This was quite long but informative. Thanks for sharing. He suggests not using the pods and using dishwashing powder in both the pre-rinse and regular dispensers. No rinsing with hands needed before loading even with weeks old, dry caked dishes.
This video changed my life, and my parents lives. They always struggled with under-cleaning and pre-washed everything. Once they started using a little bit of detergent in the pre-wash, everything comes out clean with just the suggested scape off of solids. Pre-wash detergent is critical!
It's no different from normal wash detergent, it's just normal dishwasher detergent put into the pre-wash slot of your washer. The video goes into more detail, but it basically ensures that the first rinse cycle that the washer does still has soapy water.
Or given that it is just dumped out of that slot (assuming you have one) when you shut the door, I'd say you could just toss a couple of spoonfuls of detergent into the bottom of the washer.
Dishwasher detergent only (i.e., stuff specifically marketed as for going into dishwashing machines)
Absolutely don't put dish soap like Dawn into your dishwasher - it will foam up, shoot out of the dishwasher, and absolutely wreck your dishwasher and surrounding kitchen with foam.
Normal dishwasher detergent. Never put dish soap like Dawn in a dishwasher, I've seen at least 3 kitchens flooded as a result of people not knowing this.
It does works in a pinch, just use about 3-5% as much as normal and skip the drying phase to rerun.
A related issue is people just use way to much detergents in general, presumably because commercials show people using excessive quantities. Plop Plop Fiz Fiz for example just about doubled Alka-Seltzer’s sales.
Ever since I watched that a few months back, I run the tap go get the hot water closer to the washer for the first cycle (as recommended in the vid), and I do notice a difference. So much so, that I've completely eschewed the pre-rinse (also recommended in the vid).
This must be a country-specific thing. Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference.
(Source: bought a new one a couple of years ago! I assumed a hot water feed would be more efficient, but very few models had it and they weren’t necessarily cheaper to run. Thinking about it, an electric heater inside the washer that heats exactly the amount needed is going to be way more efficient than getting hot water at a random temperature from a gas combi boiler.)
Mine says using hot water will work but only do it if you have a renewable source of heat. Otherwise, it’s more efficient to just heat up those few liters.
> Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference.
Ya, I think the same is true in America. Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. So, it wouldn't make sense to rinse your clean dishes with water that may contain bacteria and spores. Of course, you don't want to rinse hot glass with cold water either (potential breakage), so now you have to heat the water. So, you may as well just have cold water as the only source and heat it.
It's the same reason coffee machines tell you to fill them with cold water -- it has nothing to do with the temperature of the water, it's all about the potability of the water.
I’ve heard: Higher levels of dissolved minerals, which might be harmful, and a low chance of being a breeding ground for brain-eating microbes, which will be harmful.
It was a surprise to me when I first read it about 10 years ago too. I'm having trouble finding the source for the (potential) bacteria breeding problem. But, I did find an EPA document warning not to do it for another reason:
I take the opportunity to wash all the hand wash items with the water I am running to get to the hot water for the dishwasher. The water is nice and hot for the final rinse of the hand wash things, and to then start the dishwasher.
Beware, some dishwashers will throw an error or work improperly if the temperature doesn't match what it should be at certain points in the cycle. Same for some washing machines.
One of my favorite parts of that video is how he goes into how stupid an idea those "Tide Pods but for dishwashers" are. They don't do nearly as good of a job cleaning in my experience, and missing the whole pre-rinse is likely a large part of why.
Now, getting family/friends to stop using them has proven to be a challenge, because Alec can have quite the dry video format for those who are being told to "stop doing a thing you deem convenient, and watch this 32 minute video to see why".
Alec is a master at turning a three sentence concept into a 6,000 word exposition. I'm glad he's found success and seems to be enjoying Youtube, but I feel he missed his calling in academia.
> Want to see my book report? "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes." Academia, here I come!
I don’t follow this advice at all and my dishes always come out perfectly clean. So it seems totally arbitrary to me. Or at least depends on which dishwasher you have.
Watched the whole thing, got really excited (as I always pre-rinse) and then discovered that my dishwasher doesn't have a pre-wash basin. More research is needed, I suppose, to convince me to move away from rinsing (which I would love, but have not been impressed with unrinsed results thus far).
UPDATE: So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. Turns out there is a place to dump some detergent for pre-wash after all! Instead of living next to the main basin, it's built into the exterior of the dispenser latch itself. Really, just a little concave area that allows detergent to just fall out when you close the door and get used in the first cycle. Will be experimenting with this!
My dishwasher doesn't have a pre-rinse basin, either.
But, I've found that for heavily soiled loads, if I throw an extra pod into the bottom of the dishwasher before I run it, that helps. (The extra pod will be dissolved in the first rinse, giving a boost.)
Mine doesn't have a pre-wash basin either, so I just pour some directly in the dish compartment before closing/running. I feel its equivalent and it seems to work great.
>So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual.
I had gone through life either using dishwashers that came with my apartment/house, or installing used dishwashers, because I was otherwise punching above my weight.
My current home is the first place I've owned where I've bought all new appliances - which all came with manuals, which all have really good instructions for using the devices the way the product engineers intended them, and I can't believe it took me so long to come around to rtfm for day-to-day stuff. I'd basically leaned on techniques I learned as a kid in the 80s, for decades, even as technology changed. I know not to do this at work, but it was funny realizing what an oversight I'd made in my home life.
It is funny. I keep all manuals around, just in case, on rare occasions throwing away the ones for products that I no longer have. Yet not once have I actually gone back to a physical manual, finding it easier to grab one online (as I did in the dishwasher base as well).
Was going to say, if there's not a pre-rinse basin, just squirt a bit anywhere. As you can see from the one you found, it just immediately falls out anyway.
I've experimented with some of this advice in my dishwasher, with mixed results. Some of the pod manufacturers explicitly state that the pods are designed to compensate for the lack of a pre-wash, so this isn't a case of Out-of-touch Dumb Companies vs Smart Customer. Whether you believe the makers is another thing, but I think the video is oversimplifying for the sake of making viewers feel smart and achieving factoid popularity.
Pods are a scam. They measure out ordinary crappy dishwashing detergent and package it up in a 'pod' then mark the price up 10x. In the US soap seems to exist in a grey area where manufacturers can make unsubstantiated claims about performance based on 'testing' that they supposedly do internally. The new Dawn dishwashing liquids make claims about having exponentially more cleaning power and yet cleaning anything requires exactly the same amount of soap as it did with the old Dawn.
Beware that his advice about extra detergent for the prerinse stage doesn't apply to all dishwashers: some let a little water rinse through the detergent compartment during that part of the cycle, so some is released even if you're using a tablet. Once they get to the main part of the programme, the compartment flips open to let the tablet fall out so it can finish dissolving completely. This totally solves the problem described in the video. Unlike the type he describes, these dishwashers don't even have a separate place for prewash detergent (because it would be redundant).
I'm in the UK, and all dishwashers I've seen work this way, even really cheap ones. So it's probably a country thing (most likely Europe vs US).
Note that a further complication is that some don't have a compartment but literally an indent on the tablet compartment where you're supposed to pour some prewash/detergent and it just gets incoporated into the mixture as it runs down. I suspect you can "boost" any dishwasher's prewash detergent amount by adding a bit on the door/in the bottom.
I stopped using pods/packs/powerballs types and pre-scrubbing after this video. I thought cheaper liquids just didn't work, because I wasn't filling the pre-wash. I tried cheaper store brand liquid detergent with pre-wash, and with pre-wash gels work great.
Right now, I'm using Cascade Gel, really happy for the price and amount. 6 bux. It's the same price as generics if you don't buy it on amazon.
With dishwashing detergent liquids are superior. Liquid detergent often contains varying amounts of KOH which is about as good as it gets in terms of cleaning power that won't also destroy dishes(NaOH). They can't put KOH in dry detergent so it's made with less effective chemicals that are better at staying in a powdered form without clumping.
I love this video. The one part that didn't seem to work for me is the "don't pre-rinse your dishes" part -- perhaps my dishwasher's fault, but I was really disappointed when, after several washes and varying degrees of gook on plates and bowls, stuff was still coming out dirty. I quick pre-rinse works best for me and my dishwasher, combined with the other tips in his video.
Yeah. We stopped giving the dirty dishes a quick rinse and scrub after watching that video and all that happened is the dishdrawer drain blocked and the kitchen flooded. (First time ever.)
We’re back to giving the dishes a quick rinse and scrub before they go in the dishwasher.
While you don't need to pre rinse the dishes, you should at least probably scrape any leftover food off of them. I don't think I've ever had a load of dishes with enough physical matter on them to actually block a drain, and I've never pre rinsed.
That runs contrary to my experience as well. Fats, syrups, and greens - you don’t necessarily have to rinse and scrub but try to leave some starchy sticky rice or eggs to dry on the plate and that stuff may not come off, it will be dried and cemented even further.
It really depends on your dishwasher. I recently upgraded an old dishwasher to a Bosch 500, stopped pre-rinsing, and the end result is better than what the old one could do with pre-rinsing.
I don’t know if I want my dishwasher coated with automotive chemicals. But I’ve thought about having a second one in the garage for parts cleaning before sand blasting
My wife sweats how things get loaded in the dishwasher.
My opinion is that provided stuff comes out clean, the proper way to load the dishwasher is up to the person who took the time to do it for everyone in the house.
You two should go to couples therapy. No joke. The alternative: you let this disagreement remain and be a daily mini-stressor for the rest of your lives.
Or it could be the thing they joke and laugh about how different they're from each other. Taking extreme absurd examples at each other. Maybe even recording a TikTok video.
Why is it that people are always so quick to suggest (couples) therapy? Is it so unlikely that two adults can work something out between themselves, especially if they are in a marriage? Being married is essentially figuring out these mini conflicts, so you better be good at it. That's not to say that counseling cannot help, but it always seems like such an overreaction. Also: please don't take relationship advice from random strangers :)
Totally agree that conflict resolution is a key component of marriage. I suggest couples therapy as it provided me (and others) with a larger toolbox to address conflicts in general. Of course, if a couple can satisfactorily figure things out themselves, then no need! But that's not the picture that OP painted.
1. It's not about the disagreement. It's about what's behind the disagreement.
2. Many people cannot or will not discuss matters amongst themselves. Getting an impartial third-party engaged (and one who doesn't have a stake in future relationship(s) with the disputants) can have a hugely useful "unsticking" function.
Mind, there are many therapists and therapy methods, not all work, and some practitioners are incredibly ineffective.
My only disagreement with this is that there are some things that result in a more efficient unload. For example, as you put utensils in, grouping like utensils will result in a more efficient unloading. It's sort of like insertion sort, you start wit an empty set, insert a fork in one area, next you insert a spoon where spoons go, etc. It is marginally more effort than placing them in.
I do agree though if you load you get to load however you see fit. So carry on with doing stuff!
On the other hand, grouping like utensils might result in nesting such as spoons spooning. Might that reduce the effectiveness of the cleaning of those utensils?
Speaking of utensils in the dishwasher, I've occasionally stabbed myself on a steak knife when removing utensils from the dishwasher.
That raises the question of why do many steak knives have pointy tips?
I have never had occasion to stab my steak, nor have I ever noticed anyone else doing so with their steak. If I need to stab a piece of steak for some reason a fork will handle that just fine.
I intentionally alternate spoons with forks to ensure that adjacent spoons don't prevent each other from getting cleaned. And I put all knives in one area by themselves; I still have to avoid poking myself, but keeping them separate makes it easier to focus on the knives all at once.
But agreed, no idea why a kitchen steak knife would need a pointed tip.
I guess it depends on the dish washer, mine has individual slots for each utensil so this won't happen. They all get a margin of space between one another.
Lies! You should do the sorting once they're already clean, because they're easier to handle then. When you're loading it they're all dirty, put them wherever is quickest.
Miele dishwashers (maybe they exist for others brands too but I've only ever seen them on Miele) have a cutlery tray at the top of the dishwasher which allows you to lay cutlery down next to each other.
Emptying is then simply grabbing the entire group and placing straight into the drawer.
