We have a Meile dishwasher that failed about a year ago.  Sofia’s sleuthing led us to believe that this little part, a fill valve, was to blame.  People with Meile dishwashers have reported having to replace this little part multiple times.

We were confident enough that this was the source of our issues, that we went ahead and cut the original out, expecting to be able to find a replacement part easily.  It turns out that it was not so easy.  To get a branded replacement, we weren’t finding anything less than about $250 (some of which had the right part number but sold in the UK where they use 220V lines.)  At that price, it is tempting to just ditch the dishwasher and get a replacement, however, this is a stupidly expensive false front unit that has a cover that matches the other cabinetry.  I don’t expect that we could have pried that facade off easily to replace the unit, and if we had to, who knows where we could have gotten a replacement facade (assuming it was destroyed attempting to remove it from the old dishwasher.)

Anyways, after way too many months of hand washing our dishes, we finally gambled on a generic replacement ($35+$10 shipping CAD):

It’s a single solenoid GE component, but it worked!  Two additional parts were required, the first of which was a 3/8″ -> 3/8″ interior to exterior elbow (somehow I had one of these in my drawer of random plumbing related crap), and the second of which was a set of crimp on electrical connectors ($6 for a package of them at home depot.)  It took me two tried to get the connection not to leak (it dribbled a tiny little bit each dishwasher cycle), as I hadn’t put enough teflon tape on the connection between the fill hose, and the elbow.

Kudos to Youtube’s Scottthefixitguy, as his video on Miele fill valve replacement video was perfect instruction for this operation!

All is now well, and we are already enjoying not hand washing the dishes.  It’s amazing how much time that has added up to over the last year or so.  We should have braved the generic replacement fill valve months ago!  Total cost (parts, shipping, labour;) was only ~$50 CAD.