Guide to my repair of an Electrolux ESL63010 / 91153901107 dishwasher which started to continuously drain as soon as the wash cycle began.
My dishwasher (Electrolux ESL63010 / 91153901107) started to continuously/constantly drain when attempting to start a wash cycle. The wash cycle never completes as the drainage pump appears to run until it is powered off. When the dishwasher door was opened to investigate, the status lights were flashing indicating something was wrong.
Our integrated dishwasher is about 10 years old and is used daily - I was anticipating that it would have to be replaced due to the fault but wanted to investigate further to see if it could be fixed before writing it off.
From reading manuals and online resources, the symptoms suggested a leak catching tray at the bottom of the dishwasher was flooded and therefore appliance would need to be removed, drained and leak investigated/fixed. Since the nature of the fault was not a failed pump (costly to replace), it made sense to attempt to fix.
I have published this blog post as it may help others in a similar situation as you may be able to save money and time in having to source, buy and install a replacement. In addition, may help reduce the amount of white goods going to landfill.
Section 1- Removing the Dishwasher from the Kitchen Unit
You will need
- Spanner (Size TBC)
- Screwdriver (Phillips +)
Useful items
Steps
- IMPORTANT STEP - Turn off the appliance by the mains switch. Water and electricity is a dangerous combination so double check there is no electrical flow to the dishwasher by hitting the power button on the appliance to ensure the power light no longer turns on. Disable other plug sockets near by as there may be a risk of water leaking from the dishwasher or hoses. I kept the Dishwasher plugged in but powered off at the mains as white goods can often retain an electrical charge in capacitors. Having the ground connection in place can also help protect electrical components in the device.
- Disable the water feed valve and disconnect - Drain as much excess water from the hose
- Opened the dishwasher door
- Remove dirty dishes - you certainly miss a working dishwasher when you have to wash all those dirty dishes by hand!
- Removed the bottom and top dishwasher trays. The top tray has a latch at the end of the rollers that should flip to allow the tray to easily slide out (YouTube).
- Unscrew the mounting screws - with the dishwasher door open, I could see a metal mounting plate at the top corners of the dishwasher where the screws were fastened to our kitchen unit.
[PIC] - Optional/Recommended - Before removing the unit, I removed as much water as possible from under the removable sieve/filter and water tank (unscrew the cap found inside the bottom of the dishwasher area). I did this by using a Syringe and Hose (Amazon) to extract the water - I happened to one to hand as part of a bike break bleeding kit - it also came in useful in a later stage for cleaning.
- Lower the dishwasher height adjustable feet. You will need a spanner for this and screwdriver for lowering the rear foot - effectively the reverse action of this YouTube installation video.
- Remove the dishwasher carefully from the kitchen unit - For our setup, once the above steps were done I was able to pull the dishwasher out from under the kitchen unit (carefully and frequently checking to ensure the power cable, waste pipe and water feed hose was not being stretched or getting caught as the unit was being moved).
Section 2 - Optional (Remove door front panel)
You may want to remove the your kitchen unit panel cover (make it lighter, opportunity to clean behind it, prevent scratching when moving or placing on it's side or re-assurance you can transfer it to a replacement dishwasher if it can't be fixed).
There were four screws in the dishwasher door that needed to be removed to release it - two of those screw holes are highlighted below: -
Section 3 - xxx
There is a polystyrene float which triggers the Anti-Flood switch at the bottom of the dishwasher that clicks when there is an build up of water on the bottom plastic tray (see picture below) - effectively the block of polystyrene float putting pressure on the Anti-flood/safety switch. In my case, there was a pool of water on the plastic tray caused by a leak - this was another set of water to drain from the appliance and was achieved by simply tipping the appliance slowly towards the rear left corner (ensure not to put too much pressure on the appliance legs).
I removed the bottom plastic drip tray by using a flat screwdriver to lever the plastic fastening tabs out of position as pictured below:-
The darker stain on the right of the drip tray (pictured above) suggested there may have been a slow leak on that side of the appliance.
There appeared to be a large build up of brown muck in the decalcifier unit. I suspected this may have been a build up of limescale or detergent. This area matched the footprint of the dark stain on the drip tray below.
Similarly, looking closely at the rubber hose ('Pipe Untion'), I noticed residue on the connector - similar hoses in the dishwasher looked in better condition.
I therefore removed the metal 'hose clamp' to allow me to detach and clean up the hose. Removal was done by pinching the metal lever springs together with a pair of pliers.
Next steps (Summary)
Clean rubber pipe ('Pipe Union') exterior gently using a metal brush and cloth. Cleaned the internal using a water bottle cleaning brush.
Clean gunk from the inside of the Decalcifier Unit by feeding through a long thin metal/nylon 'drinking straw cleaning' brush (Amazon).
I then rinsed the gunk by squirting water and a small mix of Limescale & Detergent Remover (Amazon) using my Syringe and tubing which was fed into the inlet of the unit. Warning - this is a dangerous/corrosive chemical so be very careful with this. The brush and water pressure seemed to dislodge some of the gunk here.
Reassemble the pipe
Reattach the plastic drip tray and then restore and reconnect the dishwasher.
Test (temp with no plastic bottom shelf to try and observe any leaks) - no more leaks occurred. Restore plastic shelf.
Clean the steam vent!
Useful Links
. The particular bearing I was after appears to be compatible with dryers from other brands which suggests this is a standard component. You can also get these on some other dryer spare/repair website, but they seemed to cost a little more.