Hesitant Handyman Repairs - Dishwasher replacement & Hiti's First Law of Home Improvement...
When we bought our home in 2015, it came with all of our kitchen appliances, in fairly good, working condition. Everything required some serious cleaning, but it all worked.
Our dishwasher was a Samsung. I know people who love them, and others who hate them. After two and a half years of it, I’d probably place my judgement on them as a sort of negative-leaning indifference. Dishwashers aren’t something I spent my time losing sleep over, I just drop my dishes in them and run it when it’s almost full. My main gripe from the outset is that the previous owner had rocked it ’til the wheels fell off, literally. The cheap plastic wheels on the lower rack weren’t held on especially well, to the point that two of the wheels were missing when we moved in, and we had more than one occasion where the remaining wheels tried to escape.
Couple that with the newfound challenges of an 18 month old baby who wants to push buttons on everything, whose height finally kicked over so that he can access the front panel of the dishwasher. Thankfully, Samsung included a child lock feature on the model we have, so he couldn’t run it without us noticing, but that didn’t stop him from getting scolded constantly over pushing the buttons as he’d walk through the kitchen.
Three weeks ago, Amanda and I were getting the dishwasher loaded up after dinner, and we went to turn it on, and…. nothing. The dishwasher had died. Neither of us were especially heartbroken over the situation, and it didn’t take Amanda long to identify what she was interested in for a replacement. What follows is my anecdotal experience with the replacement process, which falls somewhere between a lesson in learning from experience and a humorous recap of everything that went sideways.
Don’t be afraid to look for a bargain
After searching around and finding the best advertised price on it, we had a really poor customer experience with the retailer and didn’t buy it from them. Amanda and I were on our way to look at some other retailers to see what they could do when my father-in-law Tom called us. He’d contacted West Coast Appliance, who wound up beating the price on the dishwasher we’d decided on by almost $100.00, all we had to do was wait for my in-laws to bring it up for us. Lesson one to take away from this — talk to your local stores to see if they’re able to beat bigger competitors. Sometimes, you can find a smoking deal just by asking, and seriously–the worst they can do is say no.
We ultimately decided on a Bosch 500 Series (SHP865WD5N) in stainless steel to match the rest of the appliances. Bosch makes some of the quietest dishwashers on the market, and we’d heard a lot of good things about them from people who we’d talked to who had them. (UPDATE: The Home Depot now carries Bosch dishwashers! The most comparable to what we bought is here. The model number differs slightly, but it appears to be nearly identical to ours.)
Hiti’s First Law
Saturday morning, Tom and I went out to grab breakfast as well as some supplies–I wanted to replace the supply hose while we had the whole thing pulled apart, since I didn’t know how old the current one was, and I couldn’t find my Teflon tape despite knowing I have at least two rolls somewhere in the house. We walked out with two supply lines (I didn’t measure the old line before we left, so I grabbed the 60″ and 72″ to be safe, figuring the 48″ would be too short for sure) and a roll of tape, swung by Starbucks to pick up our order, and then went home.
It’s at this point that I want to introduce you to one of my father-in-law’s great insights into home improvement. It’s called “Hiti’s First Law of Home Improvement.”
“Any project requiring a trip to the hardware store will require at minimum three extra trips to the hardware store.”
You all may have heard something similar in your lifetime, but this principle is something I learned from Tom. Whenever I have a project that I need to get supplies for, I usually wind up making at least three trips. For those counting at home, this was trip #1.
After breakfast, we pulled the old unit and unpacked the new one, and upon a review of the installation instructions, we found that the installation required an L connector that would go between the dishwasher and the water supply hose. Which we hadn’t knowingly bought, so it was back to the hardware store. Trip #2.
As an amusing aside, the installation instructions cheerily advised us that they were intended for use by a “qualified installer” only. I’m not sure what constitutes a “qualified installer,” but suffice to say I imagine they probably show up for the job with all of the parts in hand ahead of time.
As I noted earlier we hadn’t knowingly bought the L connector because we hadn’t, so we purchased the connector and returned the 60″ hose during trip #2. We also picked up a wire strain relief, as further reading into my installation guide made me realize that we’d need one for the electrical junction box (More on this later).
We set out to begin making connections, and on opening the supply hose, we were greeted with a simultaneously pleasant and irritating surprise–the supply hose came with the brass connector that we’d made a separate trip out to buy. So when I say we didn’t knowingly purchase one, we had unwittingly purchased it and just hadn’t noticed on the packaging that it was included. At this point we knew we would eventually be meeting the three trip requirement to meet Hiti’s First Law.
