New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

[spoon261]

I have just bought a new Siemens SE26T251GB dishwasher.

The drying results were terrible on Fairy ActiveBursts and Finish 5 in 1.

I tried the auto 55-65 program and the 65-75 program and tried the Intensive drying option.

Nothing would make it dry accept using separate powder and rinse aid.

The drying was so bad on tablets, I doubt their was any of the tablets rinse aid used. The plastic knife rack had thousands of water drops clinging to it, the upper basket also had thousands of water drops clinging underneath, the cutlery basket was incredible with many knives dripping wet, glasses were wet. When the water eventually dries after many hours white deposits were left in their place.

I live in a very hard water area = around 27 Clarke, I have a house water softener (real one that uses salt) and it was working 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} at the time so thats not the fault, I have switched the dishwashers water softener off.

If I put rinse aid in the machine and then try a Finish 5 in 1 or Fairy, it drys ok. The rinse aid meter is still set to default(4) and theirs no sign of overdose.

Siemens have constantly blamed the tablets, I have finnaly got a refund.
This machine claims to have a Auto 3 in 1 identical to the new Bosch models that adjusts the rinse cycle to 3 in 1 tablets.

Does anyone have any advise, is this a known problem, is their any make I can buy that will work ok with tablets?

I have been thinking about a Bosch SGS 46E02 = will it have the same problem?

I also wondered about the John Lewis JLDWW1201 or Zanussi ZDF501

[gegsy]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

Hi Spoon
You may find this link quite helpful. 😉
http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/modules.p … ge&pid=116

Greg

[Trilobite]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

Modern dishwashers normally take a lot longer than they used to, in order to clean a load of dishes to “A Class” wash efficiency. Unfortunately, ‘all-in-one’ tablets dissolve before the all-important Final Rinse, where rinse-aid is vitally important to the blemish-free drying process.

Dishwashers are designed to do certain things, at certain stages of their cycles. Multifunction detergents mess this up and are absolutely useless: the consumer should use separate detergent, salt, and rinse-aid, to achieve excellent results.

Furthermore, some of the multifunction tablets have trouble dissolving; dissolve too quickly, or can cause overfoaming (particularly common in smaller machines). Failure to use salt in hard water areas can cause problems too (there is insufficient ‘salt-type polymer’ within the tablet).

I have a Bosch Logixx machine and have found that separate detergent, rinse-aid, and salt give the best results – by far!

[spoon261]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

I have since bought a AEG F80860 dishwasher, it has a 3 in 1 mode that you have to manually activate.

It works perfectly with 3 in 1 tablets, I have only tried the non automatic wash temperature programs so far.

There is a possibility that the automatic wash temperature programs could be to blame, all the Siemens programs where automatic temperature except the economy 50.
The AEG has 1 automatic temperature program, but has all the manual ones like 65c.

[Trilobite]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

spoon261 wrote:I have since bought a AEG F80860 dishwasher, it has a 3 in 1 mode that you have to manually activate.

It works perfectly with 3 in 1 tablets, I have only tried the non automatic wash temperature programs so far.

There is a possibility that the automatic wash temperature programs could be to blame, all the Siemens programs where automatic temperature except the economy 50.
The AEG has 1 automatic temperature program, but has all the manual ones like 65c.

That is interesting, and confirms what has been mentioned in instruction manuals, that multfunction tablets may not perform correctly on automatic programmes (they really should call these “fuzzy logic” programmes, as all dishwashers wash, rinse and dry automatically).

Does the AEG have assisted drying? ie. does a fan kick in, at the drying stage?

With my Bosch, I find that leaving the machine closed for a few hours after it is finished, gives perfectly dry dishes but I have to use rinse-aid.

[spoon261]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

The AEG has a fan.

The Siemens had more than a drying fault, it also left white residue when it dried, this is a sign of “lack of rinse aid” according to all instruction books that I have read. The lack of rinse aid also caused thousands of water drops to cling to everything and so the drying program had hundreds of extra water drops to try to dry than normal.

I wonder if the automatic programs detect the rinse aid in the tablet and think its dirty water and so gives it an extra rinse to wash the rinse aid out of the machine, then gives a final rinse which of course has no rinse aid in it unless you have put rinse aid in the machine.

