Pinning a comment (in the hopes people read it...) that the running-the-hot-water thing is generally only for North America! I put that in the main channel video but wasn't explicit here.
@@Renegade605 Ok you all say what you want I will not be giving any more facts, Even though I'm trained on medical washers and am an official Miele agent since I know nothing after doing this for 31 years I better stop work right .. fine im wrong happy
Walmart Online employee here. Save yourself the time on trips and order the soap for pick up. If your store has it in stock you’ll get it but, and here’s the advantage, if it’s out of stock, your order not being completed will send an out of stock alert to Walmarts “In Stock Assistant” aka the algorithm and AI that keeps track of on hands. Missed sales like that help to push the system to raise the replenishment rate.
Advantage for walmart, maybe. It's still frustrating to not get it. ISA takes forever to zero those on hands. Here's the less ethical version: order 8 boxes because that's about what a full shelf can hold iirc, and select 6 or 7 AM pickup. Select no substitutions. The online shoppers will have your order ready by 6, when stocking is mostly done, but the in-person shoppers haven't had a chance to pick through it. Even if you show up late for pickup, they'll still hold it for you. The worst case scenario is you get nothing, but the best case scenario is you have enough detergent to last you until 2025. 🤣
@@no.no.4680 More unethical hacks. Your mileage may vary. Order non stock items online at best buy for store pick-up, then don't pick them up. After about a week they refund you, then put the items on clearance in the store. Accidentally found this when ordering a case of ink and not having time to pick it up. Went in the store to pick it up and ended up finding my order on the clearance rack for half price.
@@no.no.4680 and then suddenly, we get 16 eaches on the next delivery anticipating the sale trend, and 10 of them live in the bin. as a person who is at a store that chooses to packout chem during the day, there is a chance that wont work: < 8 boxes on shelf at 7am. somthing somthing unless you get lucky and the rest of your 8 are on topstock. vizpick team wont work those chem picks they picked at 7 onto a cart intill somtime past noon, so your pickup team will nil pick the empty shelf that says we have it while it sits on a l cart in the back. the team would probably also be happy to take the 4 they need out of the backroomcase, and leave the other 4 in the box in the bin, 50/50 they pick it, maybe not ( so there is still "8" in the back)
@no.no.4680 I agree. ISA is a pain to deal with. Current example at my store is butter. We've been out of GV butter for over a week and yet we still get orders coming through for it for pickup/delivery. And it's yet to be replenished. Add a remodel in the mix and it's chaos!
ISA is the worst! It will zero out an item nilpicked once, even though there’s hundreds on a cart ready to be worked, and other times it will not zero anything out even if it’s been out scanned and nilpicked for weeks. It drives me crazy!
People are joking about how many dishwasher videos there are now, but the series really proves how much more complex this seemingly simple household appliance is and how many misunderstandings can evolve from not knowing the intricacies of the washing process, the machines' operation, and the outright false advertising by the dishwasher detergent industry.
See? This is how you make that comment fresh and interesting. Most of the “BABE, WAKE UP!” comments get a thumbs down for unoriginality but you, sir, get a thumbs up.
@@TainaElisabeth Right… and this combo is the proper application of the “new lore just dropped” meme. It’s only funny where it’s kinda true though you wouldn’t normally think that about the subject.
I have attended a training from whirlpool/jennair/kitchenaid/maytag. They said that their engineers prefer that everyone just uses the "prowash" setting all the time. That's the way that the unit was designed to run, with the aid of the turbidity sensor. The other wash cycles are literally there because marketing departments want to be able to list a certain number of wash cycles. So, just use the automatic setting all the time
I have seen demonstrably inferior results due to the sensor. Yes, it can detect the water, but it often cuts off while there are a few stuck on pieces here and there, that due to their tenacity do not register with the sensor.
What I want as a consumer is a load cycle of ~45 minutes that properly cleans & rinses my dishes. The auto/pro cycles tend to take 90-150 minutes - hours upon hours, and I just flat out refuse to stay chained to my dishwasher’s 2 hour cycle so I can empty it before bed.
I just spent a few minutes perusing old Finish Powerball ads, and they definitely imply that they dissolve at different times, and do different things. The funniest part is that modern ads show the ball as the rinse stage to make them sparkle, but ads from 2000-2001 have thr ball act first to break down heavy grime in the pre-wash
damn, you're right. Now that you mention it I remember those adds showing the ball as a power move, doing the heavy attack. And now it's the sparkle thing. I didn't fall for this crap in the first place, just buy el cheapo store branded stuff, so it never really registered much.
5 месяцев назад+57
I remember someone discovering that a lot of the pods are just three differently colored versions of the same powder 😂
I actually used my remaining Finish tabs as two-parters before switching to plain powder - I pried the ball out and threw it in the tub while the rest of the tab went in the dispenser.
Fun thought about the hot water thing. If people prewash their dishes before placing them in the dishwasher (like my parents did) it would mean that when they run the dish washer right after prewashing the dishes there would already be hot water in the lines. This might be why some people think they have to prewash by hand in order to get clean dishes.
They should really just put a mechanism into the dishwasher so that it purges the first fill of prewash water immediately if it's not above a certain temperature. I don't know why that isn't a thing.
@@wck At least two reasons: 1. You don't want to waste water (especially if the whole dishwaser advertising is build around saving water) 2. Dishwasher cannot know what is the expected hot water temperature and when to stop purging (each place have different temperatures and it often changes), its even possible that someone connected it to cold water so it will never get hot.
FYI: It is also able to tell how much you loaded it by determining the temperature changes of the water, that represents the capacity of heat storage of the mass of dishes. At least my 15 years old mid price machine does that. Learned that from the technicians manual of its controllerboard.
@@liam3284 Yes, even though it only detects two different states: „The amount of dishes (full or half load) is determined during the first heating phase during washing by checking the time of water temperature increase. Full load: when the slope of the curve is below a certain limit stored as a default. Half load: when the slope of the curve is above the limit.“ It also senses how dirty the dishes are by checking a photo diode in the wastewater during prewash and in summary decides between 4 different combinations of temperature and rinsing times.
A note about plastic packaging. The 'jug' and 'tub' packaging (usually HDPE) is VERY easy to recycle. The foil-covered pouch - mixed materials are very difficult to recycle. I like how the marketing focuses on plastic used, but skips over if the package can be recycled again 😂.
@@stevethepocketThey can be recycled, but no one wants the recycled polymers. There's a few exceptions. Coke bottles and grocery bags apparently both have very high reuse levels.
Yeah, recycling works for paper, glass and aluminum just fine. But plastic recycling is barely a thing, it basically still gets thrown away. Plastic recycling is only a concept at all because of an old push from fossil fuel companies, trying to preempt and redirect environmental movements that might've otherwise created real pressure to limit plastic use.
@@stevethepocket Reddit likes saying that because Penn and Teller did an episode about it 20 years ago but whether or not recycling is being done is heavily regional. On average in the USA, 20% of #1 and 15% of #2 plastic are recycled. But in the Netherlands, 50% of ALL plastics are recycled.
I firmly believe that much of dishwasher design is controlled by their marketing departments. My first dishwasher was one that I found on the curb and repaired before using it. While fixing it, I discovered that it had about 6 manual pushbutton switches that made it look like it had all sorts of 'modes'. I was able to test out the switches with a meter and discovered that most of the switches were in parallel and it made no difference which one was pushed. My current dishwasher has a 'smart' setting which lead me to believe that it has some sort of turbidity sensor. Taking it apart and reading the enclosed circuit diagram, I found that the only sensor is a thermostat.
I have a little experience with this, not dishwashers though. I can think of two reasons for the buttons. The first is that it is cheaper to manufacturer one dishwasher that is used for an entire line than say three different washers for each price point in a line. A lot of what used to be discrete and custom designed electronics are now wrapped up into a single cheap programmable controller chip. A lot of advanced features are controlled by software and what is enabled in the firmware dictates the consumer features that are available. So in a higher-end model, those redundant switches may be hooked up differently and trigger unique cycles. Another reason is just user design. Say I have three wash modes, light, medium and heavy. How does the consumer know what dictates a light, medium, or heavy wash? These products need to be idiot proof, sometimes even illiterate. So specificity may engender better utilization of the washer. Instead of a light mode, there are small load and delicates buttons. Medium would be tied to Normal. Heavy would be pots and pans and heavily soiled. The idea is that we want the user to make better choices by giving them more familiar and informed options. Not saying that this is the case in your example or that marketing doesn't drive superfluous features or generate imaginary value. However, product engineering has to take into account multiple facets of requirements to make a successful product.
Not surprising I suppose. When you can't possibly add bells and whistles that at least add some functionality, but people still want to buy the bells and whistles version of everything, a marketing guy is just going to invent bells and whistles. On the one hand it's deceptive, but on the other hand people probably just wouldn't believe you when you told them it's just a thing that sprays hot water around, there's nothing to add. People insist on the illusion of choice quite often. Mind though.... did you just measure whether there was a connection, or did you test the resistivity or other values? I can imagine a design where they want to limit the number of wires, and still differentiate between buttons another way. If you give them different resistor values a controller could easily detect which button was pressed or even whether multiple were pressed. That's just the first thing that comes to mind where parallel switches could actually be differentiated. I can't imagine this would actually be more cost effective, or less error prone, but when you go into mass manufacturing different factors can result in odd solutions.
@@nagranoth_ It was a long time ago but I probably tested it with a DMM and visually inspected it. It was pretty old school and used a mechanical timer and logic -no semiconductors.
