The great pre rinse debate blew up my dishwasher pump yesterday

I've always been a hardcore pre rinser. Scrape every bit of food off, rinse until the plates look clean, then load them up. My wife thinks you should just scrape the chunks and let the dishwasher do the work. So two days ago I tried her method as a test. Wednesday morning I loaded a casserole dish with baked on cheese, no rinse, and ran it. Yesterday the dishwasher started making this grinding noise and now the pump is shot. Repair guy said food particles got lodged in there. So my question is did the lack of rinse actually cause this or was the pump just old and going out anyway? Anyone else have a dishwasher fail right when they switched methods?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_ruby1mo ago

Did the repair guy say anything about how old the pump actually was?

the_felix1mo agoMost Upvoted

Why are we acting like the pump's age is some deep mystery? It's probably just a regular pump that finally quit after doing its job for years. People get hung up on that number like it changes anything about what needs fixing now. The real question is whether the repair guy fixed it right and didn't try to upsell you on a whole new system. Honestly I'd focus more on if it's running quiet and not leaking than whatever the original install date was. Makes me wonder if we're just overthinking this whole thing.