KitchenAid 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 KitchenAid dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=360.

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 KitchenAid 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 KitchenAid dishwashers#

Three hundred and sixty CPSC SaferProducts incident reports name a KitchenAid [dishwasher](/blog/repair-or-replace-dishwasher) between 2011 and 2026, and this is the most concentrated corpus of its kind on the site: the control board is named in 62% of them, or 223 reports. Wiring or the power cord follows at 15%, fifty-five reports, and then the list thins out — the heating element and motor at 4% each, the thermostat or sensor and the drain pump or hose at 1%. Be precise about what a figure above six-in-ten means: 223 of the 360 people who filed wrote about the control board. It is not a measure of boards failing, and it says nothing at all about the machines nobody wrote about. What the concentration does suggest is where an owner's attention pays off.

Which parts the reports name#

Share of CPSC SaferProducts incident reports for KitchenAid dishwashers, 2011-2026, n=360 whose narrative mentions each part. A report naming a part several times counts once.

Method: /methodology.

What the certified listings say#

98 KitchenAid 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#

The control board is judged by behaviour, and on this appliance the symptom list is well worth knowing before it appears. A console lighting a pattern nobody selected, a blinking sequence that will not clear, a cycle restarting itself or jumping programme, a keypad answering some presses and ignoring others, a machine that will not cancel, or a warm-plastic smell around the door after a run — treat any single one as the signal, not as a quirk to work around. Cut power at the breaker rather than at the cancel button, and leave it off until it has been looked at.

Wiring is named in fifty-five of these reports, second by a wide margin, and it is the one place where a look costs nothing. On a hard-wired install the junction box sits behind the toe-kick: check the terminal block for discoloured or brittle insulation and for brown heat marks around the screws. On a corded install, check the cord jacket and the plug face. A breaker that lets go partway through a heated-dry cycle is reporting a condition, and repeatedly resetting it is not a repair.

The heating element and the drain pump are far down this list but visible. With the lower rack out, the element on the tub floor should be one even tone, with no bright scorched band and no plastic fused to it; the sump and filter beneath should be free of debris that could hold the pump.

The certified-listings table above is worth reading carefully rather than quickly. Several of its rows come from only 8 of the 98 catalogued models — annual energy use at 240 kilowatt-hours a year, place settings at 12, water use at 3.2 gallons a cycle — and a row that reads the same on every listing in an eight-model subset is eight filings agreeing, not a constant across the catalogue. The broader rows are drawn from 90 listings and read wider: estimated annual energy use 240 to 270, water consumption 2.9 to 3.5 gallons a cycle. Each row carries its own count for exactly this reason, so read them separately instead of merging them into one range.