@@Born2bwire what the commenter described cant be undone in software. If the buttons are wired up in parallel then the micro controller will have no way to distinguish between the buttons. source: I'm an electrical engineer
I'm one of those with a Bosh dishwasher, which infamously has no prewash receptacle. Also, I too am fascinated with how my dishwasher works to get the most out of it. Here's my 95% certainty on how it works (95% b/c I have never timed it, I'm just guessing). It will "pre-wash" with just water. As soon as it senses the water is dirty, it will drain and fill again. Each "pre-wash" cycle is thus much shorter than 10 minutes (sometimes it's literally 1-2 minutes). It will continue "pre-wash" cycles until it makes it "10 minutes" without triggering a drain and fill, release the soap, and start the main wash cycle. If the "auto" cycle is selected, it will use the number of times that it did a "drain and fill" to determine the length of the main wash cycle and intensity of spray. If another cycle is selected, it will adjust the wash length and intensity accordingly. My water bill is the lowest among my neighbors, so it's somehow not using a ton of water to do all of these fills. Yes, I said it will adjust the intensity. With the "heavy" setting selected (or auto-selected with enough drain-n-fills) it will audibly increase the intensity of the spray jets. I know (from listening carefully) that it has the ability to use the upper and lower spray arms independently. By only using the lower or the upper at any one time, it can direct the full force of the pump into one set of jets or the other, increasing the intensity. At this time I am still uncertain if it also adjusts the pump output in some way. This is just scratching the surface of the Bosch dishwashers. They also have a unique fill sequence, and an uncanny ability to get the water VERY hot (without an exposed heating element), it sometimes realizes that there's still dirty water in it before the rinse cycle and will do a partial fill to try and clear it, etc. Alec, I think you over-paid for your dishwasher. The Bosch dishwashers are cutting edge, have more features, amazing reliability, and some models are way less than 1,300. Is there a "pre-wash" soap receptacle? No, but it doesn't need one. These machines need almost no soap, and will still get your dishes clean. I know because I forget to add soap some times. Other than no "fresh washed" smell from the detergent's perfume, I can't tell the difference. The only downside to the Bosch is the filter. If your Bosch dishwasher is not performing, then just go clean the filter. Everything else will take care of itself. Pro-tip: I make sure to clean the filter every time it alerts me to adding more rinse aid and I never have problems with dirty filters.
I appreciate your channels so much and selfishly want to ask for more appliance/home lessons. I didn't get taught a lot of stuff like this growing up, and imo the worst part of a surprise house problem is having no direction. You'll forever be one of my favorite channels because you've actively made my daily life a bit less stressful :)
Really makes you want to find a phone number, and call them, and force them to explain what "cyclesync" means, as it would imply that the pods sync with the cycle of the machine. And ask how it KNOWS when to add the enzyme, and if that's during the pre-wash or the main wash. But sadly, you'll probably get some generic customer support based out of another country, and there would be no real way for them to escalate the issue to someone who could actually answer the question, or forward your comments to the assholes in the marketing department.
@@Fearmylogic It activates the enzyme the same way laundry washing machine activates the enzymes in the laundry detergent - with heat. Or more precisely, at around 40C most enzymes hit optimal efficiency and break down at around 50C, leaving rest of the work to be done by the detergent and water.
Originally it probably did. Over time, some people probably complained that it never dissolved, and some exec said it's not worth it, make it out of the same stuff and just color it red. Nobody will know.
One thing I really appreciate with my 2010-ish mid range Maytag (Whirlpool) dishwasher is that the pre-wash and wash detergent cups each have two fill lines labelled with "soft water" and "hard water." The "soft water" portion is less than half the detergent suggested for hard water.
It might be intended to work more like a commercial kitchen, where dishes are hosed down manually to remove food residue, then the dishwasher is mostly a final clean and sanitise step, and uses the same hot water for multiple loads.
European high-end machines like mine would blow your mind! We don't have exposed heating elements. They are inline. Machines are designed to run on cold water and usually are programmed to take the pod or tablet. Final drying is always residual heat, some machines open the door to accelerate drying. Having said all that, I too use powder so I can vary it according to load. My current machine only pre-washes on the heavier programme, and it uses sensors for water hardness and turbidity. Its eco grogramme is the most used, takes hours (I am in bed), but works flawlessly. It uses 9 litres of water and just over a unit of electricity to wash up to 3 days worth of dishes. Result!!
It amazes me how often the US uses 20 year old tech. My medium range dishwasher does everything the videos talk about and it doesn't even cost half of that high end one alec has. The only feature I would want is the automatic opening of the door.
@@hkr667 So interesting how markets differ. I am in Poland, I bought my dishwasher about 3 years ago. I bouht one on the cheaper end, but basically all of them (including mine) had automatic door opening.
I can't believe Europe is so big on energy saving yet uses electric resistance heaters to heat the water. Central gas or heat pump water heaters would save so much.
Can I just say how much I appreciate your general knowledge and willingness to deep dive into so many things around our daily lives (dishwashsers, hvac, light bulbs, power). I find all this stuff so interesting. The first video I ever saw of yours was how the cassette-to-aux-cord works and ive been hooked since. Keep it up!
I recently bought a new high-end dishwasher and the directions specifically said "you are not doing your dishwasher any favors by rinsing your dishes" I thought of your videos 😊. It did recommend removing bones lol
The real problem is any stuff that doesn't break down in soap and water, which may include fibrous material such as celery. This can also be awful for your sink disposal. Garbage goes to trash and compost, not into the sewer. Many elderly people especially were sold on the idea that garbage disposals and dishwashers are magic. I bought a house and they said the disposal didn't work. Used a hex key and cranked the manual override in case of obstruction until it freed itself. Works like any disposal of its age. Saved $300+ by turning a hex key a few turns. That's my experience with the older generation in a nutshell. "IT DON'T WORK" ... what did you try? ... "WELL IT WORKED BEFORE". Sigh. No, when you threw lemon peels and bones and fibrous material down the disposal, it clogged all the time and did not work, but whatever. Free disposal.
I've washed bones in a dishwasher, it does a good job, they come out nice and clean. But I've found the clothes washer does a better job. The plus with the clothes washer is that you can throw some old towels in and the bones rub against the towels and it gets the bones a lot cleaner. The other plus is you can put a lot of bleach in and that helps get the bones whiter. Using the dryer, on the other hand, is not a good idea. While it will certainly dry the bones, they tend to knock together and get chipped even when you put a lot of towels in with the bones.
My wife actually came across your initial dishwasher video, I think it's the only one of yours she's ever watched, and we've discussed it a few times, and she has said that she agrees we don't need to pre-wash the dishes. And yet, she keeps pre-washing the dishes. When I load the dishwasher without pre-washing, they come out equally as clean, but no matter what she says I just can't stop her from pre-washing.
Unless they are going from the table to the dishwasher I’m going to rinse them off before letting them sit in the sink waiting for the dishwasher. Food sitting in the sink attracts bugs.
I leave them in the sink for a little while, doing other things gets most of the food off. This is because I only run the dishwasher every 3-4 days normally and don't want it to stink.
I don't prewash everything I throw into my counter top unit, but I do rinse everything off with hot water to help a bit. I may wash some stuff a bit due to heavy stuck on junk. But yeah, I know that my unit washes better if the tap water is hot.
This is EXACTLY why I "pre-rinse". Basically, I use the hot water to rinse the plates/pots of big stuff and put them right into the dishwasher. By the time I fill the dishwasher its very hot water going into the dishwasher. That's also partly due to my dishwasher not having a macerator and I rinse into my sink which does have a garbage disposal. Also -- testing for giggles when his first dishwasher series came out, I've ran my dishwasher without soap with plates and cups just to see how clean stuff gets. With just hot water they were very, very, clean. Hot water is #1 for these modern conveniences and if you have the heater element and a sanitize function I'd be curious if you even need soap.
@@TechnologyConnextras Or just not wasting the water-why not rinse off the worst of the gunk while you're getting hot water to the machine? One person's hilarious is another person's efficient, I guess.
I've had two residences using one of those portable roll-around ones, too. They were trippy. And a great extra horizontal surface (to collect junk) in the kitchen!!! Undercounter ones impressed me!
Fill a teacup with soap, and put the rest of the soap all over the laundry and in the washing machine. EDIT: Oh, eh, whoops, somehow i imagined a washing machine and not a dishwasher.
I have a counter top portable dishwasher. You pour 5 quarts water in top. It heats the water and hot. If you open it as soon as wash is down when dry cycle starts the metal pans are too hot to touch. And already dry. So I been shutting it off skipping 1 hr dry cycle. It don't have a dispenser for soap. Just says to toss a pod in bottom. Been using the finish brand. Usually I do the 30 min quick wash and 1 pod. I usually over fill it a bit. Stuff comes out clean. Occasionally I'll have to put couple things back in. But cause I had it too full probably and water got blocked. Mine you can drain in sink or bucket. 5 quarts is total used regardless of mode.
When my home inspector went through the house they copied whatever serial numbers they could see, now at the start of each season I get an email with any recall notices on those serial numbers and there's also some seasonal home and yard advice.
I remember that the reason I know to run the hot water for the dishwasher is because when I was a kid, we lived in a single wide trailer with a small kitchen and a portable dishwasher that you had to wheel over to the sink and hook up to the faucet whenever it was time to put it on. And since it was getting water directly from the faucet, it was obvious that the hot water had to be run until it was actually hot before hooking up the dishwasher and starting it. That and just knowing that I've always had to run hot water at any faucet for a bit before it was actually hot led me to conclude that the dishwasher isn't magically getting instantly hot water that none of the faucets have, I have to make sure the water is actually hot first.
My German made Bosch 800 has this feature. I've noticed it does seem to shorten the cycle time if my dishes are fairly clean, so that's nice I guess. Oddly, even though I bought my dishwasher in the Midwest, it still has some European spec features, like a water softener and an inline water heater. I also agree completely on the heated drying though. Before buying my Bosch 800 I never used it due to the energy use and extreme heat melting stuff. Though the Bosch has a cool (hot?) feature where it dries by cycling the air through Zeolite crystals, which absorb moisture and release heat. It's a completely closed loop, and when I open my dishwasher immediately after it completes a cycle I get hit with a wave of hot, but otherwise dry air. It does a remarkably good job of drying dishes.
I'm so happy that there are other people out there really (over)thinking about home appliances. Love it. For the final part of the dishwasher saga you might also want to have a look at the Zeolith drying technology (quite standard on high end dishwashers here in Europe)
As an Icelander, the concept of water heating is such a foreign idea to me because we pump hot ground water into every home. Of course it makes sense that in places where you can't access hot ground water, you need to heat it, but it's just one of those things that I never thought about...
You know, you made me realize that it had never really occurred to me that people with access to geothermally heated water would just... use it as hot water. Like, I've always thought of it in the context of powering generators or as geysers and whatnot, never as people pumping it directly to homes. Neat.
@@the_real_Kurt_Yarish There's a reason the hot water in some Icelandic homes smells of sulphur - it may very well contain trace amounts of the stuff! Perfectly safe for bathing in or washing your dishes in, but smells like eggs.
I wish I could just get hot water out of the ground. Geothermal heating would be awesome too! It’s a little freaking thinking about living on top of hot water, though…
Just like I never thought about just pumping hot ground water into your home, eventho it is a pretty obvious thing to do when you are in Iceland. Nice you brought that up.
I just bought a Bosch and its auto-open function is my absolute favourite feature. I only run it at night before bed or in the morning before work, so if it didn't do that my dishes would be stewing in residual hot moisture for 8 hours or more, and that can lead to gross mildewy smells when I finally release them. (It is a bit alarming when it auto-opens though! You've forgotten it's doing its thing after a three-hour cycle.)
