Salt and rinse-aid in my dishwasher

[Peborgh]

I have a Hotpoint Ultima SDW80 dishwasher but use all-in-one detergent capsules/blocks with it.

Do I need to keep rinse-aid and salt topped up in the machine as well?

Thank you,

peter

[AndersonDRS]

Re: Salt and rinse-aid in my dishwasher

The rinse aid isn’t important as that is in the tablets, but even thought they say they have salt in them I would personally still put salt in. I can’t see how the salt in the tablets work as it does a pre-rinse first with no salt, then the main wash which will have the salt from the tablet, followed by rinses afterwards with no salt, therefore I would recommend putting salt in. It does depend on where you live, as we live in hard water areas so it’s essential, but if you have a water softener or don’t have hard water then salt isn’t as important.

Hope this answers your question!

[Martin]

Re: Salt and rinse-aid in my dishwasher

Peborgh wrote:Do I need to keep rinse-aid and salt topped up in the machine as well?

Do please take a moment to read THIS 😀

[AndersonDRS]

Re: Salt and rinse-aid in my dishwasher

I found this on Tescos website with the fairy tablets:-
‘Fairy All in One dish tablet’s salt action is effective in soft, medium and hard water up to 26°e (up to 95{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of households). Your dishwasher should work effectively even if the rinse aid or salt warning light comes on. For extremely hard water above 26°e (up to 5{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} households), please use salt.’

[Martin]

Re: Salt and rinse-aid in my dishwasher

AndersonDRS wrote: Your dishwasher should work effectively even if the rinse aid or salt warning light comes on. For extremely hard water above 26°e (up to 5{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} households), please use salt.’

What this bulls droppings doesn’t tell you is that the damage caused by limescale of any degree within the internal workings of a dishwasher results in premature failure of major components such as the main circulating pump and heater. Therefore it is essential to establish the water hardness in your area and set the water softener unit within the machine accordingly.

If water hardness was never an issue with dishwashers then manufacturers wouldn’t go to the expense of fitting them. If the use of a simple ‘all in one’ tablet was sufficient to render the fitting of water softener systems obsolete it would have happened years ago.

Fortunately for us in the repair trade the vast majority of users fail to realise the importance of using the water softener. And in direct consequence of that dishwasher failure rate is extremely high. The most common failing are heating elements and lime scaled up water level controls systems.

On this website we go to great lengths to advise consumers/users the importance of putting salt in their water softener units. It is there for a purpose, go figure!

[Author]

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