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It appears to be gaining traction on cheap and effective way to deep clean the washing machine drum on YouTube. Two dishwasher tablets costs around 30p against Dr Beckham deep cleaner @£3-4.
I have some reservations on this… dishwasher tablets and aluminium don’t work well together as it is corrosive. Would carrying out cleaning with dishwasher tablets shorten the lifespan on the drum that has aluminium spider? Chances are people who does this tend to use cheap machine therefore aluminium corrosion might take a long time to show problems before it packs up which often it does pack up (drum collapsed) before the corrosion sets in?
Only cast iron spider in Miele would escape from the corrosion. All other males are not immune to it.
what are your thoughts?
cant see Miele using cast iron under water as it rusts. its highly likely to be aluminium but much heavier and better quality metal
Dave
Apparently until around the year 2000, Miele used stainless steel spiders, then switched to aluminium, as least on domestic machines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5wwvQBvkMgI don’t think we really know – we are not chemists. My opinion is that you are better off using a specific washing machine cleaner, especially one marketed or endorsed by an appliance manufacturer. Bosch in America and Australia seem to be the only manufacturers that have come out publicly against using dishwasher tablets in a washing machine, while promoting their own washing machine cleaning products, while they don’t really say why.
I only stock Electrolux Super Clean, which seems quite effective at removing the sludgy deposits that cause most problems in washing machines. Unfortunately, they reformulated it a few years back from a 2-stage to 1-stage cleaner, omitting the powerful enzyme pre-treatment, which was fantastic. I suspect they found most users found the 2-stage process cumbersome, didn’t follow the instructions properly and so didn’t get the best results.
I suspect dishwasher tablets do less harm to washing machines than muddy boots do to a dishwasher, or some of the other crazy suggestions promoted online.
Re the aluminium, we had some hard anodised aluminium saucepans that we put through the dishwasher many times. Gradually, the anodised surface discoloured and eventually non-existent. They looked terrible, but structurally they remained fine. That would have been at higher temperatures and detergent concentrations than seen in your average washing machine cycle. So I doubt the occasional dishwasher tablet would do much structural harm to the drum spider, likely less harm than the damp sludge it is intended to remove.
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