That ad you're talking about absolutely rings a bell for me, too, all the way over in Europe-town. Some blue animation showing powder washing away the dirt, then the red ball coming in to finish the job.
12:30 you could put dirty dishes in, leave the dispenser open, and see if it drains out the prewash or just goes on to the main wash without draining, no? If it carries on without draining then it does handle this error and assumes the detergent is already in the dishwasher, if it drains you'll know it assumes it has detergent in the dispenser and thus doesn't know if it's open or close (or at least can't take that into account).
Have one and it was cheap, from Indesit, like 400€ (cheap no brand one is like 300€), it works fine, the quick program I notice the washed material is more wet and in the 65º for dirty stuff it does finish dryer, usually after dinner i left it washing and often I am already in bed just watching a movie or something and I hear the sound of the door opening, my GF does state ours dries the dishes much better than the one her mother has (more expensive model but older). quick program is 1 hour, the ECO 3 hours and the 65º also 3 hours, it has other programs, but I never use them, only recently started using the 65º and for stuff that was used in the hoven and has dry food it really makes a huge difference, to the point I no longer try to remove it by hand before. Also, thanks to the kind sir we are watching the video I never "prewash" anything, just remove the bits of food and goes to the machine, only expectation is coffee mugs, it does really leave a mark of left to dry. just put a pod on the compartment and a bit of gel on the prewash cavity and that's it.
@@Christobevii3 why? Whats the point of opening before the program finishes? This is a nice to have featured, you can do the same by hand, but implies that you are at home when it finishes... Using 3 hour long programs it is very likely you will not...
I think most dishwashers have that feature now, my current dishwasher is the "cheapest one that the landlord could find" and it has that (other than that it's extremely basic).
I learned about the "run the nearest hot water tap until water is hot" from the manual when we moved into our first new construction townhome. My sister has a dishwasher that doesn't have a heated dry. It relies completely on rinse agents. I also believe the the pod must have a high profit margin for the companies. I believe that because when the Tide pods were getting eaten by accident, they weren't immediately taken off the market. It became a "that's a consumer problem". Thanks for making both videos on this. It's amazing that some folks don't how to run their appliances because they never were taught. "That's how my family has always done it".
@@official_haden My laundry dryer exhausts into my garage which really rustles my jimmies. It's probably not a big deal because it's not airtight and outside is a desert. I just don't like the idea of all that moisture getting pumped into the enclosed space.
That's how they do it everywhere outside of North America. Ours are hooked up only to the cold water line. Same with washing machines. They all have an internal 2-3kW immersion heater.
@@bluthefox What's wild to me is that NA does have 240V AC available for appliances like heaters and ovens, but won't do it for dishwashers because that's just the way it is. Homes here get wired with a 120V outlet by the dishwasher because all dishwashers run on 120V, and all dishwashers sold here are designed to run on 120V because homes only have that by the dishwasher.🤦
@magisworthsnaklepass5183 Yes, the damn thing already has a microprocessor, valves, pump, all they would need to add is a temperature sensor and those are dirt cheap. But with consumer equipment, even the tiniest cost change is significant. I suspect adding 25 cents would be a deal breaker. I'm half tempted to get another Arduino and DIY my dishwasher controller after watching this. Everything's all set up to run with a micro processor, so how hard could it be? And 3 months later he knew the answer.
In Europe, as far as I can tell, the machine is designed to heat it's own watter. I bought a new apartment and the tap underneeth the sink/counter is from the cold watter pipe. I wanted to modify it to draw from the hot water pipe in stead, since the hot one comes from a gas instant heater, and so the water would be hot faster, but it seaned a bit too much of a bother, so I dropped the ideea.
on some dishwashers there is a service mode. You can in service mode select what part of the cycle to run.. For instance you can run the fill or drain cycles in what ever order you want. Does not require tools, you just have to hold the buttons down in a weird way
I lived in an apartment and owned one of those portable dishwashers. It seemed obvious to run the hot before connecting it. But for some reason when I moved to a place with a built in dishwasher, I just never even thought about running the hot first. Can't tell you why. Dishwasher is running much better now! Thanks @TechnologyConnections
You're the one that got me to wash my dishes more proper-like. I don't bother washing them myself, if the dishwasher misses one, I *then* scrub it and then stick it back in the next cycle. but like 99.9% of the time it gets everything, the only trouble I have is my wet dog food spoon never gets cleaned and sometimes leaves dog food remnants over other things, so I scrub that one every time. if you use your brain a little more and know "this food never gets cleaned by the dishwasher properly" you can plan accordingly without having to practically wash your dishes before you stick them in the dishwasher. write the dishes and foods that give the dishwasher a hard time on a piece of paper if you have to.
Same. If it didn't wash it properly, brush what's left off and back in it goes. I do live by myself so I have plenty clean stuff left. If it's full I just soak whatever can't go in in a bit of cold water and only like oven dishes in hot water.
In the food industry dishwashers are for sanitizing, not for actually washing. Well, my old roommate took this information and thought that it MUST also be true for household dishwashers too. Because of this he'd always argue with me to fully wash my dishes before loading the dishwasher. I truly wish I could have sent him these videos back then.
Really interesting that in commercial settings, they wash dishes the same way domestic dishwashers do: blasting them with a jet of very hot soapy water until all the food residue is gone. Only difference is they have a kitchen hand standing there in a big rubber apron aiming the hose by hand rather than the blindly spinning arm of a dishwasher.
At least in the states, the requirements are one sink for ringing, one for washing, one for something I can't remember . After hand wash, load a rack or two (depends on capacity of sanitizer) and put in the sanitizer which takes a few minutes per cycle. Remove rack and air dry. It's a matter of speed and volume since you aren't spending the hour or whatever per machine load and the amount of heavy baked on food to something just dirty with sauce or whatever tends to be low; while a load is being sanitized you can keep scrubbing really dirty things and the next load. Note that this is for dishes and utensils. I'm not familiar with what the process is for pots and pans.
You're legit one of my favorite youtubers. I wish I could learn under you like a monk in a temple. You know how to make things make sense in my mind. Thank you
Surprised you didn't mention in-sink food/garbage disposals. When present in a kitchen with a dishwasher, the wastewater from the wash cycles often drains into the disposal, so if you have left any solids/residues in the disposal without thoroughly running it, it can back up and affect the ability to remove the dirty water or just cause a mess. In some cases, if you look down the disposal while the wastewater is draining, you can see it flow in from the side. Neat! Great video (again), and agree with everything in it. I am also one of those people, so I read the chart in the manual for my dishwasher that says what the actual differences in the cycles are.
On a related note, the dishwasher drain line is supposed to have an air trap before entering the inlet on the disposal. If this trap is absent and your kitchen drain clogs your dirty water from the sink will siphon into the dishwasher and then overflow onto the floor. Want to guess how I know?
I do wonder if the people who say they "need" to rinse their dishes are also unknowingly flushing the cold water from the pipes as they rinse, thus getting the heat-related improvement and assuming it's because of the rinse step.
If you don't pre-clean your dishes, everything is going down the drain (often through a garbage disposal). That's fine if you're on an urban sewer system, but somewhere around 25-30% of Americans are on septic systems and are better served by pre-cleaning and not putting the extra waste food mass into their tank.
@@sumnerhayes3411 honest question - when you say “pre-clean”, what physical actions do you mean? Because to me, it means “rinse the dishes in the kitchen sink and run the wastewater down the exact same pipe as the dishwasher uses." But then, I’m a lifelong sewer user. I think maybe septic users mean something like ”scrape food carefully into the trash can” which, yes, serves a very different purpose. (It also might mean septic users could translate “you don’t need to pre-rinse your dishes” into “scraped dishes could usually be run on the light setting.”)
@@joemurphy2266 Yes, if you're on septic you typically want to scrape everything you can into the compost or garbage and avoid putting it down the drain (whether via the sink or the dishwasher).
@@sumnerhayes3411 That must be why my house doesn't have a garbage disposal in the sink. It has a septic tank. My last house in Oklahoma was connected to the city sewage system and therefore had an in-sink garbage disposal.
I feel like regardless, you should always scrape excess food in the garbage or compost, one shouldn't have to deal with drain clogs in the future. As for me, I do this, and leave dishes in the sink, let them soak until I have a sufficient load to put them all in the dishwasher and then operate it. No sense in loading them in right away, close the door, and have potential mold or botulism grow in the meantime. It happened with a leftover cereal bit once. 🤢
Your videos are pretty much the only ones I watch from absolutely start to absolute finish. Keep doing what you’re doing. Learned a lot with your dishwasher series. As someone who doesn’t have a lot of great family advice on home care, your stuff has been huge in helping me better take care of my home. Also thanks for teaching me about those improved can openers, bought one and love it.
Computer controlled dishwashers don't always resume where they left off. They can alter the cycles as needed. For example opening the door will cause the program to assume you put in an extra dirty glass. Thus run extra to make sure it is cleaned. A mechanical timer won't do this.
I have a portable dishwasher! I always run the water hot first before plugging in, but I actually didn't realize it was necessary, I just saw it as a way to save on energy. I naïvely assumed that the dishwasher checked that the water was hot enough before starting its cycle...
I think even newer dishwashers are checking the temp of the incoming water. My wife always forgets to run the hot water and when she runs it you can hear the fill and drain at the same time for a while and then when it detects hot water it starts. I only noticed this because I had shut off the hot water valve to the main sink off to work on something. She didn’t know and ran the dishwasher and thought it was broken when she kept turning it on and it would run for a bit and stop.
I am absolutely riveted by the whole dishwasher machine in itself. The soap is a whole other sector that is equally interesting. You should do more on it!
So, first...thank you for sharing. You've greatly improved my dishwasher experience. When I was a kid I was told to never fill the prewash side because "it's just a waste of detertgent" That being said, I was also raised more or less by my blind grandmother, who wouldnt "clean" the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher but she'd make sure there was no gunk on the dishes before putting them in. So I can see why the prewash step getting skipped always just seemed to work. That being said, when I was a teenager and loading the dishwasher, I'd notice food particles that just stayed put. Pasta, cheese, whatever. Even if I'd ignore the upbringing and just fill the cups as directed. In AZ we've always had very hard water. "Very Hard" water is typically rated at 10ppm ours is very consistently 19 or higher. So I've always just filled the cups up as directed. In both apartments and homes, i've consistently seen food stuff stuck on dishes post wash. What I'm learning now is likely those were things from the filter that got sprayed back up as oppoed to food that was on the dishes pre-washing. As of now, it's just habit to do a quick rinse to keep any food from caking on.
