Blinking Clean Light on Kenmore & Whirlpool Dishwashers

Thank you very much. Saved me a lot of aggravation. Hate it when appliances start to fail. They all seem to follow in line. One after another.

For 3 weeks we've been without a dishwasher because of this. My husband went to a repair shop where the guy talked him into buying 2 parts ($56 worth), and said those HAD to be the problem. Getting someone to even come here to look was going to cost $180. So we thought buying a new one was the best option. Got your reply so quickly, and "fixed" it before my husband got home. He was so surprised, and we were both thrilled that we didn't have to get a new one, especially since this one is only 2 1/2 yrs old! Thank you so much for your quick reply and RIGHT ON advice! You rock!

I was beginning to loose my temper over this. First, as a retired firefighter in California, I thought of all of the times I had told people to turn their gas off in the event of an earthquake. So I thought was a good idea that would be in a house that was vacant. That was until the gas company found the valve off and put a lock over it and closed my account (paid up automatically every month). My next step was to just close the valves to the water heater and stove. A few weeks later I thought it would be a good idea to run all of the appliances to keep the seals from drying out. No luck when I tried to start the fairly new dishwasher (just past warranty as the house has been vacant for several months). Also found that the dry time had frozen the food waste disposal and turning it with a broom handle was not effective. I am so happy to find this possible solution and will give it a try AFTER LIGHTING THE WATER HEATER! A VERY BIG BIG THANKS TO YOU

THANK YOU THANK YOU I had that problem before and had sears come and fix it I kept the formula on how to fix it but some how the paper got thrown away. My husband said try the internet and I thought for sure it would take forever to find it again but 3 min. and I had my answer. It's working fine again.

Thank you very much i spent an hour trying to get the dishwasher out and an hour just looking at it jiggling hoses and wires and just looking like i new what i was doing then an hour hooking it back up just to have that light continue to flash. my wife is exstatic when i pressed those buttons and whammmmmmmm it works. thank you so much

Thank God for smart people and information on the internet!!! We just moved into a new place and we have been using the normal cycle with no problems. Earlier tonight we used the pots & pans cycle and after we unloaded and reloaded with the second load of dishes the "clean light" just flashed and wouldn't let us run a second load. I tried unplugging and slamming....nothing worked.....Thank you for your wonderful wisdom!!! I reset using the Normal wash and heated dry and it started working again. We will be using only the normal wash from now on. You rock!!! Thank you Thank you Thank you!
PS-in our last home we bought a great BOSCH!! Never had any issues and cleaned like a charm!!! Whirlpool sucks.

Well, my goodness, I haven't tried your recommended "fix" yet, (we pulled out the dishwasher, Kenmore, 4 yrs. old) and were ready to haul it to the dump; tomorrow we will reinstall it and see if your "fix" works. I'll let you know tomorrow. THANK YOU for having this info available.
Blessings

Thank you very much. My Elite took five cycles of the button sequence to enter the diagnostic mode. It is pretty pathetic that Sears does not have this in the troubleshooting section of the manual.
My blinking light was telling me the truth - no water going into the dishwasher. A hose slid off, as the clamp around the hose was not tight enough (thanks Sears install guy), and water was all over my kitchen and basement. Anyway, simple fix with a new clamp, but the lights needed a reset. I tried unplugging the dw but no luck. Then google. Viola. Problem solved and dishes are being washed as I type. Thanks again.

Thanks for the advice, it worked! For a few days I tried to cancel the blinking clean light and couldn't do it. It would blink 8 times, pause, and then the sequence would repeat. I felt like I was in an episode of "lost". I followed the directions and pushed the buttons in the sequence of normal wash, heated dry, normal wash, heated dry, normal wash, and it went into the diagnostic mode where all the lights lit up. I hit cancel and I got a countdown display of two minutes remaining. After the countdown, all lights went blank, and I hit start. It started right up! Yea!

Thank you, thank you!!! A repair service that came to fix my 4 year old Kenmore model 17032 told me that I needed a new heating element and water pump to solve the blinking clean light problem but that it wasn't worth fixing and I should replace it. Sears Repair Service's only suggestion was to send one of their technicians out, which meant paying for another diagnostic call (I wonder why they couldn't have suggested I try the solution posted here) and Sears Customer Service kept me on hold for over an hour before I gave up trying to speak with them. After 3 months of hand washing dishes, while browsing for new dishwashers I found your website and the solution worked immediately. What a great service your website provides.

thanks jsrock.. you rock!