I have this (ours is a Bosch) and it’s wonderful. Cutlery goes from being a jangly hassle to an absolute breeze, and it also means there’s more space in the rest of the washer for everything else.
Widely available in all brands as far as I can tell. I don't get it all (had several chances to try it, family), in my experience it moves work from the unloading phase to the loading phase. I'd rather do it in the former. I know other people love it. When I was planning our kitchen, the lady said (jokingly) it's a religious issue.
depends on how you load. during loading items more likely come in a random order, especially if a single meal is not enough to fill the machine, but you collect items throughout the day until the machine is full. so if you are handling one item at a time already, might as well use the opportunity to sort right there.
The person who unloads should decide. Nothing worse than unloading a dishwasher with the spoons sticking together, cups full of pools of water, dishes still dirty because they were stacked too tightly, etc etc
If the dishwasher is awaiting dirty things, then whoever carts their own dishes into the kitchen can stick it straight in rather than place it on a bench for anyone else.
If the dishwasher is full of clean things. Then empty it, and put your dirty thing in.
Of course, it is a fantasy to ensure others in my household see things the same way.
Early on my wife and I had a blow out argument about the dishwasher. Truth is we just started living together and we had some little annoyances bottled up and the dishwasher is what broke the camels back that evening. But, we remember it as the dishwasher fight. And, she does all the dishes now because I’m standing my ground that there is nothing wrong with my method, it’s just not hers. Happily married and have been living together for almost 20 years now and I haven’t loaded a single dish in almost as long. It actually worked out brilliantly for me now that I think about it.
Don't block the spinny thing. Don't leave anything where it can fall through onto the heating element and start burning. Make sure things can't flip over and fill with nasty greywater that sloshes onto everything else.
The number of times people have done me the "favor" of loading my dishwasher and broken these rules has made me sweat it too.
Here, hot tap water is heated by district heating, while most dishwashers take cold tap water and electrically heat it.
District heating is waste heat from coal plants that produce electricity - so, depends on how you count, it can be considered free from CO2 perspective. Or then as purely made by coal, so actually really bad. Depends.
If you use electricity and the coal plant is 30% efficient, that means each kWh of electricity produced 2 kWh of waste heat.
So the calculation might not be so simple energy wise.
If your pipes are not insulated, the dishwasher might get only room temperature water anyway.
Also, district heating - it depends. In the winter, they run this district heating not only for electricity, but ramp it up for more heat production, in the winter.
Even in a typical domestic setting where hot water is heated (at something like 90%+ efficiency) by natural gas, it's still probably better than using grid electricity.
The problem is that it might not take hot water at all unless you have a water circulation pump installed and running (not sure how that thing is called in the states).
> while most dishwashers take cold tap water and electrically heat it
That's surprising. Here in the US, my dishwasher is connected to the hot water line.
Maybe it does vary from one region to another, but I can't see why it would make sense to connect to the cold water line. Typically, dishwashers are near the sink (so it's easy to load), so hot water should be available in most cases.
In my parents home, their dishwasher and washing machine is connected to both. In both the houses I've lived in in the last 10 years, all the appliances I have had have had their own heaters.
> can't see why it would make sense to connect to the cold water line
My hot water line might be a different temperature to what my dishwasher works at. If it's too high, were wasting energy by heating up the water too much. If it's too low, the dishwasher doesn't work properly. Some people don't have 100% hot water on demand; in the UK and Ireland, having a hot water tank is common (and will likely be common when ground/air source pumps are installed, or if electric boilers are used), and there's no guarantee that the tank will have enough wayer at the right temperature
> If it's too high, were wasting energy by heating up the water too much. If it's too low, the dishwasher doesn't work properly.
Even if it's too high, it's not wasting compared to electrical heater, but possibly it break dish washer. If it's too low (but not cold), then just additionally use electric heater in dish washer. Still efficient than just heating cold water by electric heater.
> Even if it's too high, it's not wasting compared to electrical heater, but possibly it break dish washer
Why would it break the dishwasher? It would need a cold intake aswell, and to measure the water temperature on intake and mix it with cold water to get to the right temperature.
> If it's too low (but not cold), then just additionally use electric heater in dish washer
So now you need a hot water supply, _and_ an extra electric heater? That sounds like a bunch of extra complexity.
> Still efficient than just heating cold water by electric heater.
Electric heaters are remarkably efficient, and a dishwasher is likely well insulated. They're often closed loop systems, reusing the same water for the entire wash. The first dishwasher I found (for £350) on a national retailer advertises using under 10L of water, and 0.75kWh of energy per cycle. That's practically nothing.
Here in Japan, no dish washer have dedicated cold intake because it's nonsense. Usually hot water on kitchen can't be too high because it's pre mixed. It seems that some US model has both. Could faucet on kitchen in US supply too hot like 80C water?
Hot water supply should be available in nearby dish washer because it's on near kitchen sink (but YMMV). So no complexity added compared to cold water supply.
Yes I agree even only electric heater is used, it won't charge much higher electricity bill, but plugging hot water pipe is still efficient.
My guess is spacing issues in non-US homes. When I was growing up in the US, running the dishwasher meant wheeling it over to the kitchen sink, hooking it up to the hot water tap, and then running it.
Friends had their dishwashers built-into the kitchen cabinetry and had a water line directly to it.
I live outside of the US now in eastern europe, and for older apartments, dishwashers aren't really possible unless you do specific renovations to run piping for it. There either just isn't space or isn't piping (or both) to make it work.
Newer apartments it's much more common, but the dishwashers are about half-the size of what I grew up with in the US.
What is with that guy in the article desperately trying to advocate for hand washing dishes? He really tries to rationalize the joy of hand washing to the point I feel really happy for him. He found joy in a mundane, mildly awful task but it also feels darker for a reason I can’t quite pinpoint. Like an OCD thing?
I don't know, I quite enjoy washing dishes by hand. As someone who spends most of the day typing in front of a screen, it's nice to do a fairly mindless manual task and let my thoughts wander.
If you wait to fill the dishwasher with its routine contents before running it, this is supposed to save the most detergent & water.
Now if you have at least two of every item that could be likely to be "in the dishwasher" at any one time, it would be ideal to also have maybe another whole dishwaher's load of cabinets & storage space to put it in.
That way you will actually have enough extra space to store basically two full loads of duplicate kitchenware when the dishwasher itself is truly empty.
You've got to have all these duplicate items and handy space and it barely cuts the odds in half that the item you want is going to still be in the dishwasher anyway.
At least that's how it works in the chemistry laboratory.
And if it needs to be analytically clean it's possible to make the data more meaningful by hand-washing the high-stakes items.
I think the thinly-vailed condescension over people who use a dishwasher is what rubs me the wrong way, as though using a more energy and time-efficient method to avoid a monotonous unnecessary task is a vice, or that hand-washing dishes is somehow promoting social harmony (in a way that isn't substitutable with a less pointless activity).
I moved the utensil bins from the front to the right side of our dishwasher (it fits nicely in our new machine), but sadly my roommate didn't like it there :(
To be honest, I find it hard to believe the "it saves water" argument.
How do you need 100 liters of water to hand wash 144 items? I can wash up an exquisite dinner for six in two tubs of water, that is maybe ten liters tops? (Just make sure to start with the cleaner stuff so your water doesn't get full of chunks of food.) A normal small family dinner is easily washed up in 5 liters of water and one squirt of liquid...
This indicates to me that you are using a literal tub of water to wash the items in, using the same water for all dishes. Kinda gross but besides the point. Most people that hand wash dishes are just letting the faucet run while they wash the dish so that's why it uses so much water, they aren't reusing any water
it's 100% the norm in the UK to wash dishes in a tub (as opposed to under the tap; dishwashers are common too). You change the water when it gets mucky, but if you've scraped off your solid food & rinsed off sauce residue beforehand, that takes a while.
Dito here in germany (at least in my near family), the dishwasher essentially reuses the same water too to clean after rinsing, you just don't see it hehe.
Suds are also not rinsed off in the UK if I recall? That would definitely safe some water too.
That’s why most sinks have two compartments. You wash your dishes in one, then rinse in the other. Do it right and it’s just as efficient as the dishwasher.
Most people do not hand wash 144 items at once though. If there's only one person with a plate, fork, knife, glass and pan that's roughly 30 wash cycles.
Apparently, it is common practice in some regions to wash dishes under a continuously flowing stream of water from the taps. Practices vary widely by region. Russian seems to favour the "let it flow" practice. Germany and several regions with a history of water shortages and rationing (Australia, South Africa, California) equal or best even the most efficient dishwashing machines.
There the usual practice is more like:
- Fill wash sink with dishes to be washed. (Excess sit on the counter next to the sink.)
- Fill wash sink with hot sudsy water.
- Fill rinse sink with cold clear water.
- Place drying rack on counter on opposite side of sink to dirty dishes.
My preferred workflow is right-to-left for all this.
- Let dishes soak in washing-up fluid for a few minutes.
- Scrub off any attached food w/ sponge and/or brush.
- Move to rinse sink.
- Place in drying rack.
(This is second-nature to me. Apparently it's a revelation to some.)
The washing sink holds about 2 gallons / 8 litres of water. The rinse sink another another 1/2 gallon / 2 litres.
And dishes and tableware come out clean. I frequently find myself re-washing what comes out of the dishwasher. There are also items that cannot go through the dishwasher, meaning that there's some hand-washing regardless.
My view is that it's ... a wash. Efficient hand-washing is about as efficient as a high-efficiency dishwasher. If hand-washing dishes isn't a chore to you (and/or you live in a small household), it's fine.
I also find it far easier to determine what's clean or not, and to put dishes away, from the drying rack than from the dishwasher.
Studies from a few years back on the machine-vs-hand discussion.
Note that the study I'm linking here is all but certainly the one the Gruanaid references. It seems to be the go-to. And it is virtually always hugely misrepresented (as in this particular article).
If you're hand-washing in a pre-filled tub using a few litres/gallons of water, you're about as efficient as a dishwashing machine. In my experience it's nearly as fast (loading/unloading are a considerable time factor), cleanliness is far easier to assure, and wear on dishes, glassware, flatware, and cutlery is vastly reduced. (Though you may break more items if you're clumsy.)
In Japan, washing by continuously flowing stream of water is normal because we love cleanness and water shortage isn't a thing in most places. There's nearly zero chance kitchen to have two sinks.
A normal small family dinner is easily washed up in 5 liters of water and one squirt of liquid...
You can probably fit four of those dinners into a dishwasher and it'll still use only 10l. I agree that the comparison in the article seems exaggerated in the article and more reasonable estimates I can find put dishwashers at double the efficiency.
I've read other numbers (e.g. 131 times[1]) for cotton totes -- they're bound to vary since both plastic bags and cotton bags vary widely in their construction and how heavy duty they are. That said I'm sure I have cotton bags that I've used a thousand times and I expect I'll use them another thousand times, at least.
Many of the arguments against reusable bags focus on water and energy costs of natural fibres (surprisingly high), but not on the million-year biohazard waste legacy of plastics.
The principle problem with cost-benefit analysis is in determing what costs and benefits to consider, and what values to ascribe to them.
Mind that numerous reusable bags are themselves synthetic (nylon or other plastics), which starts splitting differences --- lower energy and water costs, but still presenting the waste-stream hazard.
First clean of food chunks into the bin. Then fill the tub with hot water + liquid. Then submerge plates etc. one by one while scrubbing them. When clean, put in the dish rack to dry.
"The food filter is there for a reason, he adds – simply remove and clean it once a month"
If you have a Bosch, I'd recommend doing it every third or fourth cycle. There's no food grinder/impeller in these machines and the fine filter gathers material way faster than what you're probably used to.
> The idea of leaving half-washed food waste in the machine and recirculated for a whole month also doesn't appeal to me. But perhaps that's just me.
Unless there are actual solids (=bones, remains of stickers on glasses that contain plastics) in there, the combination of heat and extreme alkality of the washing water will dissolve just about anything over time so that it passes through the filter and gets pumped out.
The common service call for Bosch dishwashers is "will not drain", and the common fix is to pull out the completely clogged filter and clean it as seen in the video above. The evidence doesn't support the idea that the material eventually dissolves out of the filter.
