The Frigidaire Dishwasher Filter, and the Five Minutes That Prevent a Drain Call

How to clean a Frigidaire dishwasher filter is a five-minute job that most households do not know exists, which is why it turns into a drain call about a year later.

How to clean Frigidaire dishwasher filter: these machines were designed around it

Older dishwashers ground food up with a small chopper and flushed it down the drain. That worked and it was loud.

The generation these belong to went the other way. A fine filter catches the debris, the machine runs quietly enough to sit in an open-plan kitchen, and the owner takes the filter out every so often and rinses it.

That trade is the whole reason a modern dishwasher is quiet, and it means the filter is not a service item. It is an owner item, like the lint screen in a dryer — the one part of a dishwasher that expects a pair of hands every couple of months.

The five minutes

Pull the lower rack right out so you can see the floor of the tub.

Toward the back there is a cylinder wrapped in a coarse mesh. Twist it about a quarter turn counter-clockwise and lift it straight up. It comes away in your hand — no tools, no force. If it feels stuck it is usually grease rather than a mechanism, so dry your hands for grip and try again.

Underneath there is normally a flat plate with a much finer mesh. That lifts out too, and that is the one that actually clogs.

Rinse both under a hot tap, soft brush for anything greasy. Nothing abrasive, no detergent needed.

Look underneath while it is out

This is the part everybody skips and it is worth the extra thirty seconds.

With both filters removed you can see the sump — the small well that feeds the drain pump. Shine a light into it. What collects there is glass chips, produce stickers, occasionally a small bone or a bottle cap, and all of them got there because they were small enough to pass the mesh.

That is the space that causes grinding noises and stopped pumps, and the filters cannot catch what is already in it. Picking it out with your fingers takes a moment and it is the most valuable thirty seconds on this page.

Refit it properly

Everything goes back the same way round, and the cylinder has to turn and lock. Most of them click.

A filter sitting in place but not locked is worse than no filter at all, because the machine will pump debris straight past it into the pump housing while looking completely correct from above. If it does not feel seated, take it out and start again.

This is the maker's own answer to a code

Worth knowing, because it makes the job less optional.

This maker publishes i40 on its dishwashers — *clogged filter or sump* — and its own stated remedy is to clean out the glass trap and re-run the machine. Not a part, not a visit: this job.

i20 is the neighbouring one — *did not drain properly* — and a loaded filter is one of the two common causes behind it. The other is the knockout plug in the garbage disposal, which in a kitchen fitted to a schedule is left in often enough to be the first thing we check.

What it prevents

Two of the most common calls we take on this badge.

Drain problems. A packed filter starves the pump and recirculates what it should have caught. The machine drains slowly, then partially, then finishes with water standing in the tub.

Poor cleaning. The same water goes round and round carrying the same debris, which is where grit on glasses comes from. Households change detergent, add rinse aid and run hotter cycles, and the answer was in the floor of the tub the whole time.

Neither needs a part when it is caught at this stage.

When it has never been out

On a six or eight-year-old machine that has never had the filter removed, expect the first one to be unpleasant and to take longer than five minutes.

The mesh will be greasy rather than dirty — warm soapy water and a brush, not a rinse. The flat plate may be packed solid enough that it does not lift easily, and it should be worked rather than forced, because the tabs are plastic. The sump will almost certainly hold something.

None of that is damage. What it does mean is that the machine has been washing in recirculated debris for years, and households often tell us afterwards that it cleans better than it has in a long time. That is not the filter improving the machine — it is the filter no longer preventing it working.

And the smell

A dishwasher in this climate is a warm, damp, enclosed box with food residue in it, which is a fair description of somewhere things grow.

Most smell complaints trace to three places: the filter, the fold of the door seal, and the drain hose loop under the sink. Clearing the filter regularly removes the food everything else depends on, and it does considerably more for the smell than running vinegar through an empty machine.