What to do if your dishwasher freezes

Dishwasher freezing is a fairly common occurrence and does not necessarily indicate a problem. Often the dishwasher freezes in the first or last minute as a result of a local failure, but sometimes it is a symptom of a serious problem that needs to be localized and repaired. Let's look at the reasons why a dishwasher may start to freeze, how to find the cause of the freeze, and how to quickly fix it yourself.

Why does the malfunction occur?

If the dishwasher suddenly freezes for no reason, it is quite difficult to determine the cause of the problem. Often, with such a problem, the machine does not display system errors., which means you will have to intuitively limit the range of possible problems.

1. If a freeze occurs in the first three minutes after starting the program, but the water has not yet had time to fill, it may be the heating element.
2. If the machine freezes in the first 15-20 minutes, you should pay attention to the control module. This is usually how electronics behave. At the same time, the machine does not produce any errors.
3. Trivial reasons can also manifest themselves: overloading the machine with dishes, a skewed body, a power failure, a blockage in the sewer.

The list of possible breakdowns can be much wider. The leakage protection sensor may work, the pump, inlet valve or circulation pump may break. But we exclude these reasons, since when they occur, the dishwasher’s self-diagnosis system reacts, issuing one or another error code. In our case, the dishwasher freezing is not accompanied by the appearance of an error code; based on this fact, we limit the range of possible malfunctions.

It is not so rare that the cause of such a malfunction is serious damage to the PMM control module.

Urgent actions

The reasons for the breakdown are, of course, good, but what should the user do in the first minutes after he discovers that his “home assistant” has frozen? He won’t immediately try to disassemble the dishwasher with a multimeter at the ready in order to check the serviceability of the heating element. And there’s no need to go anywhere, at least not right away.

First, try resetting your dishwasher. The advice, of course, is banal, but it helps in about 1/3 of cases, it would be foolish to ignore it. You should reboot correctly:

• turn off the machine using the button;
• disconnect the power cord plug from the socket;
• wait for 30 seconds;
• turn on the dishwasher again and try to start it.

If rebooting helped, the likely culprit could be a power failure. To prevent failures from bothering your equipment in the future, it’s worth purchasing dishwasher stabilizer. If rebooting doesn’t help, let’s begin to figure it out. If your machine has been running for a long time, and you haven’t moved it, and it freezes in the middle of the program, it’s worth looking at how well the water goes down the drain. The machine’s self-diagnosis system may not recognize a banal blockage in the drain pipe and may freeze.

Let’s imagine that you purchased a machine recently and have been using it for no more than a month. Then the cause of freezing may be installation of the case out of level, with a significant difference. In fact, PMMs are not as sensitive to body distortions as washing machines. A washing machine with a misalignment of 4-5 degrees may stop working normally, but for a dishwasher a difference of 10-15 degrees can become critical.The solution to the problem is to level the machine body.

Well, you don’t need to discount the overload of baskets. If the dishwasher has a load sensor, it could easily trigger an overload. Then why didn’t the machine generate a system error? It's simple, some models of Bosch dishwashers produced in 2013-2014 had a similar defect in their load sensors. They worked without notifying the machine’s self-diagnosis system, putting the owners into a stupor. Such machines can freeze for no apparent reason, and then go and guess what happened.

Before opening the machine body, you should check everything possible. If the test results do not lead to results, internal diagnostics must be carried out.

Troubleshooting

Before we tell you how you can check the functionality of the likely culprits of the freeze, we consider it our duty to warn you: this is not an easy task and requires some skills in working with a multimeter. If you have never heard of this device, and have never been involved in diagnosing complex household appliances, entrust this work to a professional. At least you won't waste your time. If the machine is new and under warranty, then it’s better not to mess with it at all. Let this be a “headache” for the service center specialists.

If the warranty has expired, you should pay special attention to the heating element of the Electrolux dishwasher or any other brand. Perhaps it was the broken heating element that caused the mysterious freeze. What shall we do?

1. Turn off the water flowing into the dishwasher and turn off the appliance.
2. We disconnect all the hoses, and unplug the power cord from the outlet and wind it up.
3. Remove the fasteners holding the machine in the niche (for built-in PMMs).
4. Unscrew the screws holding the side walls of the case. Let's remove these walls.

In most dishwashers, through the side walls of the housing you can get to many parts, including the heating element.

5. We disconnect the wires from the heating element coil and check its resistance with a multimeter.
6. Using the same multimeter, we check the heating element for breakdown.

If a malfunction is detected, the heating element must be replaced. The part can be ordered on the website of the company that manufactured your dishwasher. Let's assume that the heating element is in order, then the problem is most likely in the control module. To check electronics, it is not enough to have confidence in using a multimeter; you need more serious knowledge, and only a specialist can have it. If you suspect that it is the control module that has broken down, you need to call a technician, nothing can be done.

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