Secondly, the final rinse water is filled into the tub and recirculated over the same filter. It's not directly sprayed from the water supply over the dishes and into the drain.
The difference between theory and practice in Bosch machines is very large. They don't really work that way, in my experience. Instead, the whole filter complex ends up with a huge gooey mess that clogs the whole filter.
As a (satisfied) Bosch dishwasher owner, I don't recognise this description. Offhand I can't even remember when I last cleaned the filter. Meanwhile, it just keeps working.
This morning, not long after reading most of this thread, I went to empty my Bosch dishwasher. It's just shy of a year old, and was a huge upgrade from the 25 year old Maytag it replaced. I keep being concerned about the filter, and hadn't checked it in a few months, and the only thing in there was a dozen or so dog hairs.
Really surprised me because dishes get scraped and dog-licked, but there's definitely plenty of solids that go into the wash. Seems like the detergent (basic Powerball solid things) and hot water are doing what it's supposed to.
The main complaints I read about it were how slow it is. At ~2:45 for a cycle that is a while, but it doesn't really matter. If I start it after a meal it's done well before I'm getting ready for the next. Run it overnight, done by morning.
As opposed to my old dishwasher which was ~45 minutes and noisy and sounded super powerful, I think the long wash cycle is key to modern dishwashers. I believe they basically soak/flood everything over time, letting them chemicals do their job, and the less force means it's quieter. Couple that with a bunch of insulation and the result is something more efficient that works well, at the (completely acceptable) expense of time.
A lot of that 2:45 time is the drying cycle, which uses the latent heat in the dishes to (hopefully) evaporate water off the dishes and condense on the cooler inside of the tub.
I'm a bit more interested in the newer Bosch models that are using a zeolite bed to dry the dishes. The catalyst generates heat and absorbs moisture at the same time, then is renegerated during the wash.
I find it strange that Bosch doesn't put grinders in their dishwashers, they certainly do have a good reputation. Why don't they?
I happen to be looking for a dishwasher now. Mine is having problems after 8 years (it's from IKEA, probably a rebranded Whirlpool). It has a grinder, but it the upper deck is no longer getting clean because the upper spinnning thing is no longer spinning and flinging water, I think. Also the plastic bits and gasket are starting to deteriorate.
Any recs for a good dishwasher? I'm looking for something that will last 10+ years.
Asko, without question. I've had three (in three different houses) and they've always been fantastic. Current one is rebadged as a Viking. I would definitely buy another one. First one I actually removed and reinstalled in another house. That one lasted over 10 years and is probably still running.
Just remove the upper propeller and clean the friction surface with a sponge. It probably has gunk or calcium or detergent built up on it.
While you're at it, clean the water connection mating surface between the upper drawer and the back of the dishwasher. If there's gunk there water will squirt out and the propeller will have less water pressure.
A gopro is a great tool for checking that both propellers are spinning properly.
Energy consumption. No grinder means the whole system can be driven by the pump motor alone which uses less power. Simpler (cheaper) construction as well.
the upper spinning thing is no longer spinning
The sprayer arms aren't driven by motors, they're driven by the force of the water coming out. So that means you probably have food particles stuck in the ports where water comes out. I'd remove the arm and clean it by hand. Use a toothpick to open up the ports.
Also if the upper tray is height-adjustable, check the rubber one-way valve flaps in the middle of the supply tube that runs up the inside rear wall of the basin. If any of those flaps are damaged or missing, water will leak out there instead of being directed to the spray arm depending on which height position you're using. If you're lucky, you might still have one usable height position without replacing anything. Otherwise you need a whole new supply tube ($60-100) as the rubber part doesn't seem to be sold separately.
Reading the comments here, I think we generally use dishwashers quite differently in Europe than they do in the US.
I'm French, in Belgium, with an Italian dishwater that doesn't have a grinder (didn't even know that this existed) and I simply don't leave anything that could have to be ground on my dishes.
I do have to clean the filter once in a while, but I just don't leave on my dishes anything that could be scrapped beforehand. I don't prewash them or do anything special, but I don't leave solid waste on my dishes either.
I think the grinder is a matter of convenience. It means there is no filter to change, ever. I've never actually had a dishwasher with a filter. I don't even know where it is located!
If the filter were very easy to reach/remove/clean/replace, I would consider the benefits of a dishwasher without a grinder.
Parts for the whirlpool are easy to find if you use the model number on the door. Replacing the upper arm is a 20 minute job, and lots of the part sites have instructional videos now. I'm 21 years into a crappy GE.
Another guess might be noise. Grinders are noisy and Bosch dishwashers are dead silent.
I have a Benchmark series Bosch and it cleans dishes better than any I've ever had. I think a major factor is the built-in water softener. I have hard water, and soft water is key for allowing detergents to properly work.
Beko, Indesit, Hotpoint, even Whirlpoop. Samsung and LG are surprisingly good until the electronics fail (very hard to find, expensive new). Miele are great but again, problems with part availability. Though they rarely break.
Bosch/Siemens dishwashers are frankly, garbage.
Dumbass metal/plastic construction (the plastic will crack and leak at the back), smartass inlet sensor that will fail, board at the bottom that will be taken out when it floods, overly sensitive drain and turbidity sensors, and the damn heater is a piece of shit.
They thought they were so smart using a flat wire heater (as found in many bottom heating kettles) but it fails very, very often and is expensive as hell even second hand if you can find one.
This basic construction hasn't changed for over a decade now, just like with most appliances.
Strange, since their washing machines are great and dryers are OK.
I personally like Beko, which many shit on - no frills, no bullshit dishwashers using easily available parts (shared with other brands), really easy to fix.
They work as well as any other brand, the water pressure is one of the most important things and theirs is always good.
Preferably the higher end models with built in fans, screen, they're better built than the cheap models.
I've had a series of bosches and cleaning the bottom filter is a very common operation - anything large that is left on a plate and doesn't dissolve (like a raisin) gets stuck below the filter (dunno how it gets through the filter but it does) and eventually that area clogs.
I use stainless steel for a lot of my cooking and grew up in a household without dishwasher. When I got my hand on a dishwasher as an adult and tried out washing the stainless steel utensils in it, I saw that the steel utensils had a coloured pattern left in it - it is similar to the pattern seen when petrol mixes with rain water on the roads. I am not sure if that is safe. Anybody know why this occurs?
On top of that some detergents will leave a bit behind (for various reasons). All of the washers I had, have an extra 'jet dry' compartment. It adds a drop in for the last rinse cycle. Seems to bind to the stuff and clear it up by letting it wash away. So if you are getting spotty glasses after cleaning look into that.
I hand wash our stainless pots and get (what I think is) the same. I think it’s a very thin film of something (not likely soap as I can get it without soap).
I use white vinegar to dissolve it about once a month (making me think it’s basic, possibly calcium carbonate). Pour in a cup or so of white vinegar and set the pan to heat. When it’s hot but before it boils, swish it around and then pour it into the next pan. Rinse the first pan in plain water while the vinegar sits in the second. When the first pan is rinsed, pour the vinegar into the third, etc.
Our stainless pans never see the inside of the dishwasher and still get this.
Also, presumably you're fine with vinegar, but for anyone else who prefers less fragrant cleaners, citric acid (usually available as a powder) can almost always be substituted for vinegar with comparable to better results.
The Guardian left out what I consider the most likely 'failure mode' for someone that thinks dishwashers are a magical cleaning box. Make sure the spinning wash arms are not blocked AND everything is secure, so knives, forks, lids, etc. can not fall and block the wash arm's spin. Lots of cycles seem to fail around here when someone can't seem to remember how gravity still affects things in the dishwasher..
Yes. It took me a year to figure out why my Bosch sporadically left loads of dishes dirty. It turned out that some of our smaller square dishes are able to poke down through the rack far enough to stop the lower wash arm.
Lemi shine is the game changer for us. A tiny bit into the machine and everything comes out way better. Unfortunately everyone is switching to pods which do a bad job in the dish washers I've used. Seems like only the dollar stores sell the dishwasher powder these days. Lemi shine and lemi shine boost, not paid by them but give it a try if your machine always does a bad job, a little goes a long way too. I originally found it by washing brass (I reload ammo).
Don't knock dollar stores. I get a lot of stuff there because I don't need a large amount before it goes bad or stuff that is good enough or discounted.
I might be slightly old/senile/dumb but what problem does this solve? If the dishwasher contains dirty dishes, it's dirty and if not, it's not. Why would you need another signal to tell if it's dirty or not?
It is not always obvious whether the dishes are dirty, especially if you are in a household that does some amount of rinsing of dishes (or if you had a meal that didn't have a lot of color to it).
Does it contain dirty dishes, or did the spouse run the dishwasher while you weren't paying attention? Now you're stacking dirty dishes in with the clean (sure, the dishwasher was full, but you found a spot). Or your one sample dish was rinsed, and looks clean, so you start stacking dirty dishes in the cupboard...
At our house, it's easier to just use a little magnet with clean/dirty on it to track dishwasher state. Or one can use the soap door suggestion above.
It might be that my household eat food on plates very differently, but it's obvious if it's dirty or clean dishes in the dishwasher, as long as you open the door and look in.
But I guess as the other comment mentioned, if you pre-wash the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher (not sure why you would, but let's run with it), then I can kind of see how it can be confusing.
but it's obvious if it's dirty or clean dishes in the dishwasher, as long as you open the door and look in.
Okay, let's go with that: why open the door when a $0.50 magnet can be glanced at, along with saving (what is probably a trivial amount of) wear-and-tear on the door mechanism? It's a dishwasher, not a box full of Schrödinger felines: we're allowed to cheat and put the current state on the outside of the box.
How is the indicated state maintained accurately? My experience is that clean-dirty magnets are quite prone to displaying a stale state frequently enough to not be reliable (which led directly to the suggestion).
Having a household of nothing but adults probably helps immensely. But the procedure is: flip the magnet when starting the dishwasher. Flip it back when the dishwasher is emptied. However, I can see how young kids in the house, or just plain lazy roommates, could make this less optimal.
I guess in general I tend to ask myself "why do X?" rather than "why not do Y?" and if there isn't enough benefit to doing X, I just work with what's there.
The best way to load a dishwasher is to get a Miele. (At least the US models, I can't speak for other countries.)
For Reasons, I've dealt with six dishwashers over the last decade. This one actually works. Anything that goes in and isn't ludicrously dirty or positioned just gets clean. It's wonderful not caring about top rack vs bottom rack or prewash or starting the hot water early or....
Having had the (unfortunate) opportunity to personally compare the Miele to the top-of-the-line-in-2014 Maytag back-to-back, the Miele is a different animal.
I ended up getting a Miele machine because it was the only relatively accessible dishwasher with a water softening system.
Our town water is very hard, and all my previous dishwashers struggled with this, delivering dishes with ugly milk white streaks and residue no matter what we did. Water softening solved all the issues (I know because even the Miele washer has problems without the salt needed for the water softener to function).
That it's a very nice and well-built washer is an additional cherry on top.
I had a Miele once but it didn't last. A Bosch was half the price, did as well, was silent, and lasted many years. Don't understand the cult of Miele considering the high price. On the other hand I have a Miele vacuum that is 25 years old and works perfectly, so maybe it was just bad luck. But Miele vacuum cleaners don't cost $4000.
Two of those six dishwashers were Boschs. The Miele is far better at cleaning. (Though, admittedly, I don't think either Bosch was top-of-the-line. Their best models might be much better than their midrange.)
And if a Miele dishwasher actually cost $4000, I'd probably have a Bosch today.
Pro-tip: While it's fun and awesome to optimize these little household tasks for maximum efficiency, it's not cool to criticize how your SO/housemates/whomever does it. This is not the hill to kill your relationships on.
> Despite all the caveats, dishwashers are not only the convenient answer to our modernist woes, they’re actually more energy- and water-efficient than hand washing. A full dishwasher can clean 144 items with roughly 13 litres of water, or anything between eight and 20. According to a study by the University of Bonn, hand washing the same load uses, on average, 100 litres of water.
