---
title: "Water in the Bottom of the Dishwasher: Four Places to Look"
description: "How drain LG dishwasher: scooping the sump, the filter cylinder that twists out by hand, the drain hose, and the disposal plug nobody removed on install."
url: "https://lgmiami.support/blog/dishwasher-not-draining/"
date_modified: "2026-09-05"
Category: "Common Problems"
---


# Water in the Bottom of the Dishwasher: Four Places to Look

## How drain LG dishwasher: four places, in order

Scoop the standing water out with a cup or a jug first. You cannot diagnose a sump you cannot see, and there is rarely more than a couple of liters.

Then work through four places, in this order. The order is not arbitrary — it runs from free to expensive, and most machines are fixed before the second one.

## One: the filter

Take the lower rack out. In the middle of the tub floor there is a cylindrical filter that twists out counter-clockwise by hand, and under it a flat mesh plate that lifts out with it. No tools.

Everything the machine washes off the plates that does not leave through the drain ends up there. In a household that scrapes rather than rinses — which is the right way to load a dishwasher — that is a meaningful amount of material, and it accumulates. A filter that has not been out in two years will stop a completely healthy pump.

Rinse both parts under a hot tap with a brush. Then feel carefully in the sump underneath — carefully, because a shard from a broken glass gets in there as easily as an olive stone. Put it back, turn it home, and run a rinse cycle.

For a large share of these calls, that is the entire repair.

## Two: the hose behind the machine

If the filter was clean, pull the machine forward and look at the corrugated drain hose. Two things go wrong with it and both are physical.

It gets **kinked or crushed** when the machine is pushed back into its opening — a hose flattened against the rear wall of the cabinet is a common and invisible cause. And it can be pushed **too far down the standpipe** or fitted without the high loop it needs, which lets the sink drain siphon back into the machine.

## Three: the connection at the sink

Follow the hose to where it joins the plumbing. There should be either a high loop — the hose rising to the underside of the worktop before it drops — or an air gap on the sink deck. Both exist to stop waste water flowing back into the dishwasher, and both can block.

While you are there, test the sink itself. Pour a jug of water down it with the dishwasher off. A kitchen waste that backs up or gurgles is a plumbing problem, and it will present exactly as an appliance that will not drain.

## Four: the plug nobody removed

This one has a signature: **the machine has never drained properly since the day it was installed.**

A new garbage disposal ships with its dishwasher spigot blanked off by a moulded knockout plug. It has to be punched out and removed before the dishwasher hose is connected, and if the installer missed it — or connected the hose without checking — the machine has been pumping into a closed pipe ever since.

It is a two-minute job with a screwdriver and a hammer, and the plug has to be fished out of the disposal afterwards rather than left in there.

## Then, and only then, the pump

Run a rinse cycle and listen at the machine.

**A hum with no flow** means the pump is running and something is stopping the water — go back through the four places above, because something was missed.

**Silence where there should be a hum** means the pump is not running: it has failed, or it is not being told to. That is a visit, the machine comes out and goes onto its back, and the part is a stocked item on this make rather than an order.

## What the code says

LG publishes this condition as **OE**. If you searched for a different string and found nothing, that is worth knowing about this site: the maker prints several spellings for the same condition and every page here carries all of them, so whichever one your panel shows, you land in the right place.

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