Thank you for that. I just saw a post of dishwasher seller saying that you shouldn't prewash your dishes, because if the water is too clean, it says it hasn't done a good job prewashing and increases time and temp on the prewash .. But now I now it's BS
not exactly. His (and also mine) "sees" the clean water and "thinks": I'm good to go to re-use that water in the next step to save water and energy. So it doesn't increase the time and temp, but actually reduces it, because the dishes are already rather clean. And the dishwasher is right with that.
but you probably use more water rinsing them than the full dishwasher cycle. My dw uses less than 5 gallons total on "power wash" (I have a monitor on my meter), and it's easy to use much more than that just rinsing the dishes before you put them in.
I've used the Cascade Complete gel for years, and I've always liked it. I tried the powder after watching your original video, and I had the same results as you with it leaving a white residue on everything. I threw the rest of it away and went back to the gel. I'll have to try the Great Value powder and see if it works for me.
you made me dig out my dishwasher's manual, only to find out that the program i've been using doesn't do a pre wash 😅 i now have a copy of the program table taped to the kitchen cabinet lol
I'm not sure if this applies to all makes and newer models, but there is usually a tech sheet taped on the inside of the front access cover at the bottom of the dishwasher. It has information for diagnostic modes and sometimes has a simple electrical diagram.
I have a Siemens (Bosch) dishwasher, about 4 years old (Australia). It has two main cycles (as well as a few others): Quick wash 65C and Auto 45-65C. It also has a standalone pre-wash cycle. After your first video, I looked into the cycles, prewash etc, and I also don't have a pre-wash detergent dispenser. After the last video, I discovered that Quick does not prewash. I also discovered that Auto will prewash only if it detects turbidity. Therefore, to trigger turbidity, I add a little bit of detergent powder (kudos to first video) to trigger the prewash cycle by helping get the water dirty. If I decide I need to do a quick wash, I may run an independent prewash cycle first with a little bit of detergent. Love your videos, keep them coming.
Hi, Is wm soap repranded Dove? I think I heard that when I worked at Costco. Costco has Pantene make their shampoo n we started talking about name brand stuff being made into generic. But wm soap is probably less expensive than Dove. I sympathise with your sensitive skin. I'm sorry about that.
@@kg-Whatthehelliseventhat It's either rebranded or a copy. It's very similar. But I've had better experiences with the Walmart brand, interestingly. Could be coincidence.
@@dspiffy right on. Yea, they will change it just a bit. I used to use this amazing soap with 2 sides. One side was...what is it?? Carbon? Idr... it was black and the other side was blue. The black side would scrub and the other side would moisturise. I loved that stuff. Thank you for the chat. Have a great week.
Soaps have a PH and that combined with your local waters' PH and your skins PH makes your preference. Search "The pH of Popular Soaps" to find alternatives to try or buy. I've always used Dove bar soap and I love the clean smell.
As someone who formulated dishwasher detergents I'm always excited for these videos. I'll have to update this post once I'm done with, well, both videos, but needless to say, I'm so curious if your findings have lined up with the issues I've encountered (or if consumer grade dishwashers have similar technologies. I know we would often bolt on and program dispensers).
Ooh. You'd know this --- is DIY dishwasher detergent (one part of salt and citric acid to two parts of borax and sodium bicarbonate) at all comparable to the commercial stuff? Does it even have the same ingredients, disregarding stuff like perfume?
@@bewilderbeestie Most commercial detergents also have enzymes, emulsifiers, surfactants. Stuff to make it perform the specific role of cleaning in a dishwasher better than a simple generic detergent.
Your videos have knocked some really needed common sense into this household. I found your channel a few years ago, when looking up space heaters. Love the content!
To me the best indicator of the quality of a dishwasher is how well the baskets are made. If they are well made, then it's likely the rest of the machine will be too, and it's usually the baskets that start failing first in my experience.
I live in an older house, with no provision for a dishwasher, and I am definitely not in a place in my life to remodel the kitchen just for that. All this to say, I have one of the rollaway dishwashers. I always run the water to hot before hooking it up. My wife loves her pods, so, since seeing your first video on this, I bought a bottle of gel for the prewash. That thing has worked flawlessly for me for years now. Thank you for how in-depth you've dug into this subject!
Regarding the "Don't bother pre rinsing"advice. I'd do it for stuff that contains curry or lots of red sauce. I've had plenty of stuff turn orange after putting it in a dish washer with stuff that contained curry powder. Like cutting boards or Tupperware. Guess heat and pigments trend to mix very well in a dish washer.
I worked at a food factory once, and the red they use for tomatosauces and things like that is condensed paprika(or bell pepper) oil, it's so lame, because it gets everywhere, and don't forget to wipe your lips after eating either, geez. I really wish they wouldn't use it, i'd much prefer a 'bland' looking spaghetti, than to end up with red lipstick on after a meal. I mean... i should just cook my own food anyway, but yeah, that aside.
@Trapperx89 i looked in a dishwasher manual and it says to not pre rinse and to set the temperature higher. (I used a Siemens dishwasher manual since i am familiar with it) So I wondered what temperature do you use?
Yes, someone had to tell me: after college I lived for 11 years without a dishwasher, then 3 years in an apartment with one, then moved to a townhouse that also had one. In the townhouse I had problems with the dishwasher and a repairman was summoned. He was the one who told me to run the hot water before starting the dishwasher. Since you mentioned hot water recirculation--I bet the apartment building had that feature, so I did not know about hot water to get the dishwasher to work well. Now it all makes sense! I have to fill a gallon jug to purge cold water before running the dishwasher, but at least I understand the problem.
Machines designed with tablets in mind have a perforated tray under the dispenser that doesn't let the tablet fall into the tub (on my machine, it's attached to the top shelf). There, the tablet will only get occasional sprayed water, while powder or gel will fall through the tray. That might give some credence to the tabletmakers' claims.
Okay, probably I should caveat that statement with "some". Mine (a 2007 Electrolux, has an identical dispenser to one shown in the main video, with no prewash slot) does, and it states it's purpose in the manual. Mind you, I use gel, because 1. No powder on the market here, and 2. I have a central water softener, meaning all tabs would be hopelessly overdosed (and I like to have control over dosing anyway).
Here’s a hint. If you want to save money on buying that Kitchen Aid Dishwasher. The brand name “Kitchen Aid” is owned by Whirlpool and they sell all their appliances under multiple different brand names (Maytag, Amana, Kenmore, even Whirlpool themselves). So look up the model, and find what name that dishwasher is sold under each name brand and you could probably get a better deal on the exact same dishwasher, so long as you don’t care about the Badge in front.
It's possible, but always be wary of that. I don't know about dishwashers, but with products I do know about, while they share some components and look the same, other components may be swapped to lower end alternatives or in. For example, the casing is probably the same as it is dirt cheap to produce once the tooling is set up, but you might have a pump with a shorter expected lifespan or something. The other thing you can see in some products is that the lower price tier are ones that failed QC for the higher price tier. They are still functional but may not be quite as good in one way or another. That doesn't mean it can't be worth looking at the lower tier from the same manufacturer as they may be just as good, but just because they look the same and the base specs are the same do not assume they are the exact same product rebadged.
@@88porpoise "For example, the casing is probably the same as it is dirt cheap to produce once the tooling is set up" And even if it isn't dirt cheap to produce, it's CERTAINLY cheaper to just use the same than set up tooling and production lines for a completely separate, slightly cheaper version. =) It's kinda like with Toyota and Lexus, it's cheaper for Toyota to make everything shared to the spec that Lexus needs and use it for both rather than make separate versions.
for the new dishwasher he has, all 3 brands (kitchenaid, maytag, whirlpool) have the same basic design. HOWEVER! all 3 have a different 3rd rack (the kitchenaid has spinning sprayers, maytag a stationary one, and i dont know if the whirlpool has one at all), and the maytag/kitchenaid both have the self-cleaning filter design whereas whirlpools has a manual clean filter. aside from that, the dishwashers are relatively the same.
Your previous dishwasher video was my introduction to your channel and I've been hooked since. Learning about purging the cold water before starting the dishwasher from that video has worked great for several dishwashers I've used.
Engineer who worked at GE appliances on the dishwasher line back in 2011. Turbidity sensors are in most dishwashers made after 2005 or so. They aren't exclusive to high end dishwashers. All the eco cycles use this to adjust the cycles based on how dirty the water is.
Thanks to your first video I changed to powder and my dishes have benefitted immensely. My washer also has a sensor and I've started to always use the auto mode, even though it has other ones, such as eco, extra power, glass care, etc. Eco just runs three times as long and all of them deliver less reliable results than the automatic one. It also has an additional (smaller) spray arm on one end of the bottom arm. I love it dearly because it saves so much time and water. Especially since using the cheapest powder is in use. For those in Germany: Powder is easily found in stores here, thankfully.
You also get a water recirculation unit for domestic homes, that has a pump on the hot water side, and a thermostatic valve by the tap, that allows cold water to flow till the water gets hot, circulating the cold water in the hot line back down the cold water line, so there is always a small volume of warm water instantly at the tap. Wastes power in the lines, so the suggestion is to insulate both water lines all the way, plus a small amount of power to run that circulation pump.
@@buckeye0x0c We usually have sensors near the water heater: You open the hot water and close it again, the drop in pressure activates the circulation pump, so you don't have to have the water running while waiting for it to get hot. When no hot water has been used for a while, the pump shuts off again.
@@buckeye0x0c Ones I have seen you use a contact switch like a doorbell switch to trigger and start it. It only runs on demand and then only until the water is hot. I will admit the water savings unless you are in a desert area like CA or Las Vegas or something probably is minimal. I have an "instant" on water heater which takes a while to heat so I would like the pump.
Thanks for mentioning how the Cascade powder is starting to leave a residue! The last 2 boxes I bought have done that, and I was wondering if it was our old dishwasher going out or something. Our Walmart Market only carries Cascade powder, but it's only a few minutes to a full size store that has Great Value.
I definitly think it's a ploy that P&G have intentionally not improved, or even cheapened their Cascade powder so it doesn't perform well, in order to push people to their ridiculous pods.
Y'all know what detergent for industrial dishwashers looks like? Its just Lye. Pure, solid, Sodium Hydroxide in a plastik container that gets dissolved with some water and cleans basically everything you can throw at it, at just 52 C° within 90s, yes seconds! (inkluding sanitizing cylce of 10s 82 C°) The reason it isn't used in your dishwasher, except for safety, its just the more expensive materials required for it to withstand this corrosive environment.
plus, at the end these machines add acid to neutralize the lye. I still have one of these around here, but due the reasons you mentioned I definitely won't use that for my dishwasher. Maybe, if ever needed for special cleaning. I worked with these kind of washers in the medical sectors. Pretty interesting stuff.
