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@chetlaham

You're very welcome! I'll try to answer your questions the best I can:

1) The spray arms do alternate. I haven't found an occasion yet where they both spray at the same time. As far as the filtering mechanism: I can only imagine that if a ball bearing somehow made it passed the coarse strainer, it could do some damage to the actual filtering unit. I would also suspect that you would hear the noise if you were around. I cannot imagine that would be a silent affair.

2) The fan is underneath the dishwasher tub. The exhaust is mounted just above the toe kick. I haven't experiences any moisture damage to my cabinets or floor. And I had this dishwasher installed last summer when I gutted and remolded my kitchen.

3) The spray arm is fixed. But water coverage seems to be such that everything gets hit. And I load those racks in true "load as I like" random loading; everything gets clean. It is rare if I have to put something back through.

I would also like to add that detergent makes a big difference in this machine. I have water that's of moderate hardness (7 gpg) and Cascade Platinum works the best at not only getting the dishes clean but also keeping the dishwasher clean.
 
Did they change the fan? Latter parts diagrams have it in the door.

For those who know like Combo52- will the Kitchen Aid out clean a Maytag? Equal? Or worse? I see the KA uses half the water of the Maytag.
 
KDTM354DSS - Closeout model

According to the Kitchen Aid site this model you're looking at is a closeout. I noticed looking at the pictures of the machine on their site, the venting configuration is different from mine; which could be why the parts diagram you're seeing has the vent in the door. Not sure I personally like this arrangement and it appears looking at some of the reviews online people have complained about the side vent causing damage to the surrounding cabinetry. You may or may not have a problem. But it is telling that the arrangement has been changed on the newer models to vent out at the bottom of the door.

https://www.kitchenaid.com/major-ap...-with-clean-water-wash-system.kdtm354dss.html
 
 KDTM354DSS vs. KDTM354ESS.  Display and software changes I noticed.  The DSS was announced late 2013 or early 2014.  The ESS was brought out spring/summer 2015.  

 

I'm beginning to think KA is getting ready to refresh their line of dishwashers again.  It's about time they do.  

[this post was last edited: 12/3/2019-22:21]
 
In the video why do they have a different Wash Arm as opposed to the modified HydroSweep ?

They have a three arm thing with whirly things on the ends that squirt the water.

In the still pic there is the "X" arm.

I think it's time for a new Manufacturer of appliances to break away of the same old same old.

Appliances are like New Music artist doing remakes of old classics that are and never will be the same.
 
I have heard that some people that have that alternating nonsense say the noise of the machine starting and stopping drives them nuts.

I think my friend's Miele alternates but you can't hear the darn thing running.

Like John said I would rather have the whole machine washing at the same time as opposed to one rack at a time.
 
My biggest issue with the Maytag is the staggered middle rack.

The clean water wash system is better than the chopper assembly. If you've ever seen the meat grinder for KitchenAid stand mixers, that blade and die system is basically what the chopper assembly is in the maytags. It clogs up.
 
Joshua, Maytag had a model MDB8989 on their site that's recently been removed.  It didn't have a tiered upper rack and the 3rd rack was some sort of culinary rack--it had two sections that one of which could be removed to accommodate taller items in that part of the upper rack.  I wish Whirlpool would offer that third rack design more often.  3rd racks get in my way putting in and kind of stacking things in the upper rack.  I just have a feeling Whirlpool is getting ready to refresh/offer new models in KitchenAid and Maytag lines.  They're over 5 years old since clean water wash system was introduced.  Offered new pocket door design a year or so ago.  
 
If you ask me this is the new line:

https://www.maytag.com/kitchen/dish...hwashersandCompactorsDishwashers&plpView=grid

I see tons of Maytags on the HD and Lowes site not on the Maytag site many of which are "special buys" with a lower price. Also many of them have a side tube dry system where the new Maytags do not.

I like the slopped upper rack, it lets me fit tall dishes in the bottom rack.

I ditched the substitute KA and went with the Maytag for several reasons including the fact MDB7979SHZ seems to be a new model release.

Never heard of the food disposer clogging up. In all honesty I could see more problems with the KA system.
 
When menards went exclusive Whirlpool corp, we stopped pushing anything Whirlpool or related. We might sell 3 maytag dishwashers a year anymore. KitchenAid is less than 10.