One thing I have noticed, is using the intensive drying option with the Siemens gave really good drying results when used with separate rinse aid. I did not like the drying results without the intensive option. The intensive drying option is on all new Bosch from the Excel and up, its normally mentioned in the trouble shooting part of the user guide.

The AEG drying results are in-between the Siemens intensive drying and non intensive drying option. But the fan keeps working after the program has ended, so leaving it a bit longer would improve the result.

[Kentish]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

I would have said the white deposits sound more like a lack of softening of the water. Did you actually do a hardness test of the water at the machine before outing it? I have never really found house softeners to be as good as the dishwasher inbuilt softener.
As for multi detergents, I sometimes use them but always keep the salt topped and rinse-aid up……………….all in my Siemens, and get perfect washes on any program including the 55/65 auto wash.

[spoon261]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

Kentish wrote:I would have said the white deposits sound more like a lack of softening of the water. Did you actually do a hardness test of the water at the machine before outing it? I have never really found house softeners to be as good as the dishwasher inbuilt softener.
As for multi detergents, I sometimes use them but always keep the salt topped and rinse-aid up……………….all in my Siemens, and get perfect washes on any program including the 55/65 auto wash.

I had perfect results everytime by adding rinse aid to the siemens, I never put salt in.
I left the rinse aid dispenser set to default = 4. I tried without rinse aid 3 times in 3 days with the same fault, then I put the rinse aid in and of course could not try again since it takes forever to use up the rinse aid (the rinse aid warning light comes on when theirs still many washes left).

The house softener was made by culligan and only around 3 years old, it’s a totally manual one, I read the water companies meter, to work out when to re-energise it. I always re-energise well before it’s really needed, I have also checked the hardness with a testing kit in case the water board gave a wrong estimate. I only use the best salt = AquaSol tablets (tablets are much purer than granular) and make sure theirs no salt sludge build up at the bottom of the salt compartment.

The Siemens / Bosch repair man that visited, said theirs nothing wrong with using the house softener as long as it’s working ok and not re-energising when the dishwasher is on.
He also confirmed I should not use the dishwashers softener if it’s being supplied by the house water softener, since you will be double softening. I remember that problem with my very old dishwasher, when I let the salt run out in it, the results were much better.

House water softeners have improved over the years and they soften the water better than they used to according to the manufacturer and my results, I had a 13 year old one before.

The AEG has now been used several times from new with 3 in 1 tablets with no fault, it’s never had any rinse aid or salt put in it and even if it did(by AEG), the machine has modes to switch off the rinse aid dispenser and salt dispenser.

[Penguin45]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

Can we stop for a moment and consider the detergent here? A multi-function tablet must contain detergent to actually do the wash, and the rinse aid at a bare minimum. Nowadays, they claim to contain additional softening agents, specialised glass treatments, salt and heaven only knows what else.

Apply some logic here – the various manufacturers all design their programmes to operate their way. All programme times are different, wash intensities are different, water volumes are different, temperatures are different. Yet people expect a universal tablet to “fit in” with the particular operating system of their dishwasher. It won’t, it doesn’t and it can’t.

Take salt. You put loose salt into the hole in the bottom of your dishwasher and you never see it again. It never enters the wash system, it is used solely to to regenerate the machines onboard water softener sytstem. So, why put it in a tablet? I have yet to find a tablet capable of unscrewing the salt cap and jumping in…. Having salt circulating in the wash water will only promote corrosion by pinholing the tub in cheap brands.

Rinse aid is a totally misunderstood product. It is sold as promoting shiney dry plates. This is not what it does. When released into the solution, it coats the crockery and basically makes them water repellant by destroying water surface tension. The last (hot) rinse is supposed to dry the plates, but because of the action of rinse aid, the water should simply fall off. Assuming that it’s all working as it should……….

With a multi-function tablet dissolving over time, heat and water volumes this is most unlikely, unless you have the same machine which they had in the lab when they developed the tablet. Got to be a bit unlikely, doesn’t it?

Single function tablets (or powder), liquid rinse aid in its dispenser and salt in the pot is the only way to get the best out of your dishwasher. Fairy Bursts are about the only working compromise on the market – they dissolve quickly (unlike most tablets) and get to work. We would still recommend the use of rinse aid and salt for best results.

