Well today has been an awesome day!! The dishwasher got here right at noon, as expected, and it was even strapped in its box onto two pallets to keep it stable. I appreciated the extra thought to make sure it got here in perfect shape, and it did.
I spent quite a while making sure every thing possible was leveled, centered, and installed perfectly, and proceeded to cook homemade chicken alfredo for the husband and my friend who is here for a couple of days, and already washed every dish I dirtied except the big stainless steel skillet in a maiden run: Sensor cycle with no options and no heat dry. Estimated display time was 2:35 but it ended up being around 2:10 or so, and everything was spotless and the stainless interior sparkled like jewelry!!
I have pictures, but with all the hecticness I couldn't take as many as I wanted, and right now I'm on my phone so I'll upload and give many more details tomorrow. Bottom line for now: I am beyond impressed!!! The machine is gorgeous, inside and out, all my dishes fit beautifully, some better than both the Maytag and the PowerClean, it is UNBELIEVABLY quiet, but when you press your ear on the door you can hear a good deal of water action going on. The load washed wasn't fully packed but had enough to make use of space, and we made sure to leave them filthy. At the end, not a spot was found, and the filter was clean as when it was new out of the box.
I do have one concern that I just discovered, however, that I was hoping to get some input from those that have this removable filter design Whirlpool/Kenmore/KitchenAid: when I removed the filter, there was water remaining in the sump about halfway full, just above the optical sensor. I'm not sure if that means water is back flowing through the check valve because of how far it has to go to the drain, or if it's possibly just water draining from dishes/the tub and wash arms and such and collecting in the sump. Then again, it could be that I'm not used to being able to see the absolute bottom of a dishwasher so easily, and it's a normal amount of residual water. Most dishwasher until now have always been closed systems that required tools to disassemble, but upon taking apart machines like the Point Voyager or the dreaded GE Nautilus we had, there has always been a good amount of water that is just hidden by the sump grate and such. So, my question is how much water is normally left in the filter sump after a wash? The water seems crystal clear, and the dishes were clean so I'm sure there's no real issue, but I just want to be sure before I go through pulling it back out to route the hose a different way. Thank you so much for any help!