How to Clean KitchenAid Dishwasher Filter Screens — the Part Most People Don’t Know They Have

How to Clean KitchenAid Dishwasher Filter Screens — Yes, Yours Has One

A large share of the "it is not cleaning properly" calls we take on this make end at the kitchen sink rather than with a part on the van.

The reason is not that anybody has neglected the appliance. It is that a great many people arrived at this dishwasher from an older machine with a hard food disposer — a grinder that chopped debris and flushed it away, requiring nothing from the owner ever. Machines with a manual filter work differently: they catch the soil in a screen and hold it there until somebody takes it out and rinses it.

Nobody tells you this at delivery. So the filter quietly fills, the wash water starts recirculating through soil instead of past it, and the dishes come out gritty. It is one of the few appliance problems that is genuinely free to fix.

Where it is, and what you are looking for

Pull the lower rack all the way out and look at the floor of the tub.

You are looking for a raised cylinder, usually toward the back and near the center, with a slotted or mesh body and a small handle or grip on top. Around it or beneath it sits a flat screen that covers the rest of the sump opening.

Two parts. Both come out by hand. No tools, and nothing to disconnect.

Taking it out

The cylinder first. Turn it about a quarter turn counterclockwise and lift it straight up. There are usually arrows or a small lock symbol molded into the top showing which way. It frees with light pressure — if it will not move, the usual reason is that somebody is pulling upward instead of twisting.

Then the flat screen. Once the cylinder is gone, the flat screen lifts out by hand. Look at how it is sitting before you move it, because it seats one way only and it is easier to remember than to work out.

Underneath is the sump recess. Wipe it with a paper towel and see what is in there. Glass chips, olive pits, jar labels and bits of shell all collect at this point, and if the machine has been making a noise you did not like, this is frequently where the explanation is sitting.

Cleaning them

Warm running water, an old toothbrush and a drop of dish soap. That is the whole method.

Work the brush through the mesh from both sides. Grease combined with hard-water film builds a layer that rinsing alone does not lift, and it is what turns a filter from clean-looking to actually clean.

What not to use: a wire brush, a scouring pad, or any abrasive powder. Scratching the mesh makes it hold soil in the scratches, so an abrasively cleaned filter blocks faster than it did before.

If the filter has gone a long time and is genuinely caked, soak both parts in hot water with a little dish soap for fifteen minutes before you brush them.

Putting it back, which is the step that goes wrong

Reassembly is where the follow-up calls come from.

1. The flat screen goes in first, lying flat in its recess with nothing proud.
2. The cylinder drops into the center and turns clockwise until it stops.
3. Confirm the lock. It should feel positive and it should not lift when you tug it gently.

A cylinder left unlocked or seated crooked lets soil bypass the filter completely, and on some machines it will rattle against the lower spray arm loudly enough to be alarming. If your dishwasher started behaving strangely immediately after a filter clean, this is very nearly always the reason — take it out and put it back deliberately.

How often, in this water

For a household running the machine daily, every four to six weeks is realistic. For lighter use, every couple of months.

Two things push it toward the shorter end. One is scraping less before loading — perfectly reasonable, but it puts more into the filter. The other is water hardness, which leaves film on the mesh in addition to the food soil.

Look at yours once and you will calibrate your own interval better than any general figure can.

What a blocked filter looks like before it becomes a problem

This is the useful part, because all of these are early and none of them requires anybody to be called.

• Gritty residue on the bottoms of bowls and cups — the classic first sign, and the one that reads as a wash failure.
• Dishes coming out with a fine film rather than visible debris.
• A smell when you open the door on a machine that has been standing.
• Water draining more slowly at the end of a cycle, or a small amount standing after it finishes.
• A noise change — a scraping or rattle from a spray arm catching something the filter should have held.

None of that is an error code and none of it will produce one for a long time. By the time a machine reports a drain condition, the filter has usually been asking for attention for months.

The deep clean, and what the manufacturer actually recommends

Two or three times a year, on top of the regular filter rinse:

• Wipe the door edges and the gasket. Very little water reaches these surfaces during a cycle, so soil and film sit there undisturbed. This is where most dishwasher smells actually live.
• Check the spray arm holes. Hold each arm and spin it; a seed or a label fragment in one hole leaves a wedge of the rack washing badly, which people read as a pump problem.
• Run an empty hot cycle with a dishwasher cleaner, or with white vinegar. Both are remedies the manufacturer itself names for hard-water spotting and film.

Hard water, and why this page is written for South Florida

Groundwater from the Biscayne Aquifer is hard enough that Miami-Dade and Broward both soften it at the treatment plant before it reaches your house. That is worth knowing because it means the water arriving at your dishwasher has already been treated, and it varies by which plant serves you.

The manufacturer's own manual recommends a water softener at 15 grains or more and classifies 7 to 12 grains as medium to hard. Published figures for this region from third parties disagree with each other by a factor of five, so we are not going to quote one — check your own utility's number rather than trusting a softener sales page.

What hard water does to a dishwasher is film glassware, which people read as a wash failure, and leave scale on the heater. The maker's own answers are to raise the rinse-aid setting — the factory setting is around 2 or 3 and it adjusts upward — to use tablets or packs rather than gel, and to run a cleaner periodically. None of that is a breakdown, and all of it is preventable.

When it is genuinely not the filter

If the filter was clean when you took it out, look at three things before you call: whether the machine is filling fully, whether the water arriving is actually hot, and whether the lower spray arm turns freely. A dishwasher that fills slowly runs long and washes badly without ever reporting anything.

And if the Clean light is blinking in a repeating pattern, that is a code rather than a wash complaint — count both bursts and write them down before you cancel the cycle, because canceling erases it.

Independent KitchenAid dishwasher repair and maintenance across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. We are an independent repair company and are not affiliated with, authorized by or endorsed by any manufacturer.