Start here
Dishwasher complaints cluster tightly around two things: water that will not leave and dishes that do not come out clean. Both usually trace to the filter, which makes the filter the first place to look for most of this list. Everything below is written for Aviva dishwashers as a class, and each entry links down to the page that carries the diagnosis.
The problem classes on this machine
- Water left standing in the bottom — A drainage fault, and the filter is the usual answer. See the drainage page.
- Dishes come out dirty or gritty — Spray arms, filter or loading. See the cleaning-performance page.
- It will not start — Door latch, supply or a lock mode. See the no-start page.
- Dishes are wet at the end — Usually rinse aid and loading rather than a heater. See the heating and drying page.
- It leaks — Door seal at the front, hoses underneath. See the leak page.
- It smells — Residue in the filter, sump and seal. See the odour page.
- It trips the breaker — Stop using it. See the electrical-safety page — water and mains share this cabinet.
The ranking that matters
- Filter and sump neglect — The single largest cause across this appliance. A blocked filter stops the machine draining and makes it wash in dirty water, so it produces two of the most common complaints at once.
- Spray delivery problems — Second: blocked jets and arms stopped by the load leave whole sections of the machine unwashed, which owners experience as a machine that has stopped cleaning.
- Door latch and seal faults — Third. The door does the most work on this appliance — it carries the latch, the switch and the seal — so it produces both no-starts and front leaks.
- Rinse aid, salt and loading habits — Fourth, and almost all of the drying complaints. These are consumables and technique rather than faults.
- Electrical and pump faults — Least common. When they arrive they usually follow a leak, because water in the base is what reaches the wiring and the pump.
Classes, first checks and who fixes them
General guidance| Problem class | Where to look first | Usually an owner fix? |
|---|---|---|
| Standing water | Filter and sump, then the sink waste | Often |
| Dirty dishes | Spray-arm jets and loading | Usually |
| Will not start | Door latch, then the spur switch | Sometimes |
| Wet dishes | Rinse aid level and loading | Usually |
| Leaking at the door | Clean the seal and the tub lip | Often |
| Smell | Filter, sump, seal, hot clean cycle | Usually |
| Trips the breaker | Isolate and stop using it | No |
Based on: No component-share denominator is published for this brand and appliance, so the ordering here is qualitative field experience and carries no percentage.
Before you open anything
Safety
Power down at the breaker, close both taps, and lay a towel line before tipping the machine to reach the base. Mains terminals sit within finger reach of wet metal in a cabinet this size, so nothing gets probed while the plug is in. The door lock and its wiring stay as built.
When to book a visit
Book a visit when the maintenance is genuinely done and the fault persists, and treat leaks with more urgency than the puddle suggests: a built-in machine leaks into a cabinet base that absorbs water silently for weeks. If the machine has tripped its base-tray sensor, book it as a leak rather than as a control fault — the sensor is usually right.
The rest of this family
What this page does not cover
Treat this as the generalized Aviva dishwasher page. It is written to be true across the platform, which means it stops short of the details that only hold for one family — connector pinouts, specific board revisions, the order the cabinet comes apart in. Those live on the family- and model-level pages linked here, and where one exists for your unit, that page outranks this one.
Lead Appliance Repair Technician · 12 years experience
Experienced technician with 12 years specializing in washing machine and dryer repairs across all major brands.