Our new dishwasher has a feature that when we were buying it looked like it would be a good idea, but turned out to be freaking fantastic! It has this extra, very shallow pull out tray on the very top. The tray is only about an inch deep and has grooves to line up utensils like forks, spoons, etc. It also has a slightly deeper section where you can put long knives and things. It cleans so much better than bunching utensils in the bins at the bottom, which it also has. It's such a great feature, I don't think I could buy another dishwasher without that tray. It also has bottle jets on the top rack which work great too, but that third top tray is fantastic!
It's honestly upsetting to me that corporations are always trying to manipulate society into the unnecessarily more expensive products, and then killing off the cheaper varieties as best they can.
"finish" has "powder in a bag" (3kg), and it's pretty cheap compared to their tabs.... and WORKS GREAT! (if your local shop does have it, "Jeff's Bookstore" may help you out next day or even sameday.
You're right about the turbidity sensor modifying cycle times and steps Typically the cycle where the sensor is most invasive is the "Auto" cycle, where the machine can skip the prewash and a couple of the three total rinses The machines sense the load via how much water is required to wet the dishes, how quickly the temperature rises during the heating step (the smaller the load the quicker the rise) and how dirty the dishes are. Few not so dirty dishes require little water, low wash pressure, few rinses and a lower wash temperature and viceversa In most European dishwashers (Electrolux, Bosch, Mìele) the turbidity sensor is active in MOST cycles (even the ones that aren't labelled as "AUTO") and you might find the machine might run a prewash and drain none, some, or all the water used in this step. It then might feel the need to perform some sump flushes to remove any debris from the filter. The list goes on... My dishwasher, a Bosch Serie 6, can do most of what I wrote, and especially in the "Auto" cycle it gives itself some flexibility about the programming. Few not very dirty dishes? It will wash them at 45°C and rinse them twice before drying them, all at low pressure and not flushing the sump. A heavy load with lots of dirt? Warm prewash, 65°C mainwash, three rinses and drying, all with high water pressure and flushing the sump multiple times The reason behind this? Energy classification for energy labels
You got it right. Portable dishwashers have in the instructions to connect to the hot tap only and run the water until hot. There is a button on the connector too which allows the water to run out of the tap to ensure that it is hot. The certainly explains why I always had excellent results from my portable dishwashers even with powder. I am glad that you explained the residue issue, I could never grasp why following the instructions led to bad results.
Pinning a comment (in the hopes people read it...) that the running-the-hot-water thing is generally only for North America! I put that in the main channel video but wasn't explicit here.
Dude this rocks, thanks for the double delight upload
@@VK3NFI that is laughably wrong. Take a plate with egg and run hot water in your sink over it - it will NOT bake it on. Good grief.
@@VK3NFI that's simply untrue.
@@Renegade605 Ok you all say what you want I will not be giving any more facts, Even though I'm trained on medical washers and am an official Miele agent since I know nothing after doing this for 31 years I better stop work right .. fine im wrong happy
@@DocNo27 Laugh all you want it was an example for understanding. Rather then think about it more criticism on facts.
My wife just looked at my phone and said, "you're watching ANOTHER dishwasher video by this guy?!" 😂
Is this number 5 or 6?
Same, but my wife also said "we don't even own a dishwasher!".
Yep, I'm gonna be watching dishwashers all day today
😂😂😂
@@JimmyDorff Yes.
"I know this dishwasher very intimately"
An extremely Alec thing to say
"I call her... _Linda_ ..."
@@moosemaimer Linda Purcell, the wife of Petrov?
Was the dishwasher able to Finish?
@@simolatorplease don't Finish inside
@@moosemaimer LINDA!! Get my dishes cleaned
You might say you've covered your dishwasher from start to Finish.
Boy, that Cascaded quickly!
@@anotheruser9876 Watching these videos has resulted in a Great Value to my life I can tell you!
that one was a streach, we arent getting a great value out of these puns@@anotheruser9876
Really scouring for puns, eh
Definitely providing Great Value to us
Walmart Online employee here. Save yourself the time on trips and order the soap for pick up. If your store has it in stock you’ll get it but, and here’s the advantage, if it’s out of stock, your order not being completed will send an out of stock alert to Walmarts “In Stock Assistant” aka the algorithm and AI that keeps track of on hands. Missed sales like that help to push the system to raise the replenishment rate.
Advantage for walmart, maybe. It's still frustrating to not get it. ISA takes forever to zero those on hands. Here's the less ethical version: order 8 boxes because that's about what a full shelf can hold iirc, and select 6 or 7 AM pickup. Select no substitutions. The online shoppers will have your order ready by 6, when stocking is mostly done, but the in-person shoppers haven't had a chance to pick through it. Even if you show up late for pickup, they'll still hold it for you. The worst case scenario is you get nothing, but the best case scenario is you have enough detergent to last you until 2025. 🤣
@@no.no.4680 More unethical hacks. Your mileage may vary. Order non stock items online at best buy for store pick-up, then don't pick them up. After about a week they refund you, then put the items on clearance in the store. Accidentally found this when ordering a case of ink and not having time to pick it up. Went in the store to pick it up and ended up finding my order on the clearance rack for half price.
@@no.no.4680 and then suddenly, we get 16 eaches on the next delivery anticipating the sale trend, and 10 of them live in the bin.
as a person who is at a store that chooses to packout chem during the day, there is a chance that wont work:
< 8 boxes on shelf at 7am. somthing somthing unless you get lucky and the rest of your 8 are on topstock.
vizpick team wont work those chem picks they picked at 7 onto a cart intill somtime past noon, so your pickup team will nil pick the empty shelf that says we have it while it sits on a l cart in the back.
the team would probably also be happy to take the 4 they need out of the backroomcase, and leave the other 4 in the box in the bin, 50/50 they pick it, maybe not ( so there is still "8" in the back)
@no.no.4680 I agree. ISA is a pain to deal with. Current example at my store is butter. We've been out of GV butter for over a week and yet we still get orders coming through for it for pickup/delivery. And it's yet to be replenished. Add a remodel in the mix and it's chaos!
ISA is the worst! It will zero out an item nilpicked once, even though there’s hundreds on a cart ready to be worked, and other times it will not zero anything out even if it’s been out scanned and nilpicked for weeks. It drives me crazy!
There's over 3 hours of Technology Connections content based on dishwashers. This is ridiculously excessive. And I love it.
It’s life-affirming stuff
People are joking about how many dishwasher videos there are now, but the series really proves how much more complex this seemingly simple household appliance is and how many misunderstandings can evolve from not knowing the intricacies of the washing process, the machines' operation, and the outright false advertising by the dishwasher detergent industry.
This is the most "nail on the head" statement I have seen here. Thank you for this. Most people don't take the time to read the directions.
BABE WAKE UP NEW DISHWASHER LORE DROPPED
See? This is how you make that comment fresh and interesting. Most of the “BABE, WAKE UP!” comments get a thumbs down for unoriginality but you, sir, get a thumbs up.
BABE WAKE UP, you were screaming in your sleep again.
MUST SEE TV
@@emmettturner9452 [__] lore is also a meme mr reddit
@@TainaElisabeth Right… and this combo is the proper application of the “new lore just dropped” meme. It’s only funny where it’s kinda true though you wouldn’t normally think that about the subject.
"So that's all this video is about"
Proceeds for another 10 minutes
I have attended a training from whirlpool/jennair/kitchenaid/maytag. They said that their engineers prefer that everyone just uses the "prowash" setting all the time. That's the way that the unit was designed to run, with the aid of the turbidity sensor. The other wash cycles are literally there because marketing departments want to be able to list a certain number of wash cycles. So, just use the automatic setting all the time
Replying because I find this a super interesting comment, thanks! Like an extra upvote I hope.
How does one attend a training seminar from these companies?
I have seen demonstrably inferior results due to the sensor. Yes, it can detect the water, but it often cuts off while there are a few stuck on pieces here and there, that due to their tenacity do not register with the sensor.
@somebonehead I'm a manager for a company that sells major appliances and electronics, I am sent to all kinds of training events.
What I want as a consumer is a load cycle of ~45 minutes that properly cleans & rinses my dishes. The auto/pro cycles tend to take 90-150 minutes - hours upon hours, and I just flat out refuse to stay chained to my dishwasher’s 2 hour cycle so I can empty it before bed.
My wife wasn't interested in having a date night discussion about best dishwasher practices, so I'm glad there's another lore video out
I just spent a few minutes perusing old Finish Powerball ads, and they definitely imply that they dissolve at different times, and do different things.
The funniest part is that modern ads show the ball as the rinse stage to make them sparkle, but ads from 2000-2001 have thr ball act first to break down heavy grime in the pre-wash
damn, you're right. Now that you mention it I remember those adds showing the ball as a power move, doing the heavy attack. And now it's the sparkle thing. I didn't fall for this crap in the first place, just buy el cheapo store branded stuff, so it never really registered much.
I remember someone discovering that a lot of the pods are just three differently colored versions of the same powder 😂
Thank you for the info!
I actually used my remaining Finish tabs as two-parters before switching to plain powder - I pried the ball out and threw it in the tub while the rest of the tab went in the dispenser.
@@estrheagen4160Did it work? Does the ball actually contain detergent? What is the ball made of? Questions, questions...
The video ending without the outtro jazz threw me off more than I would have expected.
"You like jazz?"
It's like a part of my soul is missing.
real
And the obligatory closing subtitle joke
Only in the main channel.
Some people are intimate with a spouse, Alec is intimate with a dishwasher.
Aren't those two the same thing?
It's a JOKE
@@Felnoodle1I mean, if your spouse doesn’t wash the dishes half the time, you need a new one.
@@Felnoodle1 😂
It's much easier to get a dishwasher wet. Although each involve touching a button.
Well, my intimate is my dishwasher. Like the old days.
Now I want to know more about my clothes washing machine.
"I have to test that. I bet it's malarkey, but i have to test that." A true practitioner of the scientific method.
In Finland you don't need detergent, just water is enough because it's already Finish
I hate you for that pun, almost as much as I hate myself for laughing at it.
Top tier dad joke. You have a gift.
Well, we do have very soft water in most areas - so you don't need a lot of detergent. But some detergent is very much recommended 😁😂
I see what you did there.
Fun thought about the hot water thing. If people prewash their dishes before placing them in the dishwasher (like my parents did) it would mean that when they run the dish washer right after prewashing the dishes there would already be hot water in the lines. This might be why some people think they have to prewash by hand in order to get clean dishes.
