Kenmore dishwashers: what CPSC incident reports show

What this page is counting#

Every number on this page is a share of CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Kenmore dishwashers, 2011-2025, n=461.

The CPSC SaferProducts database records reports of harm, not a census of units in service. It is a safety reporting channel: people report what is dangerous, so fire, smoke and burn hazards dominate it. Nothing here is a failure rate, and nothing here says how often Kenmore dishwashers break — only what was reported, and in what proportion of those reports each part is named. A narrative mention of a part is not that part failing. Method: /methodology.

What CPSC reports say about Kenmore dishwashers#

Four hundred and sixty-one CPSC SaferProducts incident reports name a Kenmore [dishwasher](/blog/repair-or-replace-dishwasher) between 2011 and 2025, and one component runs away with the corpus: the control board, named in 53% of them, or 246 reports. Nothing else comes close. Wiring or the power cord is named in 7%, the heating element in 6%, the motor in 5% and the thermostat or sensor in 1% — thirty-one, twenty-nine, twenty-four and five reports. A share above half is unusual in this data and it is worth being precise about what it means: 246 people who filed a report wrote about the control board, out of 461 who filed at all. It does not mean half of anything failed, and it says nothing about the machines nobody wrote about. One recall notice sits on this record, published in 1993 and reproduced below as issued.

Which parts the reports name#

Share of CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for Kenmore dishwashers, 2011-2025, n=461 whose narrative mentions each part. A report naming a part several times counts once.

Method: /methodology.

Recalls on record#

Recall notices CPSC has issued for this brand and appliance, listed as published. This is a list of documents, not a rate: it says nothing about how many units were affected as a share of any population.

• Kenmore Dishwashers: CPSC recall 93042 (1993-02-15) — Certain Sears Kenmore Dishwashers May Pose Fire Hazard; source: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/1993/Certain-Sears-Kenmore-Dishwashers-May-Pose-Fire-Hazard

What the certified listings say#

46 Kenmore dishwashers are catalogued in the certified-product listings. A certified-product census is not a census of units in service, and these specs are unrelated to the incident reports above.

Method: /methodology.

What an owner can act on#

Because this corpus concentrates so heavily on the control board, that is where an owner's attention is best spent, and the board is judged by behaviour rather than by opening anything. Collect the symptoms as one group: a console lighting a pattern nobody selected, a cycle that restarts itself or jumps programme, a keypad that answers some presses and ignores others, a machine that will not cancel, and any smell of warm plastic hanging around the door after a run. Any single one of those is a reason to cut power at the breaker — not at the cancel button — and to leave it off until somebody has looked at it. A board doing unpredictable things is not a board to keep energised on the theory that it may settle down.

Wiring sits second and shares that response. Where the supply enters the machine, look at the terminal block behind the toe-kick or the cord and plug on a corded install for discoloured or brittle insulation and brown heat marks around the screws. A breaker that trips partway through a heated-dry cycle is describing a real condition; resetting it repeatedly is not a fix.

The heating element you can see for yourself. Pull the lower rack and look along the element on the tub floor: it should be an even dark tone, with no bright scorched band, no blistered or swollen section, and no melted plastic fused to the metal. Check the underside of the lower basket too, since that is usually where the plastic came from.

One recall notice is listed above, from 1993. A recall list is a set of documents, not a rate, and it says nothing about the share of any population affected. Age is not a reason to skip the check on a machine that has outlived its decade, and coverage is defined by production ranges, so only the model number answers it. The plate is on the inner edge of the door.