What to check yourself
Step 1. Cut the power at the breaker for a few minutes
Start here. A momentary bad contact at the sensor plug produces one out of range reading and the board latches it. If the code does not come back on the next cycle, that was the whole story.
Step 2. Check the temperature of the incoming water
Worth ruling out before anyone opens the machine. A water heater set very high sends water hotter than the sensor expects to see at that point in the cycle. A cooking thermometer under the kitchen hot tap answers it in a minute; above about 150°F is too hot for a dishwasher supply.
Fill a cup and measure that. Water above 120°F scalds fast.
Step 3. Note whether it appears cold or during heating
A code at the very start of a cycle points at wiring or a disconnected sensor. A code that only appears once the machine has warmed up points at a sensor drifting under heat. One sentence on the phone, and it shortens the visit.
What a technician will look at
Described so you know what you are paying for, not as steps to repeat.
Test the sensor and its harness
The sensor sits low in the tub near the element. It is metered cold and warm and its readings compared against the expected curve, and its plug checked for corrosion. A bad connector is a common finding and a cheap repair, which is the reason to test rather than order a part.
When to call a technician
If the code returns after a reset. There is no useful owner side test beyond the ones above, and a machine that misreads its own water temperature should not be talked into running anyway.
What the repair costs
| Repair | Part only | Fitted by a technician |
|---|---|---|
| Reset, if a single bad reading latched it | - | Free |
| Diagnosis and connector repair | - | $100 to $250 |
| Temperature sensor replacement | $15 to $60 | $150 to $300 |
| Control board replacement | - | $300 to $550 |
A new machine of the same class runs $500 to $1,500. Once a quote passes about a third of that on an older appliance, the repair stops making sense.
Codes people confuse this with
Questions people ask
- How is tE different from HE?
- HE is about heat that never arrived: the water stayed cold. tE is about the reading itself being nonsense, or the sensor being disconnected. HE usually ends at the element, tE usually ends at the sensor or its wiring.
- My LG dishwasher has a tE code as well. Same part?
- The same kind of part, a temperature sensor, in a different machine at a different price. Both brands use the letters for a thermal fault, which is unusually consistent of them, but do not carry a diagnosis across.
- Can I keep running short cold cycles?
- Better not to. The heating circuit is the one place on a dishwasher where a wrong reading matters, and the sensor is what would tell the machine to stop.
Which machines this applies to
Applies to
Samsung dishwashers across the DW80, DW50 and Linear Wash ranges. Some machines write it tE1 when the fault is on a specific sensor circuit; the checks are the same.
Last checked
2026-08-10