That makes a lot of sense!
They should really just put a mechanism into the dishwasher so that it purges the first fill of prewash water immediately if it's not above a certain temperature. I don't know why that isn't a thing.
Yeah run the hot water for a couple seconds just til it’s hot and the machine will be ready to run.
@@wck Temperature sensors aren't even the most expensive things in the world, it's unknown why they don't do it yet
@@wck At least two reasons:
1. You don't want to waste water (especially if the whole dishwaser advertising is build around saving water)
2. Dishwasher cannot know what is the expected hot water temperature and when to stop purging (each place have different temperatures and it often changes), its even possible that someone connected it to cold water so it will never get hot.
FYI: It is also able to tell how much you loaded it by determining the temperature changes of the water, that represents the capacity of heat storage of the mass of dishes. At least my 15 years old mid price machine does that. Learned that from the technicians manual of its controllerboard.
Thermal mass as a proxy for load, neat.
@@liam3284 Yes, even though it only detects two different states:
„The amount of dishes (full or half load) is determined during the first heating phase during washing by checking the time of water temperature increase. Full load: when the slope of the curve is below a certain limit stored as a default. Half load: when the slope of the curve is above the limit.“
It also senses how dirty the dishes are by checking a photo diode in the wastewater during prewash and in summary decides between 4 different combinations of temperature and rinsing times.
You have given me the bravery to try any other dishwasher setting beyond “heavy”. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
A note about plastic packaging. The 'jug' and 'tub' packaging (usually HDPE) is VERY easy to recycle. The foil-covered pouch - mixed materials are very difficult to recycle. I like how the marketing focuses on plastic used, but skips over if the package can be recycled again 😂.
I've heard that all plastics are nearly impossible to recycle and that plastic "recycling" centers are just greenwashed landfills.
@@stevethepocketThey can be recycled, but no one wants the recycled polymers.
There's a few exceptions. Coke bottles and grocery bags apparently both have very high reuse levels.
It is "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" in that order tho. Using 5x more plastic isn't necessarily better even if it's more recyclable.
Yeah, recycling works for paper, glass and aluminum just fine. But plastic recycling is barely a thing, it basically still gets thrown away.
Plastic recycling is only a concept at all because of an old push from fossil fuel companies, trying to preempt and redirect environmental movements that might've otherwise created real pressure to limit plastic use.
@@stevethepocket Reddit likes saying that because Penn and Teller did an episode about it 20 years ago but whether or not recycling is being done is heavily regional. On average in the USA, 20% of #1 and 15% of #2 plastic are recycled. But in the Netherlands, 50% of ALL plastics are recycled.
I firmly believe that much of dishwasher design is controlled by their marketing departments. My first dishwasher was one that I found on the curb and repaired before using it. While fixing it, I discovered that it had about 6 manual pushbutton switches that made it look like it had all sorts of 'modes'. I was able to test out the switches with a meter and discovered that most of the switches were in parallel and it made no difference which one was pushed.
My current dishwasher has a 'smart' setting which lead me to believe that it has some sort of turbidity sensor. Taking it apart and reading the enclosed circuit diagram, I found that the only sensor is a thermostat.
I have a little experience with this, not dishwashers though. I can think of two reasons for the buttons. The first is that it is cheaper to manufacturer one dishwasher that is used for an entire line than say three different washers for each price point in a line. A lot of what used to be discrete and custom designed electronics are now wrapped up into a single cheap programmable controller chip. A lot of advanced features are controlled by software and what is enabled in the firmware dictates the consumer features that are available. So in a higher-end model, those redundant switches may be hooked up differently and trigger unique cycles.
Another reason is just user design. Say I have three wash modes, light, medium and heavy. How does the consumer know what dictates a light, medium, or heavy wash? These products need to be idiot proof, sometimes even illiterate. So specificity may engender better utilization of the washer.
Instead of a light mode, there are small load and delicates buttons. Medium would be tied to Normal. Heavy would be pots and pans and heavily soiled. The idea is that we want the user to make better choices by giving them more familiar and informed options.
Not saying that this is the case in your example or that marketing doesn't drive superfluous features or generate imaginary value. However, product engineering has to take into account multiple facets of requirements to make a successful product.
Not surprising I suppose. When you can't possibly add bells and whistles that at least add some functionality, but people still want to buy the bells and whistles version of everything, a marketing guy is just going to invent bells and whistles. On the one hand it's deceptive, but on the other hand people probably just wouldn't believe you when you told them it's just a thing that sprays hot water around, there's nothing to add. People insist on the illusion of choice quite often.
Mind though.... did you just measure whether there was a connection, or did you test the resistivity or other values? I can imagine a design where they want to limit the number of wires, and still differentiate between buttons another way. If you give them different resistor values a controller could easily detect which button was pressed or even whether multiple were pressed. That's just the first thing that comes to mind where parallel switches could actually be differentiated. I can't imagine this would actually be more cost effective, or less error prone, but when you go into mass manufacturing different factors can result in odd solutions.
@@nagranoth_ It was a long time ago but I probably tested it with a DMM and visually inspected it. It was pretty old school and used a mechanical timer and logic -no semiconductors.
@@Born2bwire
You are a great thinker
@@Born2bwire what the commenter described cant be undone in software. If the buttons are wired up in parallel then the micro controller will have no way to distinguish between the buttons.
source: I'm an electrical engineer
the cat is a nice touch.
in the previous video, Alec looked younger, but in this video he looks more DISHeveled.
Groan. Clever!
I'm one of those with a Bosh dishwasher, which infamously has no prewash receptacle. Also, I too am fascinated with how my dishwasher works to get the most out of it. Here's my 95% certainty on how it works (95% b/c I have never timed it, I'm just guessing).
It will "pre-wash" with just water. As soon as it senses the water is dirty, it will drain and fill again. Each "pre-wash" cycle is thus much shorter than 10 minutes (sometimes it's literally 1-2 minutes). It will continue "pre-wash" cycles until it makes it "10 minutes" without triggering a drain and fill, release the soap, and start the main wash cycle. If the "auto" cycle is selected, it will use the number of times that it did a "drain and fill" to determine the length of the main wash cycle and intensity of spray. If another cycle is selected, it will adjust the wash length and intensity accordingly. My water bill is the lowest among my neighbors, so it's somehow not using a ton of water to do all of these fills.
Yes, I said it will adjust the intensity. With the "heavy" setting selected (or auto-selected with enough drain-n-fills) it will audibly increase the intensity of the spray jets. I know (from listening carefully) that it has the ability to use the upper and lower spray arms independently. By only using the lower or the upper at any one time, it can direct the full force of the pump into one set of jets or the other, increasing the intensity. At this time I am still uncertain if it also adjusts the pump output in some way.
This is just scratching the surface of the Bosch dishwashers. They also have a unique fill sequence, and an uncanny ability to get the water VERY hot (without an exposed heating element), it sometimes realizes that there's still dirty water in it before the rinse cycle and will do a partial fill to try and clear it, etc.
Alec, I think you over-paid for your dishwasher. The Bosch dishwashers are cutting edge, have more features, amazing reliability, and some models are way less than 1,300. Is there a "pre-wash" soap receptacle? No, but it doesn't need one. These machines need almost no soap, and will still get your dishes clean. I know because I forget to add soap some times. Other than no "fresh washed" smell from the detergent's perfume, I can't tell the difference.
The only downside to the Bosch is the filter. If your Bosch dishwasher is not performing, then just go clean the filter. Everything else will take care of itself. Pro-tip: I make sure to clean the filter every time it alerts me to adding more rinse aid and I never have problems with dirty filters.
Quick reply: my Bosch is an 800 series, in case "lower tier" models don't have some of these features.
I appreciate your channels so much and selfishly want to ask for more appliance/home lessons. I didn't get taught a lot of stuff like this growing up, and imo the worst part of a surprise house problem is having no direction. You'll forever be one of my favorite channels because you've actively made my daily life a bit less stressful :)
I remember that Finish TV ad spot as well. It definitely implied that the red ball would be around after the wash was complete.
Same here in the UK.
Same in Germany
Really makes you want to find a phone number, and call them, and force them to explain what "cyclesync" means, as it would imply that the pods sync with the cycle of the machine. And ask how it KNOWS when to add the enzyme, and if that's during the pre-wash or the main wash. But sadly, you'll probably get some generic customer support based out of another country, and there would be no real way for them to escalate the issue to someone who could actually answer the question, or forward your comments to the assholes in the marketing department.
@@Fearmylogic It activates the enzyme the same way laundry washing machine activates the enzymes in the laundry detergent - with heat.
Or more precisely, at around 40C most enzymes hit optimal efficiency and break down at around 50C, leaving rest of the work to be done by the detergent and water.
Originally it probably did. Over time, some people probably complained that it never dissolved, and some exec said it's not worth it, make it out of the same stuff and just color it red. Nobody will know.
One thing I really appreciate with my 2010-ish mid range Maytag (Whirlpool) dishwasher is that the pre-wash and wash detergent cups each have two fill lines labelled with "soft water" and "hard water." The "soft water" portion is less than half the detergent suggested for hard water.
I now want you to throw a whole bunch of different situations at that "Pro Wash" cycle and see what it does it differently each time!
I have the same model - as Alex suspects, the only thing I can detect is it can be faster if the dishes aren’t dirty.
It might be intended to work more like a commercial kitchen, where dishes are hosed down manually to remove food residue, then the dishwasher is mostly a final clean and sanitise step, and uses the same hot water for multiple loads.
European high-end machines like mine would blow your mind! We don't have exposed heating elements. They are inline. Machines are designed to run on cold water and usually are programmed to take the pod or tablet. Final drying is always residual heat, some machines open the door to accelerate drying. Having said all that, I too use powder so I can vary it according to load. My current machine only pre-washes on the heavier programme, and it uses sensors for water hardness and turbidity. Its eco grogramme is the most used, takes hours (I am in bed), but works flawlessly. It uses 9 litres of water and just over a unit of electricity to wash up to 3 days worth of dishes. Result!!
It amazes me how often the US uses 20 year old tech. My medium range dishwasher does everything the videos talk about and it doesn't even cost half of that high end one alec has.
The only feature I would want is the automatic opening of the door.
I got Mieles new auto dos dishwasher. Amazing. It has even own program for beer classes. It decides what it needs.
@@hkr667 So interesting how markets differ. I am in Poland, I bought my dishwasher about 3 years ago. I bouht one on the cheaper end, but basically all of them (including mine) had automatic door opening.
Always wondered why closed heating was used to dry. Surely better to allow air exchange like a drying cabinet.
