Kenmore 13789 draining/cleaning issues

A couple of thoughts:

1) It could be a gasket somewhere starting to break down. Check your door seal.

2) Food particles could have gotten caught somewhere in the drain hose, or something, and then turned black with mold and bacteria, then when you wash, they get siphoned back into the dishwasher if the flap which composes the anti-siphon check valve on the drain hose is starting to stick open.

Try putting a cup of bleach in the top rack and run a complete cycle with no other dishes in it. Then, load up some plastic dishes and wash them as normal. See if that helps. If it does, replace your check valve.

Also, insure that your drain hose is looped up above the bottom of your sink to prevent debris from your garbage disposal backing up into your dishwasher.

Good luck and keep us posted!

Check your upper wash arm.... check the holes, especially the ones at the end of the arm. Are they possibly clogged with debris or hard water? This is the usual cause of dishes on the top rack not getting clean. The holes at the end of the wash arm are angled to eject the water at an angle to use the reaction to push the wash arm around. If those holes are clogged, then the arm won't rotate, and only those few dishes or glasses right under the arm will get clean, and the remaining 80% of the dishes on the upper rack won't get clean!

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we had the same problem with a new dishwasher. The repair man told us that the liquid soap would froth too much and not fully rinse out of the system. So the food particles stayed in the trap and wouldn't rinse away. Also the drain hose needs to be looped up to the top of the dishwasher or ran directly down to drain so the wash water doesn't just drain back into the dishwasher. Also check you top rack water jets to see if there are food particles which move into the holes and block the water flow on that level. Hope this helps :-)

Possible that the motor impeller has good particles in it, causing poor water pressure, which would be most evident on the top rack. You would have to remove the spray arm, then the filter, then the torx screws to get at impeller....unfortunately, that model of dishwasher isn't the greatest in the first place for washing, since it only has the one spray arm.

I had the same problem and fixed it by disassembling the lower spray arm and return filter, and cleaning all the junk out.
Most dishwashers have 'risers' that bring the water up to the top sprayer or arm located under the top rack. If the recirculating pump is plugged even a little there won't be enough volume or pressure to get the water up there.
Test this by putting a dry muffin pan in the top rack, flat, and running the dishwasher for a bit. If there is no water on the top (or the bottom) either the top sprayer or the sprayer arm underneath the top rack is not getting enough volume.
To fix this you need to clean out the screen and filter, where the water returns to be recirculated. If you don't have any confidence to remove the parts and clean it out yourself, get an appliance repair person to do the job.

put a pump kit in the dishwasher..and the water coming up is a house drain problem

check the inlet strainer at the bottom of the unit - and also the nozzles on the top are for clogs/sediment.

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I have this same problem, plus the pre-wash soap dispenser doesn't open sometimes even though a service guy replaced that. Could he have replaced just one side and not the other? this dishwasher also has a new motor. sometimes it washes beautifully. but other times it does not. even if both dispensers opened.

This was fixed on my unit by taking out the chopper assembly and cleaning the screen. There is full spray on top now. The screen on the chopper assembly actually had some plastic on it that was hard to see, but was blocking most of the holes. Since this was blocked, the pump couldn't pull enough water to push it to the upper spay arms. My chopper was actually broken so it wasn't clearing the screen, so I had to replace it. That will probably help prevent this from happening again, but if you ask me, the unit was designed poorly for handling normal debris that comes off of plates. I'd recommend inspecting this regularly to keep it clean.

1. Remove the top rack and lower rack.
2. Remove the lower spray arm by holding the top of the center hub and rotating spray arm counter clockwise.
3. Remove water tube feed from the back wall of the dishwasher by unclipping at top and back. Pull towards you and lift tab at the bottom on the big tube to remove the plastic clip from main water feed.
4. Remove the main water tube by turning quarter turn clockwise, then lift off. Keep the center hub from falling out so you don't lose the plastic washer.
5. Using a star tip screw driver; remove the four screws and lift off the filter cap assembly. The assembly consists of the screen filter and the food trap grate (The outer edges look gear like).
6. Look down inside this area and clean out anything foreign. usually there will be seeds, paper, and other gook. I used tweezers, toothpicks, and needlenose pliers. I remove from my dishwaser quite a bit of paper, two wooden match sticks, lots of undissolved soap etc.
7. When you have removed as much as you can, put everything back together in the order you removed it.
8. When you run the next cycle, you should immediatly hear more noise to indicate that you have cleared the pathway that allows water to flow at its intended pressure.