We connected the supply line, checked for leaks (there were none!), then moved on to connecting the electrical. One thing that struck me on the Bosch vs. the Samsung that we’d just taken out was the difference in methodology for the electrical components. You see, the Samsung’s electrical was direct wired into the system–once opening the access panel on the front of the machine, the load, neutral, and ground were all connected into the system with wire nuts. Bosch, on the other hand, included an electrical junction box that needed to be installed outside of the dishwasher enclosure (Hello, hole saw!) and utilized screwed wire brackets over wire nuts. From the junction box, an electrical plug is inserted into the back of the dishwasher, which I’m assuming is proprietary to Bosch models and likely is intended to make it easier to replace your existing Bosch with a new Bosch later down the road (after all, who’s going to want to go to the trouble of rewiring it when you can just plug in a new one?) Once we got everything situated, we plugged the unit in and turned on the circuit. The machine fired up, no problem at all.
I feel like this is an appropriate moment to explain, the Samsung we removed from the kitchen’s data sheet indicated that the machine was exactly 33.9″ high, which the Bosch’s data sheet indicates is its absolute lowest setting. Given how snug the Samsung was when we got it out, I came into the situation fully expecting the Bosch to be similarly snug. This is, in fact, an understatement. The Bosch encountered some resistance due to a couple of pieces of metal barely catching the edge of our Formica counter tops. This wouldn’t have been as big of a deal if we’d been able to just push the machine in and be done with it, but this was not meant to be.
In most normal kitchen situations, there’s flooring underneath the dishwasher, the same as there is in the rest of the kitchen. When the prior owner replaced their flooring or dishwasher (I’m honestly not sure which, but I’m sure both were replaced prior to our buying the home), they left exposed subflooring under the dishwasher, leaving a 3/4″ drop inside of the cabinet, and the flooring extended just enough that the new machine tilted at an angle when inserted, making the door catch against the lip of the counter.
We pulled it back out, knowing it needs to be level, and I cut a scrap of 3/4″ plywood to fit the hole and even things out (Replacing the floor isn’t really in the budget on this project, so we make due). Unfortunately, the tilt was also what allowed the machine past the lip of the dishwasher, so we were being defeated by a 1/8″ strip of Formica.
It’s at this point that we’re forced to get creative. My wife wants this dishwasher to fit. I want to get this installation over with so we can go on about our day. My father-in-law then makes a suggestion.
“Go get your belt sander.”
Laine’s Second Law
Once we’d slid the machine into place, I went ahead and attached the drain hose to our garbage disposal. While I worked on it, I nudged the drain line coming out of the disposal, which dropped some water on me. Upon closer examination, the elbow from the disposal to the drain had broken off.
It’s at this point in the story that I’d like to introduce Laine’s Second Law of Home Improvement, a thesis I’ve developed after a few projects around the house.
“When one project is nearly completed, a second, quasi-related project will reveal itself.”
I couldn’t just leave this alone, since the water from our sink and our dishwasher would be flowing out this very pipe, so we went back to the hardware store to fulfill Hiti’s first law. We marched back to the plumbing aisle and snagged a new elbow after making sure that it was the appropriate vertical length.
If you read the last paragraph and noticed that I only mentioned the vertical length, you may have asked yourself “What about horizontal length?” And really, you would probably be good in asking yourself that questions. I, on the other hand, did not ask myself that question. Instead, I went with the hardware store guy to the plumbing section, he handed me an elbow labelled for use with Insinkerator garbage disposals, and when I reached home, I realized that somewhere along the line, Insinkerator or someone changed the standard elbow pipe size exiting their disposals, and the replacement pipe I’d purchased came up half an inch short of the disposal. I also realized that I’d forgotten to take the extra dishwasher connector back during trip #3, so a trip #4 was required.
We went back, found out that the elbow we had was supposedly a one-size fits all item, so there weren’t varying sizes of it on hand. We wound up purchasing a pair of pipes that could be cut to fit the void left by our broken elbow joint, and went home to complete the repair to the drain line so we could fire up the new dishwasher to make sure everything was working. And, to our great relief, everything was working, and we no longer have to hand wash everything.
Initial thoughts on the Bosch 500 Series Dishwasher
We’ve not yet run a full load of dishes through it–as we get more time with it, I’ll update my review to give you more of a pros-cons likes-dislikes about the machine.
- What I first note about this machine is how quiet it is. Once we’d finished connecting it and ran a quick cycle just to make sure it was running, I couldn’t initially tell that it was on. I’m sure you’ve heard people say stuff like that about a machine before, but seriously–my fridge was actually making more noise. I kept questioning whether or not it was working until I finally heard water draining from it for the first time.
- I really like the ability to adjust the height of the middle rack–it’s incredibly useful for bring able to spread some mid-sized items out that previously could only go on the lower rack because of the distance between the top of the tub and the first rack.
- Buttons on top, tucked underneath the counter where my toddler can’t see them? Clearly a win.
- Because of how quiet it is, Bosch put a light on the bottom that will light up while the dishwasher is running. Y’know, for those of us who run around questioning if they even turned the machine on correctly.
