Problem: Your Bosch dishwasher will sometimes finish the cycle, but other times it stops without draining. You might or might not get an E19 error, and it might not be consistent.
This is an intensely irritating error because the internet does not agree on what E19 means. Some say it's not enough water, some say too much; some say it's the drain valve (which does not exist on my model), others the drain pump. It's maddening.
Possible solution: Something has bypassed all the filters and gotten into the drain pump, preventing it from spinning / working reliably.
With all the filters in the thing, you'd think that would be utterly impossible. Yet, when I checked mine, I found this little bugger rattling around the pump rotor:
The pump is a wee little thing - I'm guessing the rotor is about 15mm across - so anything bigger than a sliver can jam it up.
I'm guessing that the erratic operation of the pump sometimes leaves the
water level high enough for an E19, and other times not. But as often as not, you'll be left with too much water in the tub, even if you don't get an E19.
The good news is:
- It's easily fixable without tools; and
- The pump is probably too wussy to damage itself if jammed up.
I'm hoping mine will be OK now; hopefully yours will too.
Fixing it: You can see how a "modern" (circa 2016-2024) Bosch drain is set up in this video.
The drain pump inlet is at the front-right corner, about 4:00 on the dial. The cover thing you remove is basically a last-ditch debris guard, I guess? (Although it must be a pretty crappy one if they felt the need to make it so easily removable because stuff gets in there anyway.)
You don't need the spoon - you can pull that little white-ish inlet cover off by hand. Just reach in and grab the REALLY OBVIOUS little sticky-up pointy part nearest you - yes, how refreshing that something that feels like a handle actually is one - and wriggle it gently until it pops off. You can see the actor holding that grab-on-to-me part at 1:10 in the video.
After that, the video shows you rooting around the big circular bottom of the drain cup, but that's probably the wrong place. You don't need to remove that white-ish cover part for that!
Instead, stick your fingers in the hole right behind where the cover was. You really can't see it in the video because the actor is using his RIGHT hand, while you want to use your LEFT hand and stick your finger through the newly-opened hole at the 4:00 position.
You will feel the pump rotor, which will have nubs / ridges on it (the vanes) and should spin freely as you turn it. There may be stuff under it, or you might find it's sticking and you have to force it to rotate around to bring the obstruction to you. Regardless, root around in there until you find whatever is gumming up the works.
The cover just snaps back into place when you're done. You should feel a decent snick as it pops back in.
I see no need to remove power from the appliance for this, as there is no way for the drain pump to turn on with the door open - plus I doubt it can really hurt you even if it did. But I guess you can if you're at all worried.
