62 Silicon chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au
-^ The dishwasher that wouldn’t
-^ RF interference at the end of
the rainbow
-^ Marantz 1120 amp repair
-^ Vacuum cleaner tripping RCD
*Dave Thompson runs PC Anytime
in Christchurch, NZ.
Website: http://www.pcanytime.co.nz
Email: [email protected]
Items Covered This Month
received the same advice as before. I
don’t know how they expect people to
be dragging dishwashers all over town
but we still don’t have the capacity to
easily do that.
The other option was to have a tech-
nician come out and have a look at it.
Two things deterred me: one, the sheer
cost of the callout (I knew I should’ve
gone to appliance-repair school) and
two, the guys I rang up and talked to
had no experience with a Samsung
Waterwall dishwasher. Perhaps these
appliances were still a bit too new.
Desperately seeking solutions
My next stop was the good old in-
terweb; somebody must have come
across this problem before!
And it seems they had; forums were
ablaze with the flaming posts of dis-
gruntled Samsung Waterwall owners.
In fact, some posters were trying to
scrape up support for a class-action
type product recall, while others just
bemoaned Samsung and everything
connected with the company. Most
stated they’d never buy Samsung
again.
Crikey! I wish we’d seen
this before we bought the
thing, but then again,
these posts weren’t there
at the time (note to self:
must mend the time
machine, then go back
in time and choose a
different dishwash-
er. Also maybe do
something about that
Hitler guy).
It is worth noting that
forums tend to dispro-
portionately magnify any
problems because they are
being viewed through the lens
of people whose first instinct
is to get online and vent their
spleen. It’s as if they are on some kind
of modern-day crusade, using their
collective rage to try to take Samsung
down and thus salve their consumer
remorse for making a poor purchas-
ing decision.
To put this into perspective, Sam-
sung has sold hundreds of thousands
of our model of dishwasher alone, yet
20 people grumbling about it in a fo-
rum can make it look like this machine
is the worst thing ever made. Like I’ve
always said: the best thing about the
internet is that it gives people a voice;
the worst thing about the internet is
that it gives people a voice.
I did my usual research on the web,
first looking for similar problems and
solutions for my model of dishwasher.
When I found nothing but other people
griping without offering any clues to
the cause (or better still a fix), I cast my
net wider into other models, and used
broader and broader search terms, in
a quest for anything relevant.
Frustratingly, I found nothing con-
structive. I assumed at the time that
this was because of the relatively new
technology being used and the lack of
repair reports filtering through to end-
users via the internet.
I couldn’t find any service manu-
als online, either. While there were
plenty of user manuals available for
download, they offered nothing but
the usual operating advice and a ba-
sic (ie, useless) troubleshooting guide.
What I needed was a full service man-
ual. While I discovered a site advertis-
ing one for sale, it was too expensive.
Given time, free service manuals must
eventually appear online.
In the meantime, I played
around with the
dishwasher’s set-
tings and enabled
some zone ‘tur-
bo’ settings,
and this,in conjunction with pre-rinsing the
dishes and trying different powders
and pellets, helped clean the bottom
rack a bit better.
Still, it rankled that I had to wash the
dishes before I put them in the dish-
washer. After all, it was supposed to
be washing dishes for me — not the
other way around (you had one job,
dishwasher)! An actual fix or expla-
nation of the cause of this problem
would be nice to have.Now the dishwasher is
complaining too
So, that was the situation until a
new fault appeared just a few weeks
ago. This manifested as a grumbling
noise just after starting the wash cy-
cle; usually. I noticed this immedi-
ately since its operation is normally
extremely quiet.
My first thought was perhaps a
pump bearing had failed, but I was
just guessing; I’d need more informa-
tion on how it worked to be even in
the troubleshooting ballpark. But the
faults were likely related.
I went back to the web and once
again waded through the familiar
wasteland of the forums, though this
time, I started seeing a link to a You-
Tube video purporting to show a rela-
tively simple fix for this very problem.
There was also more incidental in-
formation, so it appeared that between
now and when I first started looking,
a lot more people had experienced
similar problems and some valid re-
pair information was finally starting
to appear. I also found a link to a free
service manual, which I immediately
downloaded. It was then off to You-
Tube to check out this ‘fix’ video.
The guy in the video, who appeared
to be American, described the exact
problem I was having and on a very
similar model.
This was fortuitous because there
are dozens of different models in the
Waterwall range (which is typical
given the different regional markets)
so it was a pleasant surprise that this
repair video appeared to apply to my
model as well.Reinventing the (water)wheel
To explain the problem properly, I
have to also explain how this new-fan-
gled Waterwall system works. In a typi-
cal dishwasher, rotating, freewheeling
booms with angled spray jets in the
top side are driven by water pressure