Maytag dishwasher will not drain

If you are looking up maytag dishwasher not draining, this is the page: dishwasher will not drain, what it usually turns out to be, and the check worth doing before anybody is called out in Miami.

Twenty minutes, no tools

Scoop the standing water out with a cup and a sponge so you can see the base of the tub. Twist out the filter — it lifts and turns by hand and it is meant to be cleaned regularly, which almost nobody does. Underneath it look for glass, a fruit sticker, or the corner of a dishwasher tablet wrapper. Then check the sink: if the disposal was replaced at any point, its dishwasher inlet has a plug that has to be knocked out, and a plug left in blocks the machine entirely. Finally, run the disposal for thirty seconds — a drain shared with a full disposal backs up into the dishwasher rather than down the pipe.

What it usually means, by the kind of machine

One complaint, several machines. This maker still sells a top-load washer with an agitator alongside one without, a front-loader, and a stacked pair, and it sells the same oven as a range and as a wall unit in gas and in electric. The behavior you can describe is identical on all of them; the first hour of the repair is not. A front-load washer has a drain filter the owner can open and a top-loader has nothing to reach from the front, and that single difference decides how the same afternoon goes.

• Front control — The status lights across the front are the whole language on these, and a repeating flash is a message rather than a decoration. Count the flashes and the pauses before you clear it.
• Top control — The display is hidden when the door is shut, so you may only see the report at the moment the cycle ends. Open the door promptly if you are trying to catch it.

The plumbing before the appliance

A dishwasher drains into the same pipe as the kitchen sink, and about a third of the time the machine is reporting the state of that pipe rather than its own. That is why the sink, the disposal and the hose loop are checked before a pump is opened up — it is quicker, it is free, and often it is the answer. If you have had any plumbing work done in the kitchen recently, say so when you book; it moves those checks to the top of the list.

What the filter is for

These machines were designed with a filter the owner takes out and rinses, and the manuals say as much. In practice it gets cleaned when something goes wrong. Doing it every couple of months takes five minutes and it prevents most of the drain calls we see on this badge, along with a good share of the poor-cleaning ones.