The short answer
A SHS dishwasher that leaks tells you where the fault is if you watch it. The eleven codes in the table cover more than one build generation, so match your own code against it before a panel comes off.
What you observe on these models
- Water at the door sill, on the floor in front of the machine — The seal, the door alignment, or suds. Look for foam at the sill: foam means detergent, not a part.
- Foam or suds visible at the bottom of the door — Hand dish soap, or far too much detergent, or a rinse-aid spill.
- Water appearing under the toe-kick only during a cycle — Something under the tub is wet while pressurised: a hose clamp, the pump seal, or the sump gasket.
- NEAR MISS — water standing inside the tub, floor dry — That is drainage, and it has its own page for this family.
Causes, most likely first on the SHS family
- The door seal is hardened, torn or out of its channel — Ranked high on a family whose codes span several generations, because the seal is the part that ages fastest on any dishwasher: it goes hard, takes a set, and stops closing on the tub lip.
- Over-sudsing from the wrong detergent — Checked early because it is free, instant and common: hand dish soap in the cup, or a heavy dose in soft water, foams until the foam finds the door.
- The sump gasket, heater seal or pump seal is passing water — Moved up on an older family: these seals are under the tub, they leak only under pressure, and their symptom is a wet toe-kick during a cycle and a dry floor afterwards.
- The drain hose connection or the air gap is overflowing — The clamp at the disposal loosens, and a silted air gap spits water onto the counter and down the cabinet side.
- The tub seam or a spray arm feed has split — Last and least common, but it is the cause that ends the machine: a corroded seam or a cracked feed cannot be sealed and the repair is rarely economic.
Check in this order, and why
- Dry the floor completely and put paper down — A sheet of kitchen paper across the sill and another under the toe-kick turns an invisible weep into a dated map.
- Run a short cycle and watch the first ten minutes — Stay with it. A leak that starts at fill is the supply side; one that starts at the wash is the door or the sump; one that starts at the drain is the hose connection.
- Look for foam before you look for a part — Foam at the sill means detergent. Run one rinse-only cycle with nothing in the cup and confirm the floor stays dry before you buy anything.
- Work round the door seal with a finger and a light — Feel for hard sections, tears at the corners and any length that has lifted out of its channel.
- Only then look under the toe-kick — Power off, panel off, torch in. A wet clamp, a wet sump seam or a stained pump body names the part — and names a job that needs the machine unseated.
Models in the SHS family — Every code here is a pattern rather than a serial, so read yours as a stem: the trailing characters vary between production builds. The eleven codes fall into six leading groups, and that spread is the reason this page is written for the family rather than for one machine.
Reference| Model number | Family key |
|---|---|
| SHS43CF** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS53C7** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS53CD** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS53CM** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS5AV5*** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS5AVF*** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS5AVL*** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS63VL*** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS843AF** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS863WD** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
| SHS863WF** | bosch:dishwasher:shs |
Before you open anything
Safety
Water and electricity are in the same place in this fault, so switch the breaker off before you mop under the machine or take the toe-kick off; a capacitor can hold a charge after the power is off. Shut the supply valve under the sink before touching any fitting.
When to call a technician
Call once you have located the leak below the tub, or if you cannot locate it at all after a watched cycle. A wet toe-kick with a dry sill is a sealed-side leak and it needs the machine out of the cabinet.
Sources — The symptom-report corpus recorded in this snapshot is what put this symptom on the page for this brand and appliance.
Documented- amazon-reviews — amazon-reviews, fetched 2026-09-02
Other symptoms covered for this family
SC
Sarah Chen
Lead Appliance Repair Technician · 12 years experience
EPA 608 UniversalNASTeC Certified
Experienced technician with 12 years specializing in washing machine and dryer repairs across all major brands.