We push Miele, Bosch, Cove and Beko.

With having over 1500 work orders open for 6 service techs and our territory of 57 counties, we stopped pushing what needed service constantly.
 
Clean Wash Water System

 

<span style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 14pt;">This talk of the clean wash water system made me wonder about how the Bosch does.  Seems hubby does a lot of the unloading so I haven't really paid that much attention.  In these pics you can see the food soil on the dishes and in the photo of the clean dishes I did my best to photograph the clear water sitting on top of the mason jar.  It was hard to photograph but I guarantee that water looks crystal clear in person.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino; font-size: 14pt;">That's not too bad considering what they looked like at the start.  I used the Heavy wash option with 1/2 of a Miele Tab in the main wash.  Since I had the sudsing issue with the Cascade pods all my research led me to the Miele tabs and I have to say I am really impressed.  I am cutting them in half because we have mechanically softened water and a full one is just too much soap.   I have to say these Miele tabs clean like crazy.  Even the inside of the dishwasher sparkles like it didn't before.  They cost a little more but are worth it.  Cutting them in half makes them really affordable for me.</span>

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New Dishwashers Etc.

Hi Joshua, The chopper in a new WP built MT DW will NEVER clog at all in the life of the DW, if you want to be taken seriously as an appliance professional Please don't put crap like that on the internet.

 

DWs with alternating wash arms have a diverter valve, these often leak on the floor and cause an expensive repair just to save a little bit of noise, not worth it in my experience. I would rather have everything washing all the time.

 

The most common repair we are doing today on newer filter style DWs are service calls to remove broken glass which is blocking and jamming either the drain pumps or often in the case of Bosch DWs the main pump.

 

When the customer lifts the filter out to clean you often do not see little pieces of broken glass and it slips into the inlet for either the drain pump or main pump causing almost immediate problems.

 

While this could happen on models with a grinder we have not seen it yet because they are much better designed to keep large hard objects out of the pumps.

 

John L.

 
 
New Dishwashers Etc.

Hi Joshua, The chopper in a new WP built MT DW will NEVER clog at all in the life of the DW, if you want to be taken seriously as an appliance professional Please don't put crap like that on the internet.

 

DWs with alternating wash arms have a diverter valve, these often leak on the floor and cause an expensive repair just to save a little bit of noise, not worth it in my experience. I would rather have everything washing all the time.

 

The most common repair we are doing today on newer filter style DWs are service calls to remove broken glass which is blocking and jamming either the drain pumps or often in the case of Bosch DWs the main pump.

 

When the customer lifts the filter out to clean you often do not see little pieces of broken glass and it slips into the inlet for either the drain pump or main pump causing almost immediate problems.

 

While this could happen on models with a grinder we have not seen it yet because they are much better designed to keep large hard objects out of the pumps.

 

John L.

 
 
I guess i better find the pictures of the chopper assemblies clogged with celery strands, stickers, bits of plastic wrap, broken ceramic, twist ties and corn kernels we've sent to the tech line proving that the choppers clog.

And why anyone would want a wash system that recirculates the food particles through the wash system is beyond me. Next you'll tell me the wash arms don't clog up with debris.

Wait, i dont care if im taken seriously. I am so ready to be out of this field. Im tired of having to prove my self to people like you and customers that think they know everything because they read it on the internet. And before you spout your bs about how long you've been doing this, i work for a company that is 5th generation in ownership, and second generation in service techs. They've been in business for 85 years, the current service manager started working there when he was 16, he started working for his dad (who started here when they originally opened) when his dad was the service manager. He's been there 44 years just on his own.

Sit there and tell me what to post. Ha.[this post was last edited: 12/5/2019-14:09]
 
Just ignore him

Told him several times before what BS he talks.

Anybody who knows what his job is, knows how to use this site, how to use google and how to use a bit of critical thinking knows combo52's agenda, knows his quality of service and what kind of person he is in general.

It's so amazing how often diverter valves leak, yet how useless water protection systems are.

It's so funny how these choppers never clogg, but like 75% of all DW repair videos on YT are about how to clean these out.

BTW never heared of a jammed main pump on a Bosch. Like ever. On any design of theirs.

