Found mysterious ring on bottom of Bosch dishwasher

June 15, 2023 10:10 AM

After the last dishwashing cycle, I found this ring lying on the bottom of our Bosch dishwasher. It obviously is a dishwasher part, but I can’t for the life of me figure out where it came from.

I’m assuming that it will be relatively easy to just pop back on from wherever it came from, but before I can do that, I need to figure out where to put it. I’m thinking it came from the rotating arm on the top rack, but I’m not sure. As you can see from the photos, it’s in two parts. Any ideas what it is and how to put it back?

posted by holborne to Home & Garden (9 answers total)

If you go here (https://www.bosch-home.com/us/owner-support/cleaners-accessories/spare-parts) and enter your dishwasher model number, you can go through a set of exploded diagrams to find the part. (That's the US link, but there's probably something similar for other locales.)
posted by donpardo at 10:33 AM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

There's nothing inside our Bosch dishwasher that looks like that. If I'm judging scale correctly it's much too large to have been attached to either sprayer arm in ours, and the sprayer arm parts in ours are all grey plastic anyway. The one possible candidate for a part that's even the right size is on the left wall of the washer. There's some round thing that's approximately the correct size, about ⅓ of the way up from the bottom. The front of it is the same grey plastic as the sprayer arms, but it could conceal something of the same size as the object you found. That side of the washer is also where the water inlet valve is, so I might guess that it has something to do with how fresh water gets into the wash tub.
posted by fedward at 10:34 AM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yes, I should have said how big it was. It’s two inches in diameter, perhaps half an inch thick.
posted by holborne at 11:01 AM on June 15, 2023

Response by poster: fedward, that was exactly my thought. I can see the round thing you’re talking about, but the disk doesn’t fit into it in any way even though it’s approximately the right size.
posted by holborne at 11:03 AM on June 15, 2023

If it is soft and flexible, my guess would be that it's a flapper for a one-way valve, perhaps for the water inlet port (to let water flow in, but to keep wash cycle water out.)

Is it possible that it is not a dishwasher part, but perhaps came off a travel mug or something else that was in the last load?
posted by xedrik at 11:12 AM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Could it be the bottom, no skid part of a travel mug? Or part of the ring in the lid?
posted by bluedaisy at 11:29 AM on June 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: It looks to me like the rubber seal that goes on a sink plug. I assume you'd know if you ran your sink plug through the load (and then it stopped working because it didn't have a seal), but like xedrik said, maybe something else from the last load that's doing something similar?
posted by cosmonaught at 11:50 AM on June 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I was also guessing sink plug. We have a Bosch dishwasher and I can't see anything that looks remotely like that.
posted by Dip Flash at 12:07 PM on June 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yep, it’s from the sink plug! I pulled the plug out of the sink and lo and behold, the rubber part was missing. It’s funny, because it was at least four or five cycles ago that I washed the sink plug, but I guess the rubber part was just hanging out on the bottom and I only now noticed. Thanks, everyone!
posted by holborne at 12:16 PM on June 15, 2023 [5 favorites]