Dishwasher Tablets

Ah, yes. Mother’s little helper—the dishwasher. Only those who have spend endless hours at the kitchen sink debating whether to soak or scrub can truly appreciate the humble dishwasher. Studies show (and who does these studies?) that using a dishwasher will save you three weeks a year. Who knew? How can you get the most out of your kitchen friend? Whether you use dishwasher tablets or powders, there are many options for optimizing your dishwasher performance.

Honestly, you’ll be amazed. Give them a try today from Here. You’ll be glad you did.

The last couple of times of using the dishwasher, we have noticed that the plates, glasses and cutlery are not coming as clean as they should, and that’s despite Lin having cleaned the thing a couple of times already. The machine just wasn’t performing at it’s peak, leading to Lin complaining about the thing and suggesting that perhaps it was time for a new one. I thought we better take a look before we go buying anew.

All washed up

Running a dishwasher doesn’t sound very thrifty does it, but one of our aims is to continue living at or better than our current standard of living whilst costing less money in the process. This means that although we do run the dishwasher, it only gets turned on a couple of times per week, when the dishwasher is literally full. We already have plenty of crockery and cutlery, so allowing the dishwasher to fill up over two or three days rather than running it daily means lower electricity bills and lower detergent costs. Those little dishwasher tablets can cost 15 pence each, so reducing the number of tablets used coupled with doubling up on those special offers the supermarkets run means we’ve more than halved the cost of clean plates in our house. That’s when it cleans properly that is.

Given that this appliance is a little more than four years old now, we would really rather make it last a few years more before considering replacing it, especially since it seems mechanically sound still. Lin had already cleaned the drain plate and catch trays, and by running the machine empty with a dishwasher tablet, we expected the machines performance to return to it’s former glory, just like it usually does. However, even after the clean cycle, the end result was still glasses and crockery coming out of the machine coated in a kind of scum. Time to investigate further.

All bunged up

I took the filter cup and tray out the base of the dishwasher just as Lin normally does to reveal dirty water still held in the trap, which is usually empty after the end of the dish-washing cycle due to the drying process. Within this trap on our dishwasher there are another two filters, a plastic one that screws into the waste trap itself and another metal one that sits over the top of that. I removed them both and found the bung from one of my sports drink canisters had somehow managed to get into that trap and being about the right size, was restricting water flow.

As I removed the bottle cap, a minor amount of debris flowed back into the waste trap which had obviously not cleared due to poor pressure in the pumping system. Something that could be best described as a willow catkin came free followed by rice and the like. Now because the dishwasher pumping cycle is followed by a hot air drying process that means any dirty water that had not been pumped out of the system would still be sat in the bottom of the machine during drying cycle. That would make ‘dirty’ steam that is going to evaporate on the surface of anything still inside the dishwasher, hence the scum on the plates, glasses and the like. So we found the cause.

All cleaned up

After washing the filters in the sink to remove cooking oils, tomato sauces and the like it was a simple matter of replacing the filters back from whence they came. Then using a dishwasher tablet with a minimal amount of dirty crockery in the dishwasher, we then set the machine going for a full cycle to thoroughly clean out the system. Now the results are just as when the machine was new, with plates and glasses as clean as they can be, without softening my hands into the bargain. How that bottle cap got in between the filters though, I’ll never know as clearly it could never pass through the filter of it’s own accord and I’m pretty sure the catch tray and filter cup are always replaced properly after a clean. That’s one of life’s mysteries, like socks that go missing in the washing machine only to resurface weeks later I guess. I don’t think any amount of dishwasher cleaner would have solved that problem, do you