I genuinely wonder how people get up to 100 litres of water, or if my intuition regarding nr. of items vs water volume is just that far off. Are we sure this isn't measured by comparing to people using a constantly running tap for this instead of filling up one sink for washing and one for rinsing? Because I was pretty shocked to discover that most of my friends use a constantly running tap while washing the dishes.
More often than not [at least where I happen to live in the US] I actually see kitchen sinks with only one basin (and often too small). One basin isn't really enough to efficiently clean dishes without it being a big hassle.
I suspect that this is a multifaceted consequence of dishwashers becoming so commonplace, people cooking less and less, and constant attempts by owners to cut minor costs at the expense of tenants' standard of living.
> instead of filling up one sink for washing and one for rinsing?
Most people I know have one sink. Two sinks were found in rich peoples homes.
Personally I really want one of those big commercial sink faucets that's a flexible shower head suspended by a spring BUT turned on by a momentary foot pedal instead of a squeeze valve on the head. The you have both hands free to rinse and scrub while your foot operates the faucet.
> Most people I know have one sink. Two sinks were found in rich peoples homes
My tiny student apartment had one, but other than that even the social housing I've lived in had two. My experience is limited to slightly older housing in the Netherlands and Sweden tough, so the other commenters point about smaller sinks being a consequence of cutting costs might still be valid.
Also, provided there is enough space this can be done in a single sink too: wash all items first, then rinse them. Speaking from (student) experience.
saving water is not all that matters. actually, saving soap is a lot more important. the more concentrated the dirt and soap is in the water, the harder it is for the biological wastewater treatment to work.
i can't find the reference but i remember reading an article in a german magazine lamenting about exactly that problem, suggesting that people don't use enough water instead of to much.
as a consequence, i prefer to spend more time scrubbing and rinsing and trying to remove as much dirt as possible without using soap, and only add a bit of soap at the end to remove the remaining oils that scrubbing can't get rid of.
given how much soap some people use when handwashing, the dishwasher may still be more effective on average, but i wouldn't use one just to save water.
>saving water is not all that matters. actually, saving soap is a lot more important. the more concentrated the dirt and soap is in the water, the harder it is for the biological wastewater treatment to work. i can't find the reference but i remember reading an article in a german magazine lamenting about exactly that problem, suggesting that people don't use enough water instead of to much.
That link would be worth its length in gold for me to show my spouse!
>I genuinely wonder how people get up to 100 litres of water, or if my intuition regarding nr. of items vs water volume is just that far off. Are we sure this isn't measured by comparing to people using a constantly running tap for this instead of filling up one sink for washing and one for rinsing?
A quick search says faucets run between 1.5 to 2 gallons per minute. That works out to 13.2 to 17.6 minutes of water. Dividing that by 144 items works out to 5.5 to 7.3 seconds of "on" water per item. That's on the high side, but not unreasonable if you're doing a through rinse.
>my friends use a constantly running tap while washing the dishes.
I realize this will sound whiny and justifying water wasting, but I am including tech solutions...
1. My hands are busy and filthy while I am washing dishes. I don't want to touch the handle. = Give me a foot controlled valve.
2. My kitchen faucet literally takes 2 minutes to get hot water. = Give me instant hot water (to a precise temp that won't burn me).
3. More water pressure makes it faster to clean food off and speed is of the essence when you are doing this chore. = Pressurize the water.
On a side note, I have determined that being the one in a relationship that takes full responsibility for the ever ominous dishes chore allows me to do less overall chores without complaint from my partner.
2. You can get a water circulator that moves hot water to the cold water pipe until it gets hot. I haven't met a plumber that has recommended them though.
> I don't want to touch the handle. = Give me a foot controlled valve.
If you want to save a bit of water, you can get faucets that are "touch" controlled (on/off). That way you can touch the faucet with your wrist/forearm/back of hand to turn it on/off. Temp is controlled by the knob position so it stays the same temp through on/off cycles until you move the knob.
You can get foot valves[1]! And I think they're wonderful, I wish every faucet had them, and infinitely better than fighting with sensor-operated ones. You can pretty easily use half or less water while doing many sink-things.
I went searching, because it does sound like quite the quotable claim. Almost everyone who talks about the efficiency of handwashing seems ultimately to be referencing the same paper[1], although virtually nobody cites it.
The peak of the distribution of water usage is in the 40-50 litre range, however a nontrivial number of people use an absolutely enormous amount of water. The paper gives some observations about different approaches to washing, although it doesn't describe them systematically.
If you want to save more water/have only one sink: only put a little bit of water in the sink and rinse with the tap (not constantly running of course) into the washing sink.
Not really much more trouble and you're always rinsing with clean water.
I don’t even have 144 items in my kitchen, I don’t think, so that’s probably a lot of dishwashing. It could happen if you lane the water running the entire time. I’m horrified to think that some people do that.
The article GROSSLY misstates the findings of the University of Bonn study.
Yes, many people around the world wash dishes under an open tap in a manner that can use 100+ litres of water.
But if you're filling a sink tub with hot sudsy water, soaking and scrubbing plates, and then rinsing them in a second tub of cold clear water (and even a squirts from the spigot), you're using about the same amount of water as a dishwasher.
The dishes come out as clean or cleaner (the detergent's less effective, but you can scrub where the dishwasher cannot, and for tough stains you can use appropriate treatments), and there's far less wear on plates, glasses, and flatware as you're not using harsh chemicals and abrasives.
If you have a large household or really don't like hand-cleaning dishes, go ahead and use the dishwasher, especially a modern one, and follow the tips. If you don't mind doing dishes by hand, or only have a few items (and need to wash them for next use), handwashing in the sink is plenty efficient. There are far worse consumers of water and energy.
Despite all the advice, I’ve been washing knives in the dishwasher for a decade and they are still totally fine. They certainly don’t “rust”. What kind of metal are these people making knives out of?
The alloy of high-carbon steel that is used in many high-end knives will absolutely rust if washed in the dishwasher. Stainless steel knives generally won't rust, of course.
I've got a cheap chef's knife from the restaurant-supply store — I think it was $30 — and have been dishwashing it exclusively since 2009, and it's totally fine.
I also use Victorinox Fibrox Pro series knives. They're inexpensive, partially forged, easy to sharpen, and stay sharp surprisingly long as long as you take care of them.
I do not dishwasher mine, however, and I do not soak them.
There are four viable takes for why not to put chef knives in dishwashers...
1) It can be dangerous for anyone reaching into the dishwasher not expecting to find a sharp knife. If you live alone and no one else reaches in there and you're always at maximum vigilance, you do you. But I've known two people who got their hands and wrists sliced open horribly by sharp dishwasher knives.
2) Every stainless steel kitchen knife I've ever seen where the person regularly put it in the dishwasher had an edge that was so etched and eaten away that it basically looked serrated. Sample size is probably 20 for those. Knives I've seen where the person never put them in the dishwasher may have had a few dings and nicks, but they never looked like their edges were being dissolved away. Note though that this isn't necessarily a bad thing if you don't have an emotional attachment to the knife. A serrated knife is basically sharp on its own for free without sharpening.
3) Even if the blade isn't appreciably harmed, the rest of the knife made of other materials can be, and the handle could crack, loosen, or weaken. This depends on how the handle is made and attached.
> Fancypants non-stainless steel knives do exist and will rust.
> I don't really get why anyone likes them though.
The non-stainless alloys will have an easier time taking and keeping a very sharp edge. This makes them more useful, and for longer. Not only does a very sharp edge make the knife easier and faster to work with, is safer to use than a not-so-sharp knife.
5) The knives can cut the plastic coating on the dishwasher tray/rack and then the inner metal starts corroding. Don't ask how I know…
As for your fourth point, soft metals sharpen in a few seconds. My high carbon steel knives will slice right through tomato peel without smashing the tomato itself; or cut raw meet in one quick movement.
when my wife puts my nice knife in the dishwasher, it ends up with gouges in the blade. It's not particularly high end but it is quality steel. The washer has never done anything to the handle or the connection between the handle and the blade (I expect this knife to last 30+ more years. Good deal for $150). The dings in the blade- that is fixed by routine periodic resharpening.
PRO-TIP: when unloading the dishwasher start from the bottom and work your way up. Doing so prevents an accidental, upside-down cup or bowl from spilling water on your clean dishes beneath.
So one thing that really surprised me is the little pocket on the soap tray. I started adding some liquid soap there as part of the loading and saw a big improvement on cleaning result.
The idea is during the first pre cleaning cycle the soap will start working so you add the detergent on dish time.
They didn't mention the most important tip: Most dishwashers draw from the hot water tap and then use the first ~gallon that comes out for the crucial first scrub, regardless of what temperature comes out the pipe.
Thus, you'll get much better results if, right before pressing Start, you run the kitchen sink's hot water tap until it gets hot.
Second best tip: Spill a bit of detergent outside the detergent box so the initial scrub gets some soap. (The rest gets released in the secondary wash cycle.)
>Spill a bit of detergent outside the detergent box so the initial scrub gets some soap.
Many (most?) dishwashers have a special section for putting soap that gets used in the pre-rinse cycle. In mine it would be functionally identical to spilling some extra detergent, but it's easier to consistently measure the right amount.
True; we use a measuring spoon anyway to scoop 1 tsp into the box and 1/2 tsp to spill. (Turns out you don't need anywhere near what the box size suggests, and that can actually cause the drain to get gunked up with foam.)
Pre-rinse is useful, and particularly for older dish washers, while the pre-rinse mode on dish washers themselves is EXTREMELY useful - probably necessary to be actually water and energy efficient while still cleaning. Pre-rinse is generally ALWAYS done anyway but using detergent during it is a good idea.
Pre-rinse mode in the dishwasher involves a first water and soap wash before the water recycling main wash occurs. Most grease can be removed with the pre-rinse cycle when detergent is used. This prevents having grease "re-applied" to the dishes during the main cycle and its repeated water recycles upon the dishes.
Pre-rinse can always be done with or without detergent - some dishwashers do not have a dedicated holder for the detergent but only an indented space next to the normal cycle detergent holder. Use this for a detergent pre-rinse.
Pre-rinsing in the sink before loading is still often necessary - no dishwasher is as effective at cleaning as hand washing. And especially when a dishwasher gets old, that already lesser effectiveness gets worse.
Honestly this article sounds like a dishwasher PR story planted in the normal news. This IS HOW MOST NEWS SOURCES OPERATOR now: a PR firm/group at a corporation will write a bunch of pro-Firm/pro-Product articles FOR use by magazines, newspapers, syndication, etc. This started to happen in the 1990s and now is pretty much all stories because 1) news organizations no longer have reporters at all or have no reporters "in the field" at all, and 2) the pay isn't good enough to do "real journalism" any more.
I worked for a Fortune 25 company that was on the vanguard of this kind of PR-to-News system. It worked really well because editors are LAZY as are far too many journalists!
I think time is the ultimate measurement when using dishwasher. The trick is to know if you can load the dish washer faster than you clean it by hand. You start measuring at the point you stand in-front of the sink and end when you press the start button.
With hand-washed dishes, there should be no ambiguity over whether or not the dishes are clean or not (if they're in the drying rack, they're clean). With the dishwasher, not only can I not immediately tell, but often what's been washed is not in fact clean.
I would think unloading from a dish washer is faster than from the drying rack as it is more organized so easier to grab similar dishes. The drying rack gets chaotic once you get large amounts.
As for dishes not cleaned, that is true, you’d need to count that somehow into a bigger equation.
I appreciate people like you who care about the effects of the products we buy on ourselves and the environment. I do too. But while the EWG does some OK work, they also do a lot of fearmongering, and you can plainly see it in this link. Look at the three big scary red "F" items.
The first scary red "F" is sodium hypochlorite. This is ordinary bleach. EWG cites two reasons for the big scary "F". The first is aquatic toxicity. This is a badly misplaced fear. Consider the fact that chlorine is the most widely used disinfectant in municipal water systems, in the form of hypochlorite and chloramine. Chlorine is dumped by the ton into the water that comes out of your taps and goes down your drains. The extra chlorine from dish detergents is insignificant compared to this and other sources such as laundry bleach.