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! I have been trying to get Sears to come and service but this worked!!! I cannot thank you enough~~~ YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!

You are awesome, thank you so much. I knew it had to do with a sensor but i am not electronically enclined, so i was at a loss. your advice did the trick and we will now run the hot water before doing a load. thank you again, have a good one
*Dave*

7-21-09 Thank you so much!!! My two kids are jumping for joy now that the dishwasher is working, because they had now become the dishwasher. Your advice to press the two buttons on the control panel worked exactly like you said it would. Kudos to you :)

Been trying to figure out how to fix "my" blinking green clean light on my Kenmore Smart wash dishwasher. I don't have a Heated Dry Button.

Continued reading on comment section, only to stumble upon the suggestion to use Sani-Rinse/Air Dry as the magic combination to get my dishwasher in Diagnostic Mode. Had both those bottons. Tried it, AND IT WORKED!!! Thanks so much!

Okay, so I did this. I reset it and I started to run the dishwasher. But, after a few minutes, it stopped the washing cycle and went straight to the end with a blinking clean light again.

What should I try now? I did go ahead and ran a diagnostic cycle. I thought that it would give me a code or something at the end, but I got nothing.

Any help would be great.

Well glad to see we were not the only ones with this problem. Our 12 yr old daughter thought she had done something to the dishwasher and had to wash dishes by hand! She hated every minute of it and now she knows what life is like without a dishwasher...

I found this a couple of weeks ago the first time we had the mysterious blinking light issue. It fixes the problem for that round but it continues to happen every two to three times we run the dishwasher. Any thoughts?

OMG ! IT WORKED! THANK YOU !
i just had a major appliance break and the dishwasher was the dbl whammy !
i am sooooo grateful
the dishwasher whirlpool quiet partner III works great its running right now!
----saved from $$$ service call

I have a KitchenAid dishwasher that was having the same problem. The button sequence posted by Master_123(Comment #15) worked like a charm.

Thank you sooo much for your information! It worked like a charm! I had already made an appointment for Sears to come out to fix this problem. You'de think that they could have told me the simple solution that you did! You saved me at least $75! Thanks again!

You're the man JS Rock!

Thank you sooo much. Your tip worked perfectly and saved us from having to pay for a service fee (of course our warrenty ended last month). In these hard economic times, it is good to know that there is someone who is trying to help people save a little money. Thank you Jsrock516!!

I Had a blinking " clean light ' on my Quite Guard 7 , I used the sequence and it worked great.
Thanks for saving me some money in these hard times.

Thanks for the tip jsrock516, I had turned the washer off at the breaker box trying to reset it and several other things and that was the ticket. Apprec, that saved me a repair call bill.

thank you, I was trying to figure out a way to return this piece of junk. I'm grateful for your expertise. Cam

I have a Whirlpool Quiet Parter I - I think the model # is 3385818. I tried this sequence and all the green lights lit up. I hit cancel and then started a normal wash and it running perfectly! Thank you for the tip!

This also worked for my Frigidaire dishwasher. You just saved me over $100!! Thank you!!!

I had blinking "clean light" on my Whirlpool KUDUO3FTSS1 for the whole last week. After trying Jsrock516's trick by pressing Normal Wash then Heated Dry buttons three times, all lights come on, I shut the washmachine door, then press the start button, the wash machine starts to wash itself and the clean light is not blinking anymore. Thank you for the tips, save my phone call to Whirlpool. Appreciate!

I have a KitchenAid KUDP02FR. Must be the same manufacturer because it has the same problem of the cleaning light blinking seven times. Based on the comments here I tried pressing Sani-Rinse, Heat Dry, Sani-Rinse, Heat Dry until all the lights come on (twice mostly). Then I closed the door and it ran and clicked for about 5 minutes then stopped. After that it runs like normal again. THANKS.

