‘Smelly’ Dishwashers?

[Martin]

An interesting article came up in the Public Forum I thought worthy of some discussion here perhaps 💡

kheath wrote:salt should be used whatever the soft/hardness of the water in your area as its function is to regenerate the incoming water crystals within the filing chamber area of your appliance.

Now I have no experience of using dishwashers in ‘soft’ water areas as Kevin has, so I find his comments very interesting 🙂 And I always though (rightly or wrongly) that if you lived in a soft water area you can ignore using salt. 😕 Furthermore some manufacturers these days advise the new owner to check with the local water company to find out the local water hardness level in their ‘postcode area’ usually. With the modern electronic machines you can simply ‘switch off’ the regeneration part of the cycle accordingly.

Now I wonder having read this 😕

Also this next statement is very interesting, and something I also was unaware of: –

kheath wrote:The choice of washing detergent should be examined as the cleanser works electrically by suspending the soil in the water and any deposits left due to poor suspension will not wash out on the next cycle, but will lead quite quickly to smells.
Try a variety of different ones to see if you notice an improvement.

I thought all d/washer detergents pretty much the same? But I do know washing machine detergents to be very critical regarding soft/hard water areas (i.e. Liguid detergents in hard water areas should be avoided, especially those ‘liquitabs’ !!!

VERY INTERESTING STUFF I RECKON…comments please 🙂

Martin

[wcda]

Re: ‘Smelly’ Dishwashers?

Martin wrote:An interesting article came up in the Public Forum I thought worthy of some discussion here perhaps 💡

We are blessed with, or cursed with, a very soft water supply.
We can tell if a customer is using salt as the dishwasher liner takes on a
“suntanned” appearance. The other downside to using salt in soft water
is that the water becomes even softer and more acidic. This can cause
permament damage to good quality glassware by leaching out the lead in the crystal. This results in a “satin finish” to the glass, which is permament.

The most frequent problem we have with “performance” on dishwashers
is the purchase of large packets of detergent, by the time the customer
has reached the lower depths of the packet, the detergent is almost
useless. Dishwasher detergents are anhydrous and absorb atmospheric
moisture, unless they are stored in a sealed container. The absorption of
this moisture renders the Enzyme content of the detergent useless and
you then do little more than wash in dirty water, with the silica component
doing it’s scouring action.

Wcda

[grooster]

Re: ‘Smelly’ Dishwashers?

My experience in living in a soft water area is that you still need to use the salt, maybe not as much, but you still need it. I have had many a customer complain about poor washing and the machine leaving grit inside cups. The grit eventually comes out through the water softening unit and into the wash after a few years without salt.

Every customer that i’ve had with this problem, has not used salt, and having revisited on other call outs, has always cured the fault.

[Author]

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