Also under the chlorine entry, EWG lists a few organic chlorine compounds. This is very misleading. Detergents don't contain any of these chemicals. Rather, they can possibly be generated when free chlorine is added to water containing a lot of organics. Many organohalogens are indeed toxic, but by far most of them that you'll encounter are generated by municipal water treatment systems. You drink and bathe in water that contains random organohalogens every day, by virtue of the chlorine used in municipal treatment. The small extra quantities generated in your dishwasher aren't a threat to you unless you make it a habit to drink the exhaust water.
The second scary red "F" on their list is zinc carbonate. This is absurd. They say it's primarily because of its potential effects on aquatic life, which I suppose might be a consideration if someone tries to use dishwasher detergent to clean a fish tank. The second reason is "general systemic/organ effects". This is the really absurd part. Zinc is an essential mineral in the human diet in large quantities. In very high doses over time, excess zinc can cause problems, but such large doses have nothing to do with dishwasher detergent residues. You'd have to actually eat large quantities of detergent daily for a long period of time, and even that would be unlikely to cause zinc overdose because the carbonate form has low bioavailability.
The third scary red "F" is "colors". They don't say what the colors are, or why they would be more of a concern than in any other cosmetic or cleaning product.
The fourth scary red "F" is "stabilizer". They don't say what the chemical is, so there's no way to know whether it's any less bullshit than the first three, or even if it exists in the product.
The scary orange "D" items continue the absurdity:
- Nitric acid: I think EWG is confused here. Nitric acid would be used only in minute quantities to adjust pH. Dishwasher detergents are very alkaline, so it's not possible for nitric acid to remain in a liquid product.
- Fragrance: Welcome to life. Everything is scented. I hate it, but putting a scary orange "D" next to it should make you roll your eyes in light of the other fragrances that saturate thousands of other products that don't get rinsed away, and thus stay in the air around you.
- Polyacrylates: you know where else you'll find polyacrylates? Fucking everywhere. Nearly every liquid cosmetic product you'll find uses polyacrylates. Shampoos, hand soap, dish soap, etc. All baby diapers are now filled with polyacrylates. They're added to potting soil to increase moisture retention. Don't eat too much of the solid form because it can expand in your stomach and cause bloating and possibly blockage, but tiny amounts of them are not the least bit threatening in your dishwasher.
In summary, don't blindly trust the EWG. None of these ingredients is the least bit dangerous even if they remained in significant quantities on your dishes, which they don't.
with chlorine, you are ignoring the production process.
with the others your argument seems to be, "it is status quo, so it is ok."
but it is not. i have been to entire towns which prohibit fragrance, including library, town hall, and police station.
this idea is still not mainstream-peak, but it is making the rounds.
i believe it is better to "err" on the side of caution when it comes to substances "potentially considered harmful" even by those who produce and approve it.
Yeah, I really wish manufacturers would knock it off with the fragrances. I hate how smelly everything is, and I think some of it gives me headaches. Laundry detergent is the worst; it contaminates everything with cheap perfume. I use non-fragranced stuff whenever I can.
> with chlorine, you are ignoring the production process.
I think you're confusing the production of hypochlorite, which is among the cleanest and most benign of all industrial processes, with that of chlorinated materials like PVC, which is fed with and leaves behind a lot of super nasty shit. Look up the Hooker process, which is how all hypochlorite is currently made. The only byproduct is sodium chloride (common salt), which is also the degradation endpoint of hypochlorite in the environment. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how clean and sustainable this particular corner of industry is.
Did you know that chlorine bleach (such as Clorox) has a shelf life for this reason? It's because hypochlorite is unstable, and eventually that bottle of Clorox will become a bottle of plain salt water.
> with the others your argument seems to be, "it is status quo, so it is ok."
Not at all. What I'm saying is that dishwasher detergent is one of the cleanest, most harmless (to us and the environment) cleaning products we use. It's actually kind of a miraculous substance; it allows a simple machine to perform the hardest household cleaning job reliably and quickly using very little water or energy. It manages to this with no surfactants (such as phosphates, which actually are environmentally damaging) and no volatile grease cutters. The grease is removed only with alkaline minerals, and protein deposits are removed enzymatically.
By drumming up a bunch of implausible and in some cases completely fictitious hazards, the EWG is doing a disservice to one of the most environmentally responsible cleaning products in use. For some reason the zinc thing especially pisses me off. That's so stupid. Pretending that zinc, a mineral that is ubiquitous in food and is essential to human health, is somehow a hazard in dishwasher detergent which is rinsed off anyway... this is basically a lie, and that alone should make you very skeptical of anything else they say.
Anyways, again, I appreciate the fact that you care about this stuff. I imagine you and I would mostly agree about environmental topics in particular.
I choose to take to the overly cautious spectrum, because this is my body and the body of people close to me at stake, and I'd rather avoid unnecessary damage to them.
You seem to take to the other end of the spectrum, the optimistic, hopeful, and apologetic side... Very well, it probably is comforting, and support you in finding your own path through this mess.
I wouldn't call myself hopeful or optimistic in this regard. Quite the opposite, actually, I downright despair over the ways we've poisoned ourselves and our environment-- for example, with lead, mercury, asbestos, air pollution, and now PFAS chemicals. However I'm also realistic about evaluating risk, and I have just enough familiarity with the chemistry of everyday life to recognize where there is none.
> I choose to take to the overly cautious spectrum, because this is my body and the body of people close to me at stake, and I'd rather avoid unnecessary damage to them.
That being the case, I assume you'll be taking some other sensible precautions, which will prevent exposure to substances that are at least as risky as dishwasher detergent:
- Cut coffee out of your diet (due to acrylamide, a suspected carcinogen)
- Cut all meat out of your diet (especially red meat)
- Avoid citrus fruits, mints, and other herbs that contain limonene, which some researcher said causes cancer in rats.
- Avoid bread, beer, dried fruits and nuts (acrylamide)
- To avoid nitrates, you'll want to avoid high-nitrate foods such as arugula, beets, cabbage, celery, cilantro, endive, fennel, kale, lettuce, parsley, rhubarb, spinach, and many others. Actually, it's probably best to avoid vegetables altogether in the Spring and Summer when nitrate levels tend to be highest.
- Avoid cell phones and wifi
- And for god's sake, don't smoke anything!
This is just the stuff I can think of right now. I'm sure there's a lot more.
The way I look at it, chemicals which my ancestors have been exposed to for hundreds and thousands of years come with a lower risk than those which have just been synthesized and were not naturally occurring before the last century.
And yes, based on watching closely for inflammation effects, I have mostly cut coffee, red meat, processed meat, bread, beer, dried fruit, synthetic nitrates, non-organic produce, cell phones (but not wifi).
I do smoke weed occasionally, but I think I take in less smoke than someone living with a campfire, something my ancestors have dealt with on many occasions.
I don't think fruits and veggies which have been consumed for centuries and millennia are that dangerous.
Generally speaking, I think of bodies as "production environments" with "known good inputs" which have worked in the past, and everything else is basically "testing in production".
> The way I look at it, chemicals which my ancestors have been exposed to for hundreds and thousands of years come with a lower risk than those which have just been synthesized and were not naturally occurring before the last century.
This clearly isn't true according to the EWG. They want you to believe that the tiny amount of zinc (which is an essential nutrient) that might be present in dishwasher detergent is poisonous enough to slap a big red warning on it. So which is it?
> I do smoke weed occasionally...
I'm all for cannabis, but I'm confused as to why someone who avoids household cleaning products is willing to put their lungs in such danger. It is well established that even occasional smoking increases your chances of lung and heart disease, and exposes you to a pantheon of toxins, including heavy metals and whatever pesticides are being used by growers in the still poorly regulated cannabis industry.
Seriously, whether you smoke or use edibles, you should be growing your own. Pesticides are a problem.
> but I think I take in less smoke than someone living with a campfire, something my ancestors have dealt with on many occasions.
Yes, and it was killing our ancestors, just as it's killing people now. Smoke pollution is a leading cause of disease, disability, and mortality across the world. It's true that your occasional smoke is probably less damaging than living with an open indoor cooking fire, but it's still doing significant damage, and it's a lot worse for your health than proper use of any cleaning product will ever be.
> I don't think fruits and veggies which have been consumed for centuries and millennia are that dangerous.
Why not? Why would you discount the danger of highly carcinogenic mycotoxins that have historically contaminated nuts, grains, and dried fruits, especially in the old days before industrial food production, and which likely killed a lot of our ancestors? And more importantly, why would you give more credence to the EWG's idiotic flagging of zinc in a cleaning product? This is a failure of risk evaluation.
John Campbell, the (in)famous editor of Analog Science Fact/ Science Fiction mag in the 50s-60s (and probably some years before and after) had a theory about tobacco smoke and fires. He reasoned that for thousands of years, people had tried to avoid smoke: campfires, chimneys, and so forth. But suddenly they took to one kind of smoke, that from tobacco. Obviously--he reasoned--it must be good for you.
>- Fragrance: Welcome to life. Everything is scented. I hate it, but putting a scary orange "D" next to it should make you roll your eyes in light of the other fragrances that saturate thousands of other products that don't get rinsed away, and thus stay in the air around you.
No, it's not everything, and it's not everywhere. There are many spaces which are free of fragrance for the most part.
It really does INCREASE QUALITY OF LIFE for many people, who are sometimes NOT EVEN AWARE of the effects this synthetic crap has on their physical well-being.
And all it takes is JUST A LITTLE BIT OF VIGILANCE on the space administrator's part in not accepting and not allowing it into the space.
Just like we are creating safe spaces which are not tolerant of bullying, bigotry, harrasment, etc., many are also creating safe spaces in terms of hazardous chemicals.
You are ignoring a lot of progress in this area when you paint things as hopeless or good enough.
And EWG is one of the most competent, clear, and level-headed organizations working in this space. They provide scientifically supported, solid, and well-researched information in an easy to understand format.
I don't think you are qualified to criticize them given what you wrote above.
I completely agree about the fragrances. I hate them, and I'm happy to hear that it's getting better.
> And EWG is one of the most competent, clear, and level-headed organizations working in this space. They provide scientifically supported, solid, and well-researched information in an easy to understand format.
Like I said, they do some good work, but they do some really shoddy, clickbaity stuff too, and this detergent link is a good example. You can tell it was written by people with no knowledge of chemistry.
> I don't think you are qualified to criticize them given what you wrote above.
Instead of an ad-hominim, are you able to defend the EWG's assertions? For example, can you explain why the EWG says a tiny amount of nitric acid used to adjust pH is a hazard of any kind? Can you explain why they think that any nitric acid could possibly survive in the finished alkaline product, or why it would be a problem even if it did? Can you find any studies or evidence of any kind to back them up?
How about the zinc? Or any of the others that I mentioned earlier?
Honestly this isn't difficult. It's not advanced chemistry. It's chemistry 101. EWG has no excuse for not knowing better.
The way I handle shiploads of Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) its already hurt somebody's feelings. That is not the intention. This is basically the most alkaline sodium chemical.
This stuff is strong in concentrated form even though the food grade product will be (hopefully) precisely diluted by orders of magnitude simply to adjust pH. Once the hydroxide becomes neutralized it's water, and such little amounts end up in each serving that's accepted as a harmless amount of additional sodium among the nutrients.
But at 50% strength it's industrial caustic soda and it more or less dissolves tissue.
This is the lye often used as drain cleaner to unclog greasy stoppages by turning the lard into water-soluble soap.
Anyway along with the carbonates the working pH in the dishwasher is so alkaline that it would slightly dissolve some glassware, especially the softer glasses and this is the kind of damage that can look like there is residue, but it will not wash off because the glass is etched. To prevent that this Cascade formula has sodium silicate so there is already some soluble silica in the bath inhibiting the uptake of more from your glassware.
The acrylates are like a micro-thin finish, so it's like a car being both washed and waxed.
263 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] threadThere is something fun about the change in perspective used in pictures like this.
Save time and get better results through haste and sloppiness.
Absolutely don't put dish soap like Dawn into your dishwasher - it will foam up, shoot out of the dishwasher, and absolutely wreck your dishwasher and surrounding kitchen with foam.
If you're curious what this mishap would look like, check out this image search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=put+dish+soap+in+dishwasher&t=ffab...
