---
title: "F Numbers on a Whirlpool-Built Kenmore Washer, and How to Read Them"
description: "A Kenmore washer F21 error is a drain problem on a Whirlpool-built 110. How the F and E halves work, and why the same machine may print one number."
url: "https://kenmoremiami.support/blog/whirlpool-built-kenmore-washer-f-codes/"
date_modified: "2026-09-01"
Category: "Troubleshooting"
---


# F Numbers on a Whirlpool-Built Kenmore Washer, and How to Read Them

## Kenmore washer F21 error: the number is a result, not a part

Plate says **110**? Then the machine is a Whirlpool, and it uses a numbering scheme of its own that has nothing to do with the two-letter codes on the LG-built machines sold under the same badge.

F21 means a drain problem. That is the whole of the manufacturer's meaning, and the restraint is the useful part: the machine has noticed that the water did not leave when it should have. It has not identified what stopped it.

F20, from the same generation of control, is the mirror image — a water inlet problem: no water, or not enough of it.

## The two halves, on newer machines

Newer controls print the same information in two parts, as an F number and an E number together.

The **F half names the function that reported.** Fill, drain, motor control, temperature, the user interface, and so on.

The **E half names what that function reported.** Too long, out of range, no response, disagreement between two sensors.

Read that way, F9 E1 on a dishwasher from the same manufacturer is not a mysterious pair of codes but a sentence: the drain function reported that draining took too long — which is exactly what Whirlpool's own label for it, Long Drain, says out loud.

The same scheme runs across this manufacturer's laundry, dishwashers and refrigeration, which is why it is worth ten minutes to understand rather than looking up one code at a time.

## The words

Alongside the numbers, these machines print short words and abbreviations directly. Ld is Whirlpool's own name for a long drain. Sud warns that the drum is full of foam. LF is a long fill. Lid and LOC are about the lid switch and the control lock, and neither is a failure.

They are part of the same language, and they are often more precise than the numbers because they were written for the owner rather than for a service technician.

## What none of it tells you

No code on this machine names a part. That is not a shortcoming; it is a design decision, and it is honest. A control can measure whether water arrived and whether it left. It cannot see a coin in a trap, a hose kinked against a wall, or a detergent dose three times what the machine expects — and all three of those produce exactly the code you are looking at.

So the order of work after a drain code is the same as it would be with no code at all: the trap, the hose, the detergent, and then the pump. The code has saved you from checking the fill side, which is worth having, and that is all it claims to do.

## Why the age of the control matters more than the age of the machine

These machines were built over a long run and the electronics changed several times inside it. The result is that two washers of similar vintage can report the same condition as a single number, as a pair of numbers, or as a short word — and lists that ignore that print all three as if they were different problems.

When you call, the useful thing to have is the whole model number rather than the code alone. It tells us which control generation is in front of us, and therefore which of those notations we are reading.

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**[Read full article: F Numbers on a Whirlpool-Built Kenmore Washer, and How to Read Them](https://kenmoremiami.support/blog/whirlpool-built-kenmore-washer-f-codes/)**