dishwasher not cleaning well

we have a dishwasher that is about 5 years old, we have never had any problems with it but the last few weeks it isn't cleaning well, we are having to hand wash the plates and a lot of other things after they have been through because they have dirt (i assume food) caked onto them (strangely in the back of the plates, not where the food has been).

we have never had to rinse them before unless they were really bad

we have cleaned out the drains and bits we can pull out, we have run it with nothing in it and put several of the dishwasher cleaners in it and nothing is working, is it time for a new dishwasher or is there something else we can try first ?

thanks :-)

When my dishwasher started doing that I used one of the dishwasher cleaners that you put in on an empty cycle, and also invested in a really good rinse agent. It seemed to work in the short term but ultimately the dishwasher only lasted a few more months.

It sounds like the spray arms are clogged - the little holes in them when you open the door during a washing cycle, can you see it spraying out the holes?

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It sounds like the spray arms are clogged - the little holes in them when you open the door during a washing cycle, can you see it spraying out the holes?

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That's what I was gonna say. Sounds like they're basically spraying crap all over your dishes again.

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That's what I was gonna say. Sounds like they're basically spraying crap all over your dishes again.

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If it is the spray arms, with my dishwasher, the arms come off, so you can take them out and give them a decent scrubbing, maybe soak them or something.I have stainless steel spray arms which havenever clogged, yet our work onewith plastic arms clogs regularly.

We give our dishwasher a clean with one of those cleaners that go in that Traveller is talking about and run it on a long cycle with no dishes.

I agree it sounds like the spray arms are not working well. I once had a load come out dirty and discoverd a piece of cutlery jammed in stopping the arms from spinning at all.

I didn't realise they had little holes in them, might give ours a good clean out too!

ok great thanks everyone, i will look at the arms, don't think we have ever cleaned them out before :dunno: DH said he has tried to take them off before but couldn't figure out how to but i will get him to take another look :)

well we pulled the arms out yesterday and they looked ok but we cleaned them out and this morning the plates still have stuff on the back of them so it looks like we will be in the market for a new dishwasher