Odd dishwasher fault

[Tim+]

What causes a dishwasher to stop mid cycle if it’s not a leak, not a pump failure, not a heater failure and not a power cut?

Our Fisher Paykel twin drawer dishwasher has twice paused after 100 minutes. Still has power, timer showing remains minutes of the program, hot water in bottom of machine. Just looks like it’s paused for some reason.

Just tried a short rinse program and all the pumps are working fine and it completed that program.

Brain failure? I can’t think of any simple electro-mechanical issue that could cause this.

Tim

[Theo]

Is it waiting for some sensor to give an expected reading before continuing? The sensor doesn't, so it stalls?

Friend of mine had a problem where the washing machine suddenly took 8 hours to do a programme. Turned out a visiting plumber had disconnected it from the cold water supply and mistakenly reconnected it to the hot: when they did a 30C cycle the machine would fill with 60C hot water and then wait until the water had cooled down to 30C before continuing with the programme.

Do you know what the cycle would normally do at 100 mins in?

Theo

[Tim+]

We’re normally asleep at that time. ;-). It’s a 162 minute “economy” cycle that heats the water less and pumps for longer. At 100 minutes I doubt it’s reached it’s rinse cycle point. There was certainly warm water in it this morning so the heater seems to be working. No evidence of a nighttime power cut (which we normally know about as the oven clock stops working).

Tim

[Brian Gaff]

Over filling and safety cut out? Brian

[Tim+]

Bit of an update.

I’ve checked the pump (by swapping the rotor from the second drawer) but that doesn’t make any difference.

There’s a time element to it’s failure. When it stops there are no error codes but the plate and brush symbols are blinking. During normal operation only the brush symbol blinks.

After having stopped for several minutes the machine gives three double beeps. At this point I can restart the machine but it only runs for a couple of minutes before stopping again.

I’m suspecting a control board issue which I guess I could test by swapping boards with the other drawer unless anyone has any other suggestion.

Tim

[wrights...]

The 'economy' setting on my dishwasher uses less water but significantly more electricity than any other programme.

Bill

[bert]

I had a similar problem with washing machine. Almost at the point of giving up and ordering a new one more in hope than anything else I checked the 13 amp plug and found it had overheated over the years and the fuse was virtually powder, Replaced plug, socket and fuse and it hasn't blinked since.

[Tim+]

Ours genuinely does seem to use less power. I used a power monitoring plug to check this. Whether the power monitor is right is another question.

Tim

[Tim+]

Definitely not the case here. It’s a “two drawer” machine (essentially two identical half sized machines stacked in a drawer arrangement). The lower machine works perfectly.

It started making odd beeps and pumping noises when it was supposedly turned off today and it wasn’t responding to button presses so I’ve taken the plunge and ordered a new control board for it. Hopefully it’ll be good for another 15 years. ;-)

Tim

[RJH]

That's ridiculous - you'd think some sort of compo was in order.

My Bosch dishwasher does claim to save electricity - but only about 20%, That's on a 5 hour programme, as opposed to the normal 2hrs20mins.