A related issue is people just use way to much detergents in general, presumably because commercials show people using excessive quantities. Plop Plop Fiz Fiz for example just about doubled Alka-Seltzer’s sales.
(Source: bought a new one a couple of years ago! I assumed a hot water feed would be more efficient, but very few models had it and they weren’t necessarily cheaper to run. Thinking about it, an electric heater inside the washer that heats exactly the amount needed is going to be way more efficient than getting hot water at a random temperature from a gas combi boiler.)
Ya, I think the same is true in America. Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. So, it wouldn't make sense to rinse your clean dishes with water that may contain bacteria and spores. Of course, you don't want to rinse hot glass with cold water either (potential breakage), so now you have to heat the water. So, you may as well just have cold water as the only source and heat it.
It's the same reason coffee machines tell you to fill them with cold water -- it has nothing to do with the temperature of the water, it's all about the potability of the water.
As a consumer of residential hot water tanks for 40+ years, this is news to me. How is the water in a residential hot water tank not potable?
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-09/documents/20...
Now, getting family/friends to stop using them has proven to be a challenge, because Alec can have quite the dry video format for those who are being told to "stop doing a thing you deem convenient, and watch this 32 minute video to see why".
Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes:
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11
> Want to see my book report? "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes." Academia, here I come!
UPDATE: So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. Turns out there is a place to dump some detergent for pre-wash after all! Instead of living next to the main basin, it's built into the exterior of the dispenser latch itself. Really, just a little concave area that allows detergent to just fall out when you close the door and get used in the first cycle. Will be experimenting with this!
But, I've found that for heavily soiled loads, if I throw an extra pod into the bottom of the dishwasher before I run it, that helps. (The extra pod will be dissolved in the first rinse, giving a boost.)
I had gone through life either using dishwashers that came with my apartment/house, or installing used dishwashers, because I was otherwise punching above my weight.
My current home is the first place I've owned where I've bought all new appliances - which all came with manuals, which all have really good instructions for using the devices the way the product engineers intended them, and I can't believe it took me so long to come around to rtfm for day-to-day stuff. I'd basically leaned on techniques I learned as a kid in the 80s, for decades, even as technology changed. I know not to do this at work, but it was funny realizing what an oversight I'd made in my home life.
The ones I buy are about 15% higher. The convenience is worth it for us for the ~$2/month increase.
I'm in the UK, and all dishwashers I've seen work this way, even really cheap ones. So it's probably a country thing (most likely Europe vs US).
Right now, I'm using Cascade Gel, really happy for the price and amount. 6 bux. It's the same price as generics if you don't buy it on amazon.
TIL, use the pre-fill
We’re back to giving the dishes a quick rinse and scrub before they go in the dishwasher.
I learned there you can run your fridge shelves through to get them nice and clean.
Also, engine parts :)
My opinion is that provided stuff comes out clean, the proper way to load the dishwasher is up to the person who took the time to do it for everyone in the house.
Is it done? Then it was done properly.
Or it could be the thing they joke and laugh about how different they're from each other. Taking extreme absurd examples at each other. Maybe even recording a TikTok video.
1. It's not about the disagreement. It's about what's behind the disagreement.
2. Many people cannot or will not discuss matters amongst themselves. Getting an impartial third-party engaged (and one who doesn't have a stake in future relationship(s) with the disputants) can have a hugely useful "unsticking" function.
Mind, there are many therapists and therapy methods, not all work, and some practitioners are incredibly ineffective.
I do agree though if you load you get to load however you see fit. So carry on with doing stuff!
Speaking of utensils in the dishwasher, I've occasionally stabbed myself on a steak knife when removing utensils from the dishwasher.
That raises the question of why do many steak knives have pointy tips?
I have never had occasion to stab my steak, nor have I ever noticed anyone else doing so with their steak. If I need to stab a piece of steak for some reason a fork will handle that just fine.
But agreed, no idea why a kitchen steak knife would need a pointed tip.
Emptying is then simply grabbing the entire group and placing straight into the drawer.
Example: https://www.miele.com/media/microsites/ubc/images/Jubilee/13...
/s
If the dishwasher is awaiting dirty things, then whoever carts their own dishes into the kitchen can stick it straight in rather than place it on a bench for anyone else.
If the dishwasher is full of clean things. Then empty it, and put your dirty thing in.
Of course, it is a fantasy to ensure others in my household see things the same way.
The number of times people have done me the "favor" of loading my dishwasher and broken these rules has made me sweat it too.
District heating is waste heat from coal plants that produce electricity - so, depends on how you count, it can be considered free from CO2 perspective. Or then as purely made by coal, so actually really bad. Depends.
If you use electricity and the coal plant is 30% efficient, that means each kWh of electricity produced 2 kWh of waste heat.
So the calculation might not be so simple energy wise.
Also, district heating - it depends. In the winter, they run this district heating not only for electricity, but ramp it up for more heat production, in the winter.
That's surprising. Here in the US, my dishwasher is connected to the hot water line.
Maybe it does vary from one region to another, but I can't see why it would make sense to connect to the cold water line. Typically, dishwashers are near the sink (so it's easy to load), so hot water should be available in most cases.
> can't see why it would make sense to connect to the cold water line
My hot water line might be a different temperature to what my dishwasher works at. If it's too high, were wasting energy by heating up the water too much. If it's too low, the dishwasher doesn't work properly. Some people don't have 100% hot water on demand; in the UK and Ireland, having a hot water tank is common (and will likely be common when ground/air source pumps are installed, or if electric boilers are used), and there's no guarantee that the tank will have enough wayer at the right temperature
Even if it's too high, it's not wasting compared to electrical heater, but possibly it break dish washer. If it's too low (but not cold), then just additionally use electric heater in dish washer. Still efficient than just heating cold water by electric heater.
Why would it break the dishwasher? It would need a cold intake aswell, and to measure the water temperature on intake and mix it with cold water to get to the right temperature.
> If it's too low (but not cold), then just additionally use electric heater in dish washer
So now you need a hot water supply, _and_ an extra electric heater? That sounds like a bunch of extra complexity.
> Still efficient than just heating cold water by electric heater.
Electric heaters are remarkably efficient, and a dishwasher is likely well insulated. They're often closed loop systems, reusing the same water for the entire wash. The first dishwasher I found (for £350) on a national retailer advertises using under 10L of water, and 0.75kWh of energy per cycle. That's practically nothing.
Hot water supply should be available in nearby dish washer because it's on near kitchen sink (but YMMV). So no complexity added compared to cold water supply.
Yes I agree even only electric heater is used, it won't charge much higher electricity bill, but plugging hot water pipe is still efficient.
Friends had their dishwashers built-into the kitchen cabinetry and had a water line directly to it.
I live outside of the US now in eastern europe, and for older apartments, dishwashers aren't really possible unless you do specific renovations to run piping for it. There either just isn't space or isn't piping (or both) to make it work.
Newer apartments it's much more common, but the dishwashers are about half-the size of what I grew up with in the US.
Now if you have at least two of every item that could be likely to be "in the dishwasher" at any one time, it would be ideal to also have maybe another whole dishwaher's load of cabinets & storage space to put it in.
That way you will actually have enough extra space to store basically two full loads of duplicate kitchenware when the dishwasher itself is truly empty.
You've got to have all these duplicate items and handy space and it barely cuts the odds in half that the item you want is going to still be in the dishwasher anyway.
At least that's how it works in the chemistry laboratory.
And if it needs to be analytically clean it's possible to make the data more meaningful by hand-washing the high-stakes items.
How do you need 100 liters of water to hand wash 144 items? I can wash up an exquisite dinner for six in two tubs of water, that is maybe ten liters tops? (Just make sure to start with the cleaner stuff so your water doesn't get full of chunks of food.) A normal small family dinner is easily washed up in 5 liters of water and one squirt of liquid...
In a similar vain you need to use a cotton tote bag thousands of times to beat the environmental impact of plastic bags (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/style/cotton-totes-climat...) and the same goes for your reusable coffee cup (https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/07/reusable-or-dis...).
This indicates to me that you are using a literal tub of water to wash the items in, using the same water for all dishes. Kinda gross but besides the point. Most people that hand wash dishes are just letting the faucet run while they wash the dish so that's why it uses so much water, they aren't reusing any water
Suds are also not rinsed off in the UK if I recall? That would definitely safe some water too.
Still more work, of course.
There the usual practice is more like:
- Fill wash sink with dishes to be washed. (Excess sit on the counter next to the sink.)
- Fill wash sink with hot sudsy water.
- Fill rinse sink with cold clear water.
- Place drying rack on counter on opposite side of sink to dirty dishes.
My preferred workflow is right-to-left for all this.
- Let dishes soak in washing-up fluid for a few minutes.
- Scrub off any attached food w/ sponge and/or brush.
- Move to rinse sink.
- Place in drying rack.
(This is second-nature to me. Apparently it's a revelation to some.)
The washing sink holds about 2 gallons / 8 litres of water. The rinse sink another another 1/2 gallon / 2 litres.
And dishes and tableware come out clean. I frequently find myself re-washing what comes out of the dishwasher. There are also items that cannot go through the dishwasher, meaning that there's some hand-washing regardless.
My view is that it's ... a wash. Efficient hand-washing is about as efficient as a high-efficiency dishwasher. If hand-washing dishes isn't a chore to you (and/or you live in a small household), it's fine.
I also find it far easier to determine what's clean or not, and to put dishes away, from the drying rack than from the dishwasher.
Studies from a few years back on the machine-vs-hand discussion.
https://slate.com/technology/2008/04/is-it-worth-the-effort-...
https://web.archive.org/web/20140716153651/http://www.landte...
If you're hand-washing in a pre-filled tub using a few litres/gallons of water, you're about as efficient as a dishwashing machine. In my experience it's nearly as fast (loading/unloading are a considerable time factor), cleanliness is far easier to assure, and wear on dishes, glassware, flatware, and cutlery is vastly reduced. (Though you may break more items if you're clumsy.)
You can probably fit four of those dinners into a dishwasher and it'll still use only 10l. I agree that the comparison in the article seems exaggerated in the article and more reasonable estimates I can find put dishwashers at double the efficiency.
I've read other numbers (e.g. 131 times[1]) for cotton totes -- they're bound to vary since both plastic bags and cotton bags vary widely in their construction and how heavy duty they are. That said I'm sure I have cotton bags that I've used a thousand times and I expect I'll use them another thousand times, at least.
[1] https://www1.wdr.de/wissen/mensch/baumwolltaschen-papiertuet...
Combined with a once/week grocery run, you're looking at around 100 uses for a half dozen or so bags.
The principle problem with cost-benefit analysis is in determing what costs and benefits to consider, and what values to ascribe to them.
Mind that numerous reusable bags are themselves synthetic (nylon or other plastics), which starts splitting differences --- lower energy and water costs, but still presenting the waste-stream hazard.
If you have a Bosch, I'd recommend doing it every third or fourth cycle. There's no food grinder/impeller in these machines and the fine filter gathers material way faster than what you're probably used to.
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M2b9QeiYRo&t=80s
The idea of leaving half-washed food waste in the machine and recirculated for a whole month also doesn't appeal to me. But perhaps that's just me.
Unless there are actual solids (=bones, remains of stickers on glasses that contain plastics) in there, the combination of heat and extreme alkality of the washing water will dissolve just about anything over time so that it passes through the filter and gets pumped out.
Secondly, the final rinse water is filled into the tub and recirculated over the same filter. It's not directly sprayed from the water supply over the dishes and into the drain.
Really surprised me because dishes get scraped and dog-licked, but there's definitely plenty of solids that go into the wash. Seems like the detergent (basic Powerball solid things) and hot water are doing what it's supposed to.
The main complaints I read about it were how slow it is. At ~2:45 for a cycle that is a while, but it doesn't really matter. If I start it after a meal it's done well before I'm getting ready for the next. Run it overnight, done by morning.
As opposed to my old dishwasher which was ~45 minutes and noisy and sounded super powerful, I think the long wash cycle is key to modern dishwashers. I believe they basically soak/flood everything over time, letting them chemicals do their job, and the less force means it's quieter. Couple that with a bunch of insulation and the result is something more efficient that works well, at the (completely acceptable) expense of time.