A DW technician should know the main reason for alternating spray arms as it does not draticly cut noise.
It does, somewhat, but barely.

I went away from this site to a certain degree because of discussions like this and people like him.

And now prepare to be shouted at and insulted...
 
I have seen dishwashers with diverter valves leak. Most of them American brands. I don't know that I've seen a European diverter based dishwasher leak.

I have yet to see a dishwasher with a slide shutter on the pump leak because the diversion is done IN the pump housing and not as a separate unit.

We have had some Miele motors jam, but that was from hard water buildup, too much detergent and lack of use. Soaking in heated white vinegar freed the motors.

The bulk of our issues with Miele dishwashers have been on the classic series, the heater elements reacted with something in the water up here and corroded. They have since changed vendors and materials.

Two motors have been jammed from debris and both were customer mis-use. One was in a drug rehab facility where someone pulled the filter assembly out and started the dishwasher, a piece of saran wrap wrapped around the impeller and seized the motor. The other, the customer dumped a package of flax seeds in the dishwasher on accident (the door was partially opened and they knocked the container over on the counter and it all landed in the dishwasher), when they pulled the filter out, the filter was so full it ran over and seeds dropped into the sump and jammed the motor. We used the motor fork, turned it the opposite direction and unclogged the motor after vacuuming it out.

One dishwasher showed up brand new with a seized motor.

The only leaks we've had on Bosch dishwashers were from the seams/welds of the tubs. I can think of 8 in the last 3 years. I have rarely had an issue with the diverter assembly or the sump. As far as jammed motors, I am not recalling hearing of any.

Our service calls are mainly Whirlpool-made dishwashers, GE and Samsungs. We have far more floor leak issues from Whirlpool-made dishwashers than any of the other brands combined. As far as I know, Whrilpool-made dishwashers are the only ones on the market that don't have some form of flood protection in any of their lineups. If I recall correctly, Jenn-Air had BSH making their dishwashers for the longest time...
 
I don't want to jump into any discourse. I do however want to point out one misconception about dishwashers with the disposal blade versus a manual filter: all "self-cleaning" chopper equipped dishwashers *still* filter the water. At least, this is true for any Whirlpool built machine since at least the mid 90's. The PowerClean platform is touted by many to still be one of the best dishwashers to have graced the planet, and it also fully filters the wash water as well, because of the mesh accumulator chamber under the wash arm. The soil is spun out with centrifugal force and some of the water pressure is directed straight into that filter chamber through a small passage inside the impeller chamber, much the same way a Dyson cyclonic vacuum spins the dirt out of the air inside the cones. This is also true for the Voyager and now the new Maytag platform that derives from the GlobalWash design of the current manual-filter WPs, KitchenAids, and Kenmores. The current Maytag's accumulator is housed under the wash arm above the spot the manual filter would normally sit, and in all mentioned machines, the drain pump pulls straight from that chamber, pulling the soil out.

I will agree that if care is not taken to avoid letting fibrous foods like celery, or labels/stickers and toothpicks fall in, the screen behind the blade will get clogged. Absolutely. But I will also say that it almost takes deliberate negligence to get to that point. The pic I posted is pretty extreme, I've never seen one like this on a Voyager. But the Kenmore Elite-Voyager machine my grandparent's had, before I gave them the slightly famous-to-this-site WP 920 model, had a fair amount of crud around the outer edges of that screen. Nothing that affected performance, but after around five years of use, that was the result.

If you do choose/have chosen the Maytag machine, I don't think you'll have a bit of problem so long as common sense is used loading it. As with most things during the internet era, if there were wide spread problems with them after all these years with this design, you'd have heard about it, and they would have absolutely abandoned and shifted the Maytags to the manual filter design by now and wouldn't be selling them like they do.

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Also, in defense of the diverter-equipped models, that 920 has been going strong since the end of 2015, and now it's lived since August 2018 at my grandparents with fairly hard well water. Granddad has been instructed to use nothing but Cascade Platinum or Finish Quantum and to never let that rinse aid compartment run dry. From what I've gathered, hard water, cheap detergents, lack of rinse aid, and prewashing dishes are all factors that cause the diverter shaft to etch and start leaking.
 

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