Dishwasher flood

Sep 06, 2025 Last reply: 11 months ago 4 Replies

Last night my six-year-old Hoover dishwasher failed catastrophically, flooding the kitchen. Everyone had gone to bed, but fortunately my son came downstairs to get something and found it awash. Even though it hadn't been left running, water was flowing in the inlet and out the bottom.



I turned off the water tap and switched the power off at the mains, and we mopped it all up from the floor before going back to bed. This morning the floor had dried off but the bottom of the machine was still full of water.



Strangely, the user manual says there are two separate anti-flooding mechanisms; one on the inlet hose just next to the mains tap, and one internal one, presumably a float-based switch to activate the drain pump. Neither did a damn thing.


Possibly both mechanisms require the item to be fully on and not in standby or switched off a the plug.

The anti-flood device at the water inlet on both our dishwasher and washing machine is a normally closed valve which has to be activated to allow water into the machine. Maybe it jammed open when the machine was last run? - but I would have thought this would have been pretty obvious to anyone around when the cycle ended.

If water was flowing out 'at the bottom' then I assume the door wasn't fully closed. Maybe the float switch is mounted too high to be triggered when the water can flow out at the base of the door? (I assume it has to be mounted at a point which is higher than the water level achieved when in normal use.)

It can be a broken drain pump

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