I'm a bit more interested in the newer Bosch models that are using a zeolite bed to dry the dishes. The catalyst generates heat and absorbs moisture at the same time, then is renegerated during the wash.
I happen to be looking for a dishwasher now. Mine is having problems after 8 years (it's from IKEA, probably a rebranded Whirlpool). It has a grinder, but it the upper deck is no longer getting clean because the upper spinnning thing is no longer spinning and flinging water, I think. Also the plastic bits and gasket are starting to deteriorate.
Any recs for a good dishwasher? I'm looking for something that will last 10+ years.
While you're at it, clean the water connection mating surface between the upper drawer and the back of the dishwasher. If there's gunk there water will squirt out and the propeller will have less water pressure.
A gopro is a great tool for checking that both propellers are spinning properly.
Energy consumption. No grinder means the whole system can be driven by the pump motor alone which uses less power. Simpler (cheaper) construction as well.
the upper spinning thing is no longer spinning
The sprayer arms aren't driven by motors, they're driven by the force of the water coming out. So that means you probably have food particles stuck in the ports where water comes out. I'd remove the arm and clean it by hand. Use a toothpick to open up the ports.
I'm French, in Belgium, with an Italian dishwater that doesn't have a grinder (didn't even know that this existed) and I simply don't leave anything that could have to be ground on my dishes.
I do have to clean the filter once in a while, but I just don't leave on my dishes anything that could be scrapped beforehand. I don't prewash them or do anything special, but I don't leave solid waste on my dishes either.
If the filter were very easy to reach/remove/clean/replace, I would consider the benefits of a dishwasher without a grinder.
Another guess might be noise. Grinders are noisy and Bosch dishwashers are dead silent.
I have a Benchmark series Bosch and it cleans dishes better than any I've ever had. I think a major factor is the built-in water softener. I have hard water, and soft water is key for allowing detergents to properly work.
Bosch/Siemens dishwashers are frankly, garbage.
Dumbass metal/plastic construction (the plastic will crack and leak at the back), smartass inlet sensor that will fail, board at the bottom that will be taken out when it floods, overly sensitive drain and turbidity sensors, and the damn heater is a piece of shit.
They thought they were so smart using a flat wire heater (as found in many bottom heating kettles) but it fails very, very often and is expensive as hell even second hand if you can find one.
This basic construction hasn't changed for over a decade now, just like with most appliances.
Strange, since their washing machines are great and dryers are OK.
I personally like Beko, which many shit on - no frills, no bullshit dishwashers using easily available parts (shared with other brands), really easy to fix.
They work as well as any other brand, the water pressure is one of the most important things and theirs is always good.
Preferably the higher end models with built in fans, screen, they're better built than the cheap models.
Source: worked on thousands of them.
> To clean the food catcher, grab your partner's toothbrush and brush it into the rubbish bin.
I love British humor.
Stainless steel is corrosion resistant, not corrosion proof. Dishwashers are actually pretty harsh with high temperatures and high pH detergents.
You can get the same effect by putting a stainless steel spoon in a pot of boiling water.
I use white vinegar to dissolve it about once a month (making me think it’s basic, possibly calcium carbonate). Pour in a cup or so of white vinegar and set the pan to heat. When it’s hot but before it boils, swish it around and then pour it into the next pan. Rinse the first pan in plain water while the vinegar sits in the second. When the first pan is rinsed, pour the vinegar into the third, etc.
Our stainless pans never see the inside of the dishwasher and still get this.
Also, presumably you're fine with vinegar, but for anyone else who prefers less fragrant cleaners, citric acid (usually available as a powder) can almost always be substituted for vinegar with comparable to better results.
Target and Trader Joes each have powdered. No need to stoop to dollar store levels ;)
After unloading, put a new tablet in and close the dispenser.
Voila, closed dispenser == dirty dishes (or your dishwasher is broken :) )
Or I grandly miss the point here, sorry if so.
At our house, it's easier to just use a little magnet with clean/dirty on it to track dishwasher state. Or one can use the soap door suggestion above.
But I guess as the other comment mentioned, if you pre-wash the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher (not sure why you would, but let's run with it), then I can kind of see how it can be confusing.
Okay, let's go with that: why open the door when a $0.50 magnet can be glanced at, along with saving (what is probably a trivial amount of) wear-and-tear on the door mechanism? It's a dishwasher, not a box full of Schrödinger felines: we're allowed to cheat and put the current state on the outside of the box.
Premature optimization and all that yada yada :)
For Reasons, I've dealt with six dishwashers over the last decade. This one actually works. Anything that goes in and isn't ludicrously dirty or positioned just gets clean. It's wonderful not caring about top rack vs bottom rack or prewash or starting the hot water early or....
It just gets dishes clean.
Ditto for Maytag laundry machines. Those things are tanks.
Maytag does not build them like they used to.
that has been my experience across their entire lineup since the early 2000s.
some of their industrial style earlier stuff is fantastic, it's a shame they couldn't keep up with those standards.
So when I read articles claiming dryers have a life of around a decade I can't help but laugh.
Our town water is very hard, and all my previous dishwashers struggled with this, delivering dishes with ugly milk white streaks and residue no matter what we did. Water softening solved all the issues (I know because even the Miele washer has problems without the salt needed for the water softener to function).
That it's a very nice and well-built washer is an additional cherry on top.
And if a Miele dishwasher actually cost $4000, I'd probably have a Bosch today.
I genuinely wonder how people get up to 100 litres of water, or if my intuition regarding nr. of items vs water volume is just that far off. Are we sure this isn't measured by comparing to people using a constantly running tap for this instead of filling up one sink for washing and one for rinsing? Because I was pretty shocked to discover that most of my friends use a constantly running tap while washing the dishes.
I suspect that this is a multifaceted consequence of dishwashers becoming so commonplace, people cooking less and less, and constant attempts by owners to cut minor costs at the expense of tenants' standard of living.
Most people I know have one sink. Two sinks were found in rich peoples homes.
Personally I really want one of those big commercial sink faucets that's a flexible shower head suspended by a spring BUT turned on by a momentary foot pedal instead of a squeeze valve on the head. The you have both hands free to rinse and scrub while your foot operates the faucet.
not having hands free to turn water on and off is also an issue i ran into resulting in letting water running more often than necessary.
My tiny student apartment had one, but other than that even the social housing I've lived in had two. My experience is limited to slightly older housing in the Netherlands and Sweden tough, so the other commenters point about smaller sinks being a consequence of cutting costs might still be valid.
Also, provided there is enough space this can be done in a single sink too: wash all items first, then rinse them. Speaking from (student) experience.
i can't find the reference but i remember reading an article in a german magazine lamenting about exactly that problem, suggesting that people don't use enough water instead of to much.
as a consequence, i prefer to spend more time scrubbing and rinsing and trying to remove as much dirt as possible without using soap, and only add a bit of soap at the end to remove the remaining oils that scrubbing can't get rid of.
given how much soap some people use when handwashing, the dishwasher may still be more effective on average, but i wouldn't use one just to save water.
That link would be worth its length in gold for me to show my spouse!
A quick search says faucets run between 1.5 to 2 gallons per minute. That works out to 13.2 to 17.6 minutes of water. Dividing that by 144 items works out to 5.5 to 7.3 seconds of "on" water per item. That's on the high side, but not unreasonable if you're doing a through rinse.
I realize this will sound whiny and justifying water wasting, but I am including tech solutions...
1. My hands are busy and filthy while I am washing dishes. I don't want to touch the handle. = Give me a foot controlled valve.
2. My kitchen faucet literally takes 2 minutes to get hot water. = Give me instant hot water (to a precise temp that won't burn me).
3. More water pressure makes it faster to clean food off and speed is of the essence when you are doing this chore. = Pressurize the water.
On a side note, I have determined that being the one in a relationship that takes full responsibility for the ever ominous dishes chore allows me to do less overall chores without complaint from my partner.
2. You can get a water circulator that moves hot water to the cold water pipe until it gets hot. I haven't met a plumber that has recommended them though.
If you want to save a bit of water, you can get faucets that are "touch" controlled (on/off). That way you can touch the faucet with your wrist/forearm/back of hand to turn it on/off. Temp is controlled by the knob position so it stays the same temp through on/off cycles until you move the knob.
(This requires access to the plumbing, of course.)
Foot-pedal taps are available, though they're more commonly a hospital item.
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=foot+operated+faucet
The peak of the distribution of water usage is in the 40-50 litre range, however a nontrivial number of people use an absolutely enormous amount of water. The paper gives some observations about different approaches to washing, although it doesn't describe them systematically.
[1] https://www.tempurl4.uni-bonn.de/forschung/haushaltstechnik/...
Not really much more trouble and you're always rinsing with clean water.
Yes, many people around the world wash dishes under an open tap in a manner that can use 100+ litres of water.
But if you're filling a sink tub with hot sudsy water, soaking and scrubbing plates, and then rinsing them in a second tub of cold clear water (and even a squirts from the spigot), you're using about the same amount of water as a dishwasher.
The dishes come out as clean or cleaner (the detergent's less effective, but you can scrub where the dishwasher cannot, and for tough stains you can use appropriate treatments), and there's far less wear on plates, glasses, and flatware as you're not using harsh chemicals and abrasives.
If you have a large household or really don't like hand-cleaning dishes, go ahead and use the dishwasher, especially a modern one, and follow the tips. If you don't mind doing dishes by hand, or only have a few items (and need to wash them for next use), handwashing in the sink is plenty efficient. There are far worse consumers of water and energy.
https://i.imgur.com/tL699FA.jpg
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008M5U1C2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
These are highly recommended for a being cheap yet good chef's knife. Mine has survived 5 years of daily dishwasher cleaning...
I do not dishwasher mine, however, and I do not soak them.
1) It can be dangerous for anyone reaching into the dishwasher not expecting to find a sharp knife. If you live alone and no one else reaches in there and you're always at maximum vigilance, you do you. But I've known two people who got their hands and wrists sliced open horribly by sharp dishwasher knives.
2) Every stainless steel kitchen knife I've ever seen where the person regularly put it in the dishwasher had an edge that was so etched and eaten away that it basically looked serrated. Sample size is probably 20 for those. Knives I've seen where the person never put them in the dishwasher may have had a few dings and nicks, but they never looked like their edges were being dissolved away. Note though that this isn't necessarily a bad thing if you don't have an emotional attachment to the knife. A serrated knife is basically sharp on its own for free without sharpening.
3) Even if the blade isn't appreciably harmed, the rest of the knife made of other materials can be, and the handle could crack, loosen, or weaken. This depends on how the handle is made and attached.
4) Fancypants non-stainless steel knives do exist and will rust. (see e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bladesmith/comments/bj63yu/this_is_... ) I don't really get why anyone likes them though.
The non-stainless alloys will have an easier time taking and keeping a very sharp edge. This makes them more useful, and for longer. Not only does a very sharp edge make the knife easier and faster to work with, is safer to use than a not-so-sharp knife.
As for your fourth point, soft metals sharpen in a few seconds. My high carbon steel knives will slice right through tomato peel without smashing the tomato itself; or cut raw meet in one quick movement.
The idea is during the first pre cleaning cycle the soap will start working so you add the detergent on dish time.
https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04
Thus, you'll get much better results if, right before pressing Start, you run the kitchen sink's hot water tap until it gets hot.
Second best tip: Spill a bit of detergent outside the detergent box so the initial scrub gets some soap. (The rest gets released in the secondary wash cycle.)
Many (most?) dishwashers have a special section for putting soap that gets used in the pre-rinse cycle. In mine it would be functionally identical to spilling some extra detergent, but it's easier to consistently measure the right amount.
Pre-rinse mode in the dishwasher involves a first water and soap wash before the water recycling main wash occurs. Most grease can be removed with the pre-rinse cycle when detergent is used. This prevents having grease "re-applied" to the dishes during the main cycle and its repeated water recycles upon the dishes.
Pre-rinse can always be done with or without detergent - some dishwashers do not have a dedicated holder for the detergent but only an indented space next to the normal cycle detergent holder. Use this for a detergent pre-rinse.
