How to Determine What Year My Bosch SHU5315 Dishwasher Was Made

Manufacturers of home appliances certainly don't make it easy to find out what year the appliance was made. If your dishwasher model was released annually to the same hype as most mobile phones are every year, the release date would be ingrained in your memory even if you're not a fan of that particular model and never planned to get one.

Alas, people are less excited about dishwashers these days even if they're used just as much as phones.

Finding out the production year of Bosch SHU5315 is not an impossible task, but it does help if you wanted to be a detective as a kid and owned a magnifying glass, among other sleuthing equipment.

You will want to know the production year of your dishwasher if it's due to be serviced, as it will help the service engineers to determine which tools to use to fix your appliance. It is also handy to know the year for insurance purposes.

Finally, if you're buying a secondhand dishwasher, knowing the year it was made is also really important. This information will come in handy if you need to buy any spare parts or, again, if your dishwasher develops a fault and needs to be serviced.

The Bosch SHU5315 model has now been discontinued, so if you have one at home, you likely don't remember by heart what year it was made or even what year it was bought.

Now, how do you find that magical number?

To find out the year your dishwasher was made, you first need to find its serial number. Inside the door or on the side panel of your dishwasher, you will find strings of numbers and letters hopefully still legible after years of use. One of these numbers is beginning with the letters FD. This is the serial number you're looking for.

The serial number of your dishwasher begins with the letters FD and is followed by a string of numbers. Ignore all these number but the first four.

Now, put your Sherlock Holmes hat on because you'll need it to decipher the information encoded in these four numbers.

To find out the year, add 2 to the first two digits of that four number string. The last two digits represent the month.

So if the number is FD 7902, adding 2 to the first two numbers will give you 99. Since Bosch dishwashers weren't made in 1899 yet – and barring the unlikely possibility that you're reading this post 2099 – the production year in this case is 1999. The production month is February.

If your serial is FD 8205, adding 2 to the first two digits will give you a 5 digit number 10205. In that case, ignore the first digit, giving you the year 02 (2002) and the month 05 (May).

Now, if that serial number is still legible, don't test your fate and go write it down on a piece of paper to save you time and energy the future!