be able to take out the top rack, let alone figure out how to do other things. I managed to disassemble it enough that I could clean the spray bars, make sure the water supply tube was clear, and even clear much of the gunk out of the drain (including four or five twist ties... I wonder how they got in there?) Then I put everything back together and let it run again.

Did all this help anything? Besides pulling all the gunk from the drain, I didn't uncover any major blockages. I still have no idea why the water hadn't seemed to be getting to the top rack, so I don't know for sure yet, but I have high hopes. The good news is that it is running, and water isn't spilling out all over the floor... (Yay! I didn't break anything!) Water does seem to be hitting the top rack again. It even seems to be draining properly. I'll have to see what it does with a full load of dirty dishes. If it gets them clean, Yay! I fixed it. If not, I guess I'll have to go back to washing dishes by hand.

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