Pre-rinsing in the sink before loading is still often necessary - no dishwasher is as effective at cleaning as hand washing. And especially when a dishwasher gets old, that already lesser effectiveness gets worse.
Honestly this article sounds like a dishwasher PR story planted in the normal news. This IS HOW MOST NEWS SOURCES OPERATOR now: a PR firm/group at a corporation will write a bunch of pro-Firm/pro-Product articles FOR use by magazines, newspapers, syndication, etc. This started to happen in the 1990s and now is pretty much all stories because 1) news organizations no longer have reporters at all or have no reporters "in the field" at all, and 2) the pay isn't good enough to do "real journalism" any more.
I worked for a Fortune 25 company that was on the vanguard of this kind of PR-to-News system. It worked really well because editors are LAZY as are far too many journalists!
With hand-washed dishes, there should be no ambiguity over whether or not the dishes are clean or not (if they're in the drying rack, they're clean). With the dishwasher, not only can I not immediately tell, but often what's been washed is not in fact clean.
As for dishes not cleaned, that is true, you’d need to count that somehow into a bigger equation.
The fact that it's at counter-height helps. I find that chore pretty straightforward.
And most dishwashers I have inspected leave a bit of soap residue on all the dishes.
You can easily see this for yourself by filling a "clean" glass with water and observing the soapy bubbles.
If you rinse it thoroughly and try again, they will not be there.
Another one of modern life's intelligence tests, if you ask me. I avoid them, and I rinse dishes which come out of one thoroughly before using them.
https://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners/1604-CascadeDishwasherDe...
a small portion you eat and drink, most of it ends up harming animals downstream.
by buying it, you also support its harmful production process.
The first scary red "F" is sodium hypochlorite. This is ordinary bleach. EWG cites two reasons for the big scary "F". The first is aquatic toxicity. This is a badly misplaced fear. Consider the fact that chlorine is the most widely used disinfectant in municipal water systems, in the form of hypochlorite and chloramine. Chlorine is dumped by the ton into the water that comes out of your taps and goes down your drains. The extra chlorine from dish detergents is insignificant compared to this and other sources such as laundry bleach.
Also under the chlorine entry, EWG lists a few organic chlorine compounds. This is very misleading. Detergents don't contain any of these chemicals. Rather, they can possibly be generated when free chlorine is added to water containing a lot of organics. Many organohalogens are indeed toxic, but by far most of them that you'll encounter are generated by municipal water treatment systems. You drink and bathe in water that contains random organohalogens every day, by virtue of the chlorine used in municipal treatment. The small extra quantities generated in your dishwasher aren't a threat to you unless you make it a habit to drink the exhaust water.
The second scary red "F" on their list is zinc carbonate. This is absurd. They say it's primarily because of its potential effects on aquatic life, which I suppose might be a consideration if someone tries to use dishwasher detergent to clean a fish tank. The second reason is "general systemic/organ effects". This is the really absurd part. Zinc is an essential mineral in the human diet in large quantities. In very high doses over time, excess zinc can cause problems, but such large doses have nothing to do with dishwasher detergent residues. You'd have to actually eat large quantities of detergent daily for a long period of time, and even that would be unlikely to cause zinc overdose because the carbonate form has low bioavailability.
The third scary red "F" is "colors". They don't say what the colors are, or why they would be more of a concern than in any other cosmetic or cleaning product.
The fourth scary red "F" is "stabilizer". They don't say what the chemical is, so there's no way to know whether it's any less bullshit than the first three, or even if it exists in the product.
The scary orange "D" items continue the absurdity:
- Nitric acid: I think EWG is confused here. Nitric acid would be used only in minute quantities to adjust pH. Dishwasher detergents are very alkaline, so it's not possible for nitric acid to remain in a liquid product.
- Fragrance: Welcome to life. Everything is scented. I hate it, but putting a scary orange "D" next to it should make you roll your eyes in light of the other fragrances that saturate thousands of other products that don't get rinsed away, and thus stay in the air around you.
- Polyacrylates: you know where else you'll find polyacrylates? Fucking everywhere. Nearly every liquid cosmetic product you'll find uses polyacrylates. Shampoos, hand soap, dish soap, etc. All baby diapers are now filled with polyacrylates. They're added to potting soil to increase moisture retention. Don't eat too much of the solid form because it can expand in your stomach and cause bloating and possibly blockage, but tiny amounts of them are not the least bit threatening in your dishwasher.
In summary, don't blindly trust the EWG. None of these ingredients is the least bit dangerous even if they remained in significant quantities on your dishes, which they don't.
with the others your argument seems to be, "it is status quo, so it is ok."
but it is not. i have been to entire towns which prohibit fragrance, including library, town hall, and police station.
this idea is still not mainstream-peak, but it is making the rounds.
i believe it is better to "err" on the side of caution when it comes to substances "potentially considered harmful" even by those who produce and approve it.
> with chlorine, you are ignoring the production process.
I think you're confusing the production of hypochlorite, which is among the cleanest and most benign of all industrial processes, with that of chlorinated materials like PVC, which is fed with and leaves behind a lot of super nasty shit. Look up the Hooker process, which is how all hypochlorite is currently made. The only byproduct is sodium chloride (common salt), which is also the degradation endpoint of hypochlorite in the environment. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how clean and sustainable this particular corner of industry is.
Did you know that chlorine bleach (such as Clorox) has a shelf life for this reason? It's because hypochlorite is unstable, and eventually that bottle of Clorox will become a bottle of plain salt water.
> with the others your argument seems to be, "it is status quo, so it is ok."
Not at all. What I'm saying is that dishwasher detergent is one of the cleanest, most harmless (to us and the environment) cleaning products we use. It's actually kind of a miraculous substance; it allows a simple machine to perform the hardest household cleaning job reliably and quickly using very little water or energy. It manages to this with no surfactants (such as phosphates, which actually are environmentally damaging) and no volatile grease cutters. The grease is removed only with alkaline minerals, and protein deposits are removed enzymatically.
By drumming up a bunch of implausible and in some cases completely fictitious hazards, the EWG is doing a disservice to one of the most environmentally responsible cleaning products in use. For some reason the zinc thing especially pisses me off. That's so stupid. Pretending that zinc, a mineral that is ubiquitous in food and is essential to human health, is somehow a hazard in dishwasher detergent which is rinsed off anyway... this is basically a lie, and that alone should make you very skeptical of anything else they say.
Anyways, again, I appreciate the fact that you care about this stuff. I imagine you and I would mostly agree about environmental topics in particular.
You seem to take to the other end of the spectrum, the optimistic, hopeful, and apologetic side... Very well, it probably is comforting, and support you in finding your own path through this mess.
> I choose to take to the overly cautious spectrum, because this is my body and the body of people close to me at stake, and I'd rather avoid unnecessary damage to them.
That being the case, I assume you'll be taking some other sensible precautions, which will prevent exposure to substances that are at least as risky as dishwasher detergent:
- Cut coffee out of your diet (due to acrylamide, a suspected carcinogen)
- Cut all meat out of your diet (especially red meat)
- Avoid citrus fruits, mints, and other herbs that contain limonene, which some researcher said causes cancer in rats.
- Avoid bread, beer, dried fruits and nuts (acrylamide)
- To avoid nitrates, you'll want to avoid high-nitrate foods such as arugula, beets, cabbage, celery, cilantro, endive, fennel, kale, lettuce, parsley, rhubarb, spinach, and many others. Actually, it's probably best to avoid vegetables altogether in the Spring and Summer when nitrate levels tend to be highest.
- Avoid cell phones and wifi
- And for god's sake, don't smoke anything!
This is just the stuff I can think of right now. I'm sure there's a lot more.
And yes, based on watching closely for inflammation effects, I have mostly cut coffee, red meat, processed meat, bread, beer, dried fruit, synthetic nitrates, non-organic produce, cell phones (but not wifi).
I do smoke weed occasionally, but I think I take in less smoke than someone living with a campfire, something my ancestors have dealt with on many occasions.
I don't think fruits and veggies which have been consumed for centuries and millennia are that dangerous.
Generally speaking, I think of bodies as "production environments" with "known good inputs" which have worked in the past, and everything else is basically "testing in production".
This clearly isn't true according to the EWG. They want you to believe that the tiny amount of zinc (which is an essential nutrient) that might be present in dishwasher detergent is poisonous enough to slap a big red warning on it. So which is it?
> I do smoke weed occasionally...
I'm all for cannabis, but I'm confused as to why someone who avoids household cleaning products is willing to put their lungs in such danger. It is well established that even occasional smoking increases your chances of lung and heart disease, and exposes you to a pantheon of toxins, including heavy metals and whatever pesticides are being used by growers in the still poorly regulated cannabis industry.
Seriously, whether you smoke or use edibles, you should be growing your own. Pesticides are a problem.
> but I think I take in less smoke than someone living with a campfire, something my ancestors have dealt with on many occasions.
Yes, and it was killing our ancestors, just as it's killing people now. Smoke pollution is a leading cause of disease, disability, and mortality across the world. It's true that your occasional smoke is probably less damaging than living with an open indoor cooking fire, but it's still doing significant damage, and it's a lot worse for your health than proper use of any cleaning product will ever be.
> I don't think fruits and veggies which have been consumed for centuries and millennia are that dangerous.
Why not? Why would you discount the danger of highly carcinogenic mycotoxins that have historically contaminated nuts, grains, and dried fruits, especially in the old days before industrial food production, and which likely killed a lot of our ancestors? And more importantly, why would you give more credence to the EWG's idiotic flagging of zinc in a cleaning product? This is a failure of risk evaluation.
I doubt he ever smoked weed.
No, it's not everything, and it's not everywhere. There are many spaces which are free of fragrance for the most part.
It really does INCREASE QUALITY OF LIFE for many people, who are sometimes NOT EVEN AWARE of the effects this synthetic crap has on their physical well-being.
And all it takes is JUST A LITTLE BIT OF VIGILANCE on the space administrator's part in not accepting and not allowing it into the space.
Just like we are creating safe spaces which are not tolerant of bullying, bigotry, harrasment, etc., many are also creating safe spaces in terms of hazardous chemicals.
You are ignoring a lot of progress in this area when you paint things as hopeless or good enough.
And EWG is one of the most competent, clear, and level-headed organizations working in this space. They provide scientifically supported, solid, and well-researched information in an easy to understand format.
I don't think you are qualified to criticize them given what you wrote above.
> And EWG is one of the most competent, clear, and level-headed organizations working in this space. They provide scientifically supported, solid, and well-researched information in an easy to understand format.
Like I said, they do some good work, but they do some really shoddy, clickbaity stuff too, and this detergent link is a good example. You can tell it was written by people with no knowledge of chemistry.
> I don't think you are qualified to criticize them given what you wrote above.
Instead of an ad-hominim, are you able to defend the EWG's assertions? For example, can you explain why the EWG says a tiny amount of nitric acid used to adjust pH is a hazard of any kind? Can you explain why they think that any nitric acid could possibly survive in the finished alkaline product, or why it would be a problem even if it did? Can you find any studies or evidence of any kind to back them up?
How about the zinc? Or any of the others that I mentioned earlier?
Honestly this isn't difficult. It's not advanced chemistry. It's chemistry 101. EWG has no excuse for not knowing better.
This stuff is strong in concentrated form even though the food grade product will be (hopefully) precisely diluted by orders of magnitude simply to adjust pH. Once the hydroxide becomes neutralized it's water, and such little amounts end up in each serving that's accepted as a harmless amount of additional sodium among the nutrients.
But at 50% strength it's industrial caustic soda and it more or less dissolves tissue.
This is the lye often used as drain cleaner to unclog greasy stoppages by turning the lard into water-soluble soap.
Anyway along with the carbonates the working pH in the dishwasher is so alkaline that it would slightly dissolve some glassware, especially the softer glasses and this is the kind of damage that can look like there is residue, but it will not wash off because the glass is etched. To prevent that this Cascade formula has sodium silicate so there is already some soluble silica in the bath inhibiting the uptake of more from your glassware.
The acrylates are like a micro-thin finish, so it's like a car being both washed and waxed.