I hope that explains things a little more clearly.

Regards,
Penguin45.

[Trilobite]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

Dear Mr Penguin,

You’ve got the wrong end of the stick: there, apparently, is no actual salt in the tablets. It is a polymer-type ingredient which supposedly ‘grabs’ hard deposits out of the water, and donating sodium ions. I presume it’ll be something like bentonite clay, or some such synthetic derivative, etc.

As for rinse-aids being built into the tablets, I once phoned Reckitt Benckiser to ask about the, then, newly released 3-1 Finish (with the pearl powerball rinse-aid).

I was told that the rinse-aid powerball will not dissolve properly until the pH of the water is just right, along with temperature.

I took this to mean that the wash water is too alkaline for the powerball to dissolve; it only doing so when the subsequent rinses dilute the alkalinity, and the heater kicks in again.

[spoon261]

I have read all the advice about the salt action in the tablets, it does not help your dishwashers mechanical parts, so running a dishwasher with hard water and no dishwasher or house softener is a very bad idea.

As for the 3 in 1 tablets only being designed to work with a few dishwashers, its very simple, Finish are the name brand in tablets all around the world (they are re-branded to suit each country’s tastes). The finish tablets are identical all around the world, all the dishwasher manufacturers recommend you use finish, they could hardly recommend another company since their are no other brands commonly available.
So when the dishwasher manufacturers make a dishwasher, they no it must work on finish tablets if they state it will work with 3 in 1 tablets.

[Kentish]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

I,m sorry, but I don’t buy the “makers make appliances to work with X detergent”. Years back, Electrolux ran adverts stating the machine had been made and developed with Persil to give best results. At the same time, Zanussi had adverts saying their machines were made with Ariel to give the best results.
Both machine were identically except for a different fascia frontage (made by Zanussi). So who is telling the truth, and which detergent was best?

Detergent sponsorship is just that..sponsorship, which means money for each party. I have no doubt some makes may be better than others, but the appliance will still work with any detergent.

Perhaps the multi in 1 tabs boxes should state that failure to use salt in hard water areas (eg the South of England) will result in premature and expensive failure of wash motor seals, wash motors and probably the water softener too.

[kwatt]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

You all may find this article interesting which I wrote and published some time ago. I hope that explains the position with tablets well enough.

If you actually quiz and press hard enough the manufacturers of the detergent will admit that the “all-in-one” products are not as great as the advertising makes them out to be. Often, if you read the pack, they actually state this, the problem is, no-one ever reads the instructions.

K.

[spoon261]

Re: New dishwasher drying fault with quality 3 in 1 tablets

kwatt wrote:You all may find this article interesting which I wrote and published some time ago. I hope that explains the position with tablets well enough.

If you actually quiz and press hard enough the manufacturers of the detergent will admit that the “all-in-one” products are not as great as the advertising makes them out to be. Often, if you read the pack, they actually state this, the problem is, no-one ever reads the instructions.

K.

I had read your article before I made my first post.
I did not remember reading the communiques by two major dishwasher manufacturers before, have you just added them to the page?

Anyway, it got me thinking, the Siemens I had and the Bosch Logix have a heat exchanger, this is used to store the heat from the main wash and uses it to pre heat the rinse water before it hits the items you are washing. The heat exchanger is only available on top of the range models.
This warm water might be tricking the tablet in to thinking it’s on the final hot rinse. Of course we do not even no if the Siemens has 2 hot rinses or not, the user guide tells you nothing when on automatic modes.
All I do no is theirs no way the Siemens can have a cold rinse due to the heat exchanger. And at the last count you always have at least 2 rinses in a program that includes drying. My AEG non automatic programs have a cold rinse followed by a hot rinse like all dishwashers did on their normal (non automatic) programs since they have no heat exchangers.

I think we can rule out a ph or water hardness problem, since my new AEG and my 15 year old AEG had no problem with 3 in 1 tablets . The old AEG was made ages before 3 in 1 tablets had even been thought of.

[kwatt]

Yes, I decided to add the bulletins although I obviously was aware of them long before writing that. There are more though along similar lines.

K.

[Author]

Posts