I can't believe Europe is so big on energy saving yet uses electric resistance heaters to heat the water. Central gas or heat pump water heaters would save so much.
Can I just say how much I appreciate your general knowledge and willingness to deep dive into so many things around our daily lives (dishwashsers, hvac, light bulbs, power). I find all this stuff so interesting. The first video I ever saw of yours was how the cassette-to-aux-cord works and ive been hooked since. Keep it up!
I recently bought a new high-end dishwasher and the directions specifically said "you are not doing your dishwasher any favors by rinsing your dishes" I thought of your videos 😊. It did recommend removing bones lol
The real problem is any stuff that doesn't break down in soap and water, which may include fibrous material such as celery. This can also be awful for your sink disposal. Garbage goes to trash and compost, not into the sewer.
Many elderly people especially were sold on the idea that garbage disposals and dishwashers are magic. I bought a house and they said the disposal didn't work. Used a hex key and cranked the manual override in case of obstruction until it freed itself. Works like any disposal of its age. Saved $300+ by turning a hex key a few turns. That's my experience with the older generation in a nutshell. "IT DON'T WORK" ... what did you try? ... "WELL IT WORKED BEFORE". Sigh. No, when you threw lemon peels and bones and fibrous material down the disposal, it clogged all the time and did not work, but whatever. Free disposal.
Bones........
imagine just chucking bones in the dishwasher lmao
@@flamingspinach They'd only know to mention it if people have done it before...
I've washed bones in a dishwasher, it does a good job, they come out nice and clean. But I've found the clothes washer does a better job. The plus with the clothes washer is that you can throw some old towels in and the bones rub against the towels and it gets the bones a lot cleaner. The other plus is you can put a lot of bleach in and that helps get the bones whiter. Using the dryer, on the other hand, is not a good idea. While it will certainly dry the bones, they tend to knock together and get chipped even when you put a lot of towels in with the bones.
My wife actually came across your initial dishwasher video, I think it's the only one of yours she's ever watched, and we've discussed it a few times, and she has said that she agrees we don't need to pre-wash the dishes. And yet, she keeps pre-washing the dishes. When I load the dishwasher without pre-washing, they come out equally as clean, but no matter what she says I just can't stop her from pre-washing.
There's only so much you can do about a religious ritual... =)
Unless they are going from the table to the dishwasher I’m going to rinse them off before letting them sit in the sink waiting for the dishwasher. Food sitting in the sink attracts bugs.
@@meJaso why bother putting them in the sink though?
I leave them in the sink for a little while, doing other things gets most of the food off. This is because I only run the dishwasher every 3-4 days normally and don't want it to stink.
@@buckeye0x0c the dishwasher has a seal - mine doesn’t stink as long as the door is latched?
Theory: People think prewashing is best because they're getting the water hot, and the washing is not what improves their outcome.
Could be! I'm sure plenty of people are inadvertently helping their dishwasher that way and don't realize it.
I don't prewash everything I throw into my counter top unit, but I do rinse everything off with hot water to help a bit. I may wash some stuff a bit due to heavy stuck on junk. But yeah, I know that my unit washes better if the tap water is hot.
This is EXACTLY why I "pre-rinse". Basically, I use the hot water to rinse the plates/pots of big stuff and put them right into the dishwasher. By the time I fill the dishwasher its very hot water going into the dishwasher. That's also partly due to my dishwasher not having a macerator and I rinse into my sink which does have a garbage disposal. Also -- testing for giggles when his first dishwasher series came out, I've ran my dishwasher without soap with plates and cups just to see how clean stuff gets. With just hot water they were very, very, clean. Hot water is #1 for these modern conveniences and if you have the heater element and a sanitize function I'd be curious if you even need soap.
@@billbukowski4750 the soap is probably best just for getting rid of germs at the very least.
@@TechnologyConnextras Or just not wasting the water-why not rinse off the worst of the gunk while you're getting hot water to the machine? One person's hilarious is another person's efficient, I guess.
2:47 or so: that's an impressive pronunciation of both the _d_ and the _t_ of "used to", very close together and yet distinct.
I've had two residences using one of those portable roll-around ones, too. They were trippy. And a great extra horizontal surface (to collect junk) in the kitchen!!! Undercounter ones impressed me!
Good thing you also had an independent inspector on-site for the tests.
Of *course* they will tell you to fill the cups completely. they sell a consumable item and they want you to buy as much of it as possible.
Fill a teacup with soap, and put the rest of the soap all over the laundry and in the washing machine.
EDIT: Oh, eh, whoops, somehow i imagined a washing machine and not a dishwasher.
Oh my God it's her
She's everywhere
@@Games_and_Music wot? we want to use less
As evidenced by my small apartment sized dishwasher having a full sized regular washer dispenser.
@@mynameisben123 I know, it was just a stupid joke
i don’t know why i’m so invested in this dishwasher series but i’m here for it
I have a counter top portable dishwasher. You pour 5 quarts water in top. It heats the water and hot. If you open it as soon as wash is down when dry cycle starts the metal pans are too hot to touch. And already dry. So I been shutting it off skipping 1 hr dry cycle. It don't have a dispenser for soap. Just says to toss a pod in bottom. Been using the finish brand. Usually I do the 30 min quick wash and 1 pod. I usually over fill it a bit. Stuff comes out clean. Occasionally I'll have to put couple things back in. But cause I had it too full probably and water got blocked. Mine you can drain in sink or bucket. 5 quarts is total used regardless of mode.
The entire reason I watch you is angst about mundane household items. Your neurocess are deeply entertaining.
Lmao wait you don't share this anxiety about cleaning dishes properly? That's why I watch
When my home inspector went through the house they copied whatever serial numbers they could see, now at the start of each season I get an email with any recall notices on those serial numbers and there's also some seasonal home and yard advice.
That is actually a helpful service!
I remember that the reason I know to run the hot water for the dishwasher is because when I was a kid, we lived in a single wide trailer with a small kitchen and a portable dishwasher that you had to wheel over to the sink and hook up to the faucet whenever it was time to put it on. And since it was getting water directly from the faucet, it was obvious that the hot water had to be run until it was actually hot before hooking up the dishwasher and starting it.
That and just knowing that I've always had to run hot water at any faucet for a bit before it was actually hot led me to conclude that the dishwasher isn't magically getting instantly hot water that none of the faucets have, I have to make sure the water is actually hot first.
Dishwashers are designed to start cold. That dissolves the proteines better and their couplings are designed for cold water.
I think this is the 4th dishwasher video of yours that I've watched, from start to finish. I do not own a dishwasher.
ditto!
… start to Finish 🤔
Just think of it as getting ready for the day you do own one. 😉
My German made Bosch 800 has this feature. I've noticed it does seem to shorten the cycle time if my dishes are fairly clean, so that's nice I guess.
Oddly, even though I bought my dishwasher in the Midwest, it still has some European spec features, like a water softener and an inline water heater.
I also agree completely on the heated drying though. Before buying my Bosch 800 I never used it due to the energy use and extreme heat melting stuff. Though the Bosch has a cool (hot?) feature where it dries by cycling the air through Zeolite crystals, which absorb moisture and release heat. It's a completely closed loop, and when I open my dishwasher immediately after it completes a cycle I get hit with a wave of hot, but otherwise dry air. It does a remarkably good job of drying dishes.
I'm so happy that there are other people out there really (over)thinking about home appliances. Love it. For the final part of the dishwasher saga you might also want to have a look at the Zeolith drying technology (quite standard on high end dishwashers here in Europe)
As an Icelander, the concept of water heating is such a foreign idea to me because we pump hot ground water into every home.
Of course it makes sense that in places where you can't access hot ground water, you need to heat it, but it's just one of those things that I never thought about...
well la-di-da Mr. "I have volcanically heated water"
You know, you made me realize that it had never really occurred to me that people with access to geothermally heated water would just... use it as hot water. Like, I've always thought of it in the context of powering generators or as geysers and whatnot, never as people pumping it directly to homes. Neat.
@@the_real_Kurt_Yarish There's a reason the hot water in some Icelandic homes smells of sulphur - it may very well contain trace amounts of the stuff! Perfectly safe for bathing in or washing your dishes in, but smells like eggs.
I wish I could just get hot water out of the ground. Geothermal heating would be awesome too! It’s a little freaking thinking about living on top of hot water, though…
Just like I never thought about just pumping hot ground water into your home, eventho it is a pretty obvious thing to do when you are in Iceland. Nice you brought that up.
Our Bosch all but scared us til we figured it was opening itself
I just bought a Bosch and its auto-open function is my absolute favourite feature. I only run it at night before bed or in the morning before work, so if it didn't do that my dishes would be stewing in residual hot moisture for 8 hours or more, and that can lead to gross mildewy smells when I finally release them. (It is a bit alarming when it auto-opens though! You've forgotten it's doing its thing after a three-hour cycle.)
That ad you're talking about absolutely rings a bell for me, too, all the way over in Europe-town. Some blue animation showing powder washing away the dirt, then the red ball coming in to finish the job.
12:30 you could put dirty dishes in, leave the dispenser open, and see if it drains out the prewash or just goes on to the main wash without draining, no? If it carries on without draining then it does handle this error and assumes the detergent is already in the dishwasher, if it drains you'll know it assumes it has detergent in the dispenser and thus doesn't know if it's open or close (or at least can't take that into account).
Love that the backside of that cascade box basically points out how a tablet is one fourth as effective as powder.
You have that math backwards. It's telling you it's 4x as effective (whether you believe that or not).
I suppose it's worth investing in those dishwashers that automatically kick the door open when they're done
Have one and it was cheap, from Indesit, like 400€ (cheap no brand one is like 300€), it works fine, the quick program I notice the washed material is more wet and in the 65º for dirty stuff it does finish dryer, usually after dinner i left it washing and often I am already in bed just watching a movie or something and I hear the sound of the door opening, my GF does state ours dries the dishes much better than the one her mother has (more expensive model but older).
quick program is 1 hour, the ECO 3 hours and the 65º also 3 hours, it has other programs, but I never use them, only recently started using the 65º and for stuff that was used in the hoven and has dry food it really makes a huge difference, to the point I no longer try to remove it by hand before.
Also, thanks to the kind sir we are watching the video I never "prewash" anything, just remove the bits of food and goes to the machine, only expectation is coffee mugs, it does really leave a mark of left to dry.
just put a pod on the compartment and a bit of gel on the prewash cavity and that's it.
Yes, it’s far more effective and the only feature I wish mine had that it doesn’t.
I just crack it manually and it still works fine though.
Mine does this and it doesn't help. My MIL will open the dishwasher while it is running no matter what when she visits.
@@Christobevii3 why? Whats the point of opening before the program finishes?
