Fish bones???
Written: Mar 17 '04
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Pros: Reasonably quiet and washes the dishes. I've no complaints about "the" Maytag repairman.
Cons: White external finish shows dirt and the utensil containers are too small.
The Bottom Line: We'll see how well it holds up, but so far so good.
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| plilikoi's Full Review: Maytag MDB9150A 24 in. Built-in Dishwasher |
~~ My previous experience with dishwashers ~~
My wife and I have been married 15 years now; it seems like forever. That's not a bad thing :-) We've always had a dishwasher. Our first was a Whirlpool, then we an inherited a General Electric in our second house.
The Whirlpool was okay, although every now and then I'd have to stick my hand under the bottom of the dishwasher to free the fan on the motor -- this kept sticking and then the dishwasher wouldn't run. The service man taught me this trick when it was still under warranty. Consequently I left the bottom access panel off all the time.
I always disliked the General Electric dishwasher. Quite a few of the tines (the metal prongs) on the racks had rusted and broken off, and the ones that were left continued breaking off. Then it started leaving specks of soap powder on the dishes or, with liquid detergent, it would leave a dull scum on glasses. The General Electric microwave on top of the range that faced the dishwasher kept breaking; the control board would burn out. As a result of these two bad experiences I'll never purchase another General Electric product. Not even their toasters work well.
I checked Epinions before buying another dishwasher. The Maytag MDB9150A and MDB9100A both seemed to be good bets, barring a couple of rants about the Maytag repairman. Since the 9150 had a stainless steel interior I thought that might be the better bet so that's the one I bought.
~~ The Maytag ~~
I removed the GE and installed the Maytag myself. This was easy. It's an under-counter dishwasher, of course. It's not meant to stand on its own four feet with top and sides exposed in all their naked glory. It should have been a piece of cake to install with my new GearWrenches, http://www.epinions.com/content_132452617860, but they weren't much help in this instance. I couldn't fit the ratcheting box end over the nuts because there was always a water hose in the way, so I had to beaver away the old fashioned way. Shucks!
The first thing we noticed was that the white finish shows every speck of dirt. I'd got some dirt on the door during installation. My wife cleaned this off and now we can see where she scrubbed the front panel as some of the paint isn't as glossy as the rest of the panel.
In order to open the door you have to grasp the underside of the top of the door exactly in the middle. You can see where the handle is, but the target area for your hand is quite small. This is poor design. Our previous dishwashers could be opened by grasping anywhere along the upper edge of the door. The external finish along the top of the door is some kind of mottled white plastic that retains every speck of dirt. This has the not-so-wonderful effect of concentrating dirty thumb prints in the middle of the door handle.
The door is so precariously balanced that it falls down if you open it even one inch. It would be better if the door was cantilevered so as to require it be opened at least 30 degrees before it falls down. This would allow you to open the door, add a few cups and/or glasses to the top rack and not have to bend down to pick up and close the door. It's subtleties like this that distinguish good from bad design.
The utensil containers are a bit on the small side. There are three of these. We moved them around wondering where on Earth we were supposed to put them. Finally having to resort to reading the instructions we learnt that two of them clip together and can be placed in this configuration on the bottom tray in front of the water tower. Each of the two halves has one (out of three) compartments that has a fold-down lid so you can hold down those plastic utensils that want to float away. The problem here is that the enclosed compartments aren't all that deep. However, they do have generous slots in their lids so that handles can poke through (if you can orient them correctly before closing the lid -- good luck!). The third utensil holder can be placed on the upper rack. It's designed to hold those larger odd-shaped utensils such as large knives, wooden spoons, etc.
This dishwasher has two racks. There's a latch on the right hand side of the upper rack that allows the upper rack to be latched in a higher than normal position. This allows more space for tall items in the bottom rack. The upper rack can even be removed entirely for an extra tall load. Even I prefer to wash such very large items in the sink, however.
There is considerable flexibility built into the racks. There are stem holders than can be rotated to lock stemmed glasses into place. The tines on the back of the lower rack can be dropped flat against the bottom of the rack. It remains to be seen how long these tines last before they start to rust and fall out, or perhaps this particular problem is confined to GE dishwashers.
There is the usual dual-compartment for dishwasher detergent and a separate compartment for rinse-aid.
There are multiple cycle options, but we have only used the regular cycle to date; in fact we almost only ever used the regular cycle on our previous dishwashers. Too many choices, too little time. Or, "So much time, so little to do". Who said that, anyone?
The dishwasher is fairly quiet, especially when it's not running, ha ha. Then it's very quiet. In use it's quieter than the GE and quieter than I remember the Whirlpool being, but it's not what I would call exceptionally quiet. It produces about the same noise level as our Panasonic microwave, http://www.epinions.com/content_32277630596, does when it's running. I did, however, notice a vibration-like noise that sounded like something was loose in the door panel. Indeed, pressing on the door stopped the noise. I removed the front panel and discovered that the sound proofing material behind the door panel was a large piece of cardboard, specially cut to fit, no less. Whoa! No wonder they tell you not to press on the door to push it into place when you're installing the dishwasher. Of course, I read this after I'd installed it, but no damage was done to the cardboard that I could see. The vibration noise appeared to be coming from the top of the door, the control panel or latch and I didn't really want to go there so I replaced the panel. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the vibration noise goes away, but I'm not optimistic.
~~ The Maytag repairman ~~
After we washed our second load of dishes in this machine we opened it to discover that the (dirty) water hadn't drained. We checked all the obvious problems such as a poorly-draining sink and a kinked waste hose before calling Maytag. A service call was scheduled four business days later. The Maytag repairman arrived on schedule, took one look at the dishwasher, wrestled with the air gap and asked if we ate a lot of fish. "Some", I replied, wondering where this was going. "The bones get lodged in the air gap", he replied. The bones create a net that traps further debris and eventually plug up the air gap. Duh! Why didn't I think of that? He removed a plug comprised of fish bones and who knows what. And it worked!!! He was a very cheerful fellow too. He didn't know what would cause the vibration. "Call it in if it keeps happening, and we'll take a look at it." He wasn't very anxious to pull the door apart.
~~ The last load ~~
As far as washing the dishes goes, this dishwasher does a good job of cleaning the dishes when it's draining. You would hope so too, wouldn't you, for $540? I could have bought hundreds of pairs of rubber gloves for this price :-)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 540
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Epinions.com ID:
plilikoi
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 - Top 1000 |
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Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Reviews written: 76
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:
Raised in Scotland, living in San Diego. Getting older and wiser daily, older for sure!
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