How Often to Clean KitchenAid Dishwasher Filters, and Why the Glasses Are Cloudy

How often to clean KitchenAid dishwasher parts, and which clock each one runs on

There are three maintenance jobs on this machine and they run on three different schedules. None of them is complicated, and together they take about fifteen minutes a month.

Monthly: the filter assembly. Pull the lower rack. In the floor of the tub is a cylindrical filter that turns counterclockwise and lifts out, and a flat filter underneath it that lifts away once the cylinder is gone. Rinse both under a hot tap and brush them with a soft brush. That word is the job: the cylinder looks dirty and rinses clean in seconds, while the flat mesh looks clean and is not, because grease films it in a way running water does not lift. Seat the flat one first, twist the cylinder back until it locks, and confirm it is locked.

Quarterly: the spray arms and the seal. Turn each arm by hand — it should spin freely. Take it off, which is a twist or a single clip, and hold it up to a window. You are looking through the jets, and a clear arm shows daylight through every hole. Narrowed holes come clear with a cocktail stick. Then wipe the door seal all the way around and the lip of the tub the door closes onto, which is where a smell begins.

Every month or two: an empty hot cycle with a dishwasher cleaner or a cup of white vinegar in a cup on the top rack. This is the finishing step, and it only works if the first two have been done.

That is the whole schedule, and it deals with residue, drainage and smell. What it will not deal with is the thing that brought most people to this page.

Cloudy glasses are not a dirty dishwasher

If your glassware comes out with a white film or fine spots, and it wipes off with a fingernail or comes back after vinegar, you are looking at minerals from the water rather than dirt from the dishes. No amount of cleaning changes it, because there is nothing to clean.

KitchenAid treats this as a water question in its own manual, and its remedies are specific:

• Raise the rinse aid setting. The dispenser leaves the factory around 2 or 3 and it adjusts upward. Rinse aid is not a luxury on hard water; it is what stops water sheeting into droplets that dry into spots.
• Use tablets or packs rather than gel. The maker names this directly for spotting and filming.
• Run a cleaner periodically, or a white vinegar rinse, in an empty hot cycle.
• Consider a water softener. KitchenAid's manual strongly recommends one at 15 grains or more, and classifies 7 to 12 grains as medium to hard.

Those thresholds are the manufacturer's, they are the same thresholds everywhere in the country, and they are the useful part.

The honest part: we will not tell you Miami's hardness number

You will find pages that give you one. We are not going to, and the reason is worth your time.

What is solidly established: Miami-Dade Water and Sewer's own water quality reports state that the water from the Alexander Orr plant receives lime treatment to reduce hardness, and that the Hialeah and Preston plants use enhanced softening. Broward County likewise treats its groundwater with lime to reduce hardness and color. Both utilities soften on purpose, at the plant, because the source — the shallow limestone Biscayne Aquifer under all three counties — is hard. That is first-party, it is in their own documents, and it settles the direction: the water arriving at your dishwasher started hard and has been treated.

What is not established is a figure. Hardness is not a regulated contaminant, so an annual water quality report is not required to publish a number, and the Miami-Dade reports do not. The figures circulating for this city come from third-party sites, most of them selling softeners, and they disagree with each other by a factor of five for the same address — one gives about 4 grains, another 11.5, another the equivalent of more than 22. At least one attributes its number to a county report that does not contain it. Publishing any one of those would be inventing a fact, and this site does not do that.

So here is how to get your own number, which is the only one your machine cares about:

1. Call your utility — Miami-Dade WASD, Broward County Water and Wastewater, or your city system — and ask for hardness in grains per gallon. It is a routine question and they answer it.
2. Or test at your tap. A hardness test strip or a small kit costs a few dollars, takes a minute, and measures the water your dishwasher is actually filling with, including whatever your building's plumbing and any existing treatment do to it.

Then compare it to the maker's own thresholds above. Under 6 grains and rinse aid alone is plenty. Between 7 and 12 and you want rinse aid turned up and tablets rather than gel. At 15 or more, the manufacturer's own recommendation is a softener, and at that point a softener protects far more than glassware.

What hard water quietly costs, beyond appearance

Scale is not only cosmetic. Three things inside the machine pay for it, and none of them are the dishes.

The heating circuit. An element or a heat pump coated in scale transfers heat poorly, runs hotter to compensate, and ages faster.

The spray jets. They close gradually rather than suddenly, which is exactly why "it does not clean as well as it used to" arrives over two or three years and never has a starting date.

The inlet valve and the drain path. Residue that gets past a neglected filter ends up somewhere, and it ends up there.

When it is not the water and not the cleaning

Dishes coming out gritty with clean filters and clear jets, water standing in the tub at the end of a cycle, a machine that will not fill, or a blinking Clean light are not maintenance. On most of these dishwashers the blinking Clean light is the error code, because the machine has no display — and it deserves reading rather than resetting.

Independent KitchenAid service across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. We are not affiliated with, authorized by or endorsed by any manufacturer.