FYI - for the Whirlpool GU1500 the button presses to enter diagnostics are-Sani Rinse, Air Dry, Sani Rinse, Air Dry, repeat a couple of times.
Press w/ door open
Repeat until you see everything light up,close the door and let it run through the self diagnostics. After that, select a cycle and try it (as I'm doing right now).
Was previously locked up after a control board replacement and had the clean light blinking 7 on, pause etc. and no cycles would start. The unit ran a "quick wash" cycle after board replacement but the "clean" light never went out and hung up.
Will check that the "clean" light goes out after opening and closing the door as before and hope to post up success if I'm not in the middle of installing a Bosch DW.
Not a fan of Whirlpool, unit died just over 2 yrs and it took > 5 wks to get the warranty replacement board. They didn't want to send it without a "certified Whirlpool service technician" looking at it first @ $120 for a visit in my area. I talked to them and they told me how many problems they had with these boards and that they would feel bad taking my money since the board was 95% certain to be the problem.Whirlpool disagreed but eventually (2 managers later) agreed to send me the board. No mention of the diagnostics mode even though I asked about that first and several times.
The board was supposedly shipped on 8/4/08 but after 3 calls, they had to re-send and I got mine on 9/5. People were nice but clueless.
Wish me luck geting this done or Bosch it is.

Looked and looked for my owner’s manual, couldn’t find it. I spent 24 hours with that green clean light blinking at me. I love the internet and I love you jsrock516!

You guys are on top of it, the code cleared. Lets hope it stays clear. Thanks again, you guys rock

It worked perfectly for me!

I bought my Kenmore Ultra Wash Quiet 3 dishwasher brand new. Used it a couple of times and then it "broke." I kept putting off calling in a repairman because I'm somewhat of a cheapskate and besides, I don't generate a lot of dirty dishes. For the last two years I've been washing dishes by hand. I only happened to stumble onto this site while looking for a manual.

I saw this post and thought, could it actually be THAT simple? It was!

Thanks a million!

The blinking light problem ( clean light blinks 7 times) if the thermistor fails to detect 2-4 degree F raise in waster temperature during the wash cycle.This will make the Timer produce a fault.The main problem in most of the cases could be caused by Bad heater/thermostat/door switch/heater relay or unbalanced dishwasher that causes the door switch to open(one switch) while trying to heat the water.This problem could be also caused by a very low water level in the dishwasher or a bad water pump since the if there is not enough water in the machine or if the water pump is not pumping water through the spray arms, the water will not touch the heating element and therefore the control board will not detect 2-4 F increase in water temperature and then will produce a fault. A bad(shorted or open) thermistor can not be the cause of this problem since a the thermistor in these tow cases will produce an extreme water temperature ready and the control board will skip this temperature check.One more thing, if the Temperature is extremely cold or hot, the control board will bypass this temperature test.
Newer kenmore modules have different control borad desighn in which the control board will produce the blinking light if the thermistor fails to detect that increase THREE times.The way to clear the fault is ( Hi temp-->air dry ; Hi temp-->air dry -depending on the module)
I hope that was helpful,
SEARS Engineer

Thanks for the tip - it worked great!
What a great site.

Before I found your wonderful advice I bought a new recommended part $100 from the company and they told me if it did it again another part was needing to be replaced that would cost $100....Grr! So thank you SO VERY MUCH, you saved us money, time and wet hands! :-)

Great tip!!! After trying 3 function tests on my Maytag dishwasher MDB7160, calling Maytag technical support and going to the library all to no avail, I finally found this website.

Although, you only mentioned Kenmore and Whirlpool I gave your tip a try on my Maytag and it worked immediately!

Your suggestion makes sense because we were on vacation for ten days and had no one running the water in the house for us. My wife is happy once again.

Thanks "jsrock516"!

DJT

Thank you soo, much! My Husband was supposed to figure it out two days ago and he didn't. We also lost the user manual so we were kind of out of luck. I went online looking for a online user manual and found you. Now I fixed it all by my self! Thanks!

saved me time and money, worked like a charm. thank you.

You are amazing. I can't thank you enough! Your tip worked like a champ and avoided having to call a repairman on a Saturday -- which gave me a tremendous sense of satisfaction. Thank you.

this was the perfect answer for my dishwasher.i was going crazy,i have back problems and standing just doesnt cut it.did the normal wash then heated dry,it only took two times.it entered diagnostics,cleared the fault and works like a dream.a real life saver.thank you jsrock516

Great advice!!! worked like a champ. Keep in mind my problem was because of a new water heater-a tankless one , I will be installing a 5 gallon electric after the tankless to eliminate this and some other small issues.

I have been repairing this dishwasher for the last 3 years. I have never seen water temp cause the blinking clean light. according to whirlpool that cannot and will not happen. In fact the control board will bypass water temp if coming in too cold or to hot. If after the first five minutes of the wash cycle if the control does dot sence a rise in water temp from the heater then and only then will the blinking clean light will start to flash

Great advice jsrock516. Worked like a charm.