This is a nice to have featured, you can do the same by hand, but implies that you are at home when it finishes... Using 3 hour long programs it is very likely you will not...
I think most dishwashers have that feature now, my current dishwasher is the "cheapest one that the landlord could find" and it has that (other than that it's extremely basic).
I learned about the "run the nearest hot water tap until water is hot" from the manual when we moved into our first new construction townhome. My sister has a dishwasher that doesn't have a heated dry. It relies completely on rinse agents. I also believe the the pod must have a high profit margin for the companies. I believe that because when the Tide pods were getting eaten by accident, they weren't immediately taken off the market. It became a "that's a consumer problem". Thanks for making both videos on this. It's amazing that some folks don't how to run their appliances because they never were taught. "That's how my family has always done it".
I also wonder how many of these people think their clothes dryer sucks and it's because they've never cleaned the lint filter
@@mjc0961 that and the exhaust.
@@official_haden My laundry dryer exhausts into my garage which really rustles my jimmies. It's probably not a big deal because it's not airtight and outside is a desert. I just don't like the idea of all that moisture getting pumped into the enclosed space.
Time usually isn't of the essence for dishwashers, so I wish they would just sense the temperature of your water, and heat it itself.
That's how they do it everywhere outside of North America. Ours are hooked up only to the cold water line. Same with washing machines. They all have an internal 2-3kW immersion heater.
@@kpanic23 Most outside North America are also operating on 240VAC, so they don't have any issues heating water themselves.
@@bluthefox What's wild to me is that NA does have 240V AC available for appliances like heaters and ovens, but won't do it for dishwashers because that's just the way it is. Homes here get wired with a 120V outlet by the dishwasher because all dishwashers run on 120V, and all dishwashers sold here are designed to run on 120V because homes only have that by the dishwasher.🤦
@magisworthsnaklepass5183 Yes, the damn thing already has a microprocessor, valves, pump, all they would need to add is a temperature sensor and those are dirt cheap. But with consumer equipment, even the tiniest cost change is significant. I suspect adding 25 cents would be a deal breaker. I'm half tempted to get another Arduino and DIY my dishwasher controller after watching this. Everything's all set up to run with a micro processor, so how hard could it be?
And 3 months later he knew the answer.
In Europe, as far as I can tell, the machine is designed to heat it's own watter. I bought a new apartment and the tap underneeth the sink/counter is from the cold watter pipe. I wanted to modify it to draw from the hot water pipe in stead, since the hot one comes from a gas instant heater, and so the water would be hot faster, but it seaned a bit too much of a bother, so I dropped the ideea.
on some dishwashers there is a service mode. You can in service mode select what part of the cycle to run.. For instance you can run the fill or drain cycles in what ever order you want. Does not require tools, you just have to hold the buttons down in a weird way
I lived in an apartment and owned one of those portable dishwashers. It seemed obvious to run the hot before connecting it. But for some reason when I moved to a place with a built in dishwasher, I just never even thought about running the hot first. Can't tell you why. Dishwasher is running much better now! Thanks @TechnologyConnections
You're the one that got me to wash my dishes more proper-like. I don't bother washing them myself, if the dishwasher misses one, I *then* scrub it and then stick it back in the next cycle. but like 99.9% of the time it gets everything, the only trouble I have is my wet dog food spoon never gets cleaned and sometimes leaves dog food remnants over other things, so I scrub that one every time.
if you use your brain a little more and know "this food never gets cleaned by the dishwasher properly" you can plan accordingly without having to practically wash your dishes before you stick them in the dishwasher. write the dishes and foods that give the dishwasher a hard time on a piece of paper if you have to.
Same. If it didn't wash it properly, brush what's left off and back in it goes. I do live by myself so I have plenty clean stuff left. If it's full I just soak whatever can't go in in a bit of cold water and only like oven dishes in hot water.
Thanks for the bit on Cascade Complete leaving a residue! It happened to me too, it left a gritty residue on pretty much any cup.
In the food industry dishwashers are for sanitizing, not for actually washing. Well, my old roommate took this information and thought that it MUST also be true for household dishwashers too. Because of this he'd always argue with me to fully wash my dishes before loading the dishwasher. I truly wish I could have sent him these videos back then.
So you wanna tell me, that they wash the dishes per hand and then put the clean dishes into a dishwasher just for sanitation?
@@cookie_space
One would imagine.
Pretty important thing to do when you need speed and clean and sanitized products
Really interesting that in commercial settings, they wash dishes the same way domestic dishwashers do: blasting them with a jet of very hot soapy water until all the food residue is gone.
Only difference is they have a kitchen hand standing there in a big rubber apron aiming the hose by hand rather than the blindly spinning arm of a dishwasher.
in fairness, my dishwasher DOES have a "just sanitize it" setting, in case you wanna go that route.
At least in the states, the requirements are one sink for ringing, one for washing, one for something I can't remember . After hand wash, load a rack or two (depends on capacity of sanitizer) and put in the sanitizer which takes a few minutes per cycle. Remove rack and air dry. It's a matter of speed and volume since you aren't spending the hour or whatever per machine load and the amount of heavy baked on food to something just dirty with sauce or whatever tends to be low; while a load is being sanitized you can keep scrubbing really dirty things and the next load. Note that this is for dishes and utensils. I'm not familiar with what the process is for pots and pans.
You're legit one of my favorite youtubers. I wish I could learn under you like a monk in a temple. You know how to make things make sense in my mind. Thank you
Surprised you didn't mention in-sink food/garbage disposals. When present in a kitchen with a dishwasher, the wastewater from the wash cycles often drains into the disposal, so if you have left any solids/residues in the disposal without thoroughly running it, it can back up and affect the ability to remove the dirty water or just cause a mess. In some cases, if you look down the disposal while the wastewater is draining, you can see it flow in from the side. Neat!
Great video (again), and agree with everything in it. I am also one of those people, so I read the chart in the manual for my dishwasher that says what the actual differences in the cycles are.
On a related note, the dishwasher drain line is supposed to have an air trap before entering the inlet on the disposal. If this trap is absent and your kitchen drain clogs your dirty water from the sink will siphon into the dishwasher and then overflow onto the floor. Want to guess how I know?
I do wonder if the people who say they "need" to rinse their dishes are also unknowingly flushing the cold water from the pipes as they rinse, thus getting the heat-related improvement and assuming it's because of the rinse step.
If you don't pre-clean your dishes, everything is going down the drain (often through a garbage disposal). That's fine if you're on an urban sewer system, but somewhere around 25-30% of Americans are on septic systems and are better served by pre-cleaning and not putting the extra waste food mass into their tank.
@@sumnerhayes3411 honest question - when you say “pre-clean”, what physical actions do you mean? Because to me, it means “rinse the dishes in the kitchen sink and run the wastewater down the exact same pipe as the dishwasher uses." But then, I’m a lifelong sewer user. I think maybe septic users mean something like ”scrape food carefully into the trash can” which, yes, serves a very different purpose.
(It also might mean septic users could translate “you don’t need to pre-rinse your dishes” into “scraped dishes could usually be run on the light setting.”)
@@joemurphy2266 Yes, if you're on septic you typically want to scrape everything you can into the compost or garbage and avoid putting it down the drain (whether via the sink or the dishwasher).
@@sumnerhayes3411 That must be why my house doesn't have a garbage disposal in the sink. It has a septic tank. My last house in Oklahoma was connected to the city sewage system and therefore had an in-sink garbage disposal.
I feel like regardless, you should always scrape excess food in the garbage or compost, one shouldn't have to deal with drain clogs in the future.
As for me, I do this, and leave dishes in the sink, let them soak until I have a sufficient load to put them all in the dishwasher and then operate it. No sense in loading them in right away, close the door, and have potential mold or botulism grow in the meantime.
It happened with a leftover cereal bit once. 🤢
Your videos are pretty much the only ones I watch from absolutely start to absolute finish. Keep doing what you’re doing. Learned a lot with your dishwasher series. As someone who doesn’t have a lot of great family advice on home care, your stuff has been huge in helping me better take care of my home. Also thanks for teaching me about those improved can openers, bought one and love it.
Computer controlled dishwashers don't always resume where they left off. They can alter the cycles as needed. For example opening the door will cause the program to assume you put in an extra dirty glass. Thus run extra to make sure it is cleaned. A mechanical timer won't do this.
I have a portable dishwasher! I always run the water hot first before plugging in, but I actually didn't realize it was necessary, I just saw it as a way to save on energy. I naïvely assumed that the dishwasher checked that the water was hot enough before starting its cycle...
I think even newer dishwashers are checking the temp of the incoming water. My wife always forgets to run the hot water and when she runs it you can hear the fill and drain at the same time for a while and then when it detects hot water it starts. I only noticed this because I had shut off the hot water valve to the main sink off to work on something. She didn’t know and ran the dishwasher and thought it was broken when she kept turning it on and it would run for a bit and stop.
I am absolutely riveted by the whole dishwasher machine in itself. The soap is a whole other sector that is equally interesting. You should do more on it!
He has. A few years ago on his main channel.
So, first...thank you for sharing. You've greatly improved my dishwasher experience. When I was a kid I was told to never fill the prewash side because "it's just a waste of detertgent" That being said, I was also raised more or less by my blind grandmother, who wouldnt "clean" the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher but she'd make sure there was no gunk on the dishes before putting them in. So I can see why the prewash step getting skipped always just seemed to work.
That being said, when I was a teenager and loading the dishwasher, I'd notice food particles that just stayed put. Pasta, cheese, whatever. Even if I'd ignore the upbringing and just fill the cups as directed. In AZ we've always had very hard water. "Very Hard" water is typically rated at 10ppm ours is very consistently 19 or higher. So I've always just filled the cups up as directed.
In both apartments and homes, i've consistently seen food stuff stuck on dishes post wash. What I'm learning now is likely those were things from the filter that got sprayed back up as oppoed to food that was on the dishes pre-washing. As of now, it's just habit to do a quick rinse to keep any food from caking on.
Thank you for that. I just saw a post of dishwasher seller saying that you shouldn't prewash your dishes, because if the water is too clean, it says it hasn't done a good job prewashing and increases time and temp on the prewash
.. But now I now it's BS
I mean, Alec did say his dishwasher does exactly that.
not exactly. His (and also mine) "sees" the clean water and "thinks": I'm good to go to re-use that water in the next step to save water and energy.
So it doesn't increase the time and temp, but actually reduces it, because the dishes are already rather clean. And the dishwasher is right with that.
but you probably use more water rinsing them than the full dishwasher cycle. My dw uses less than 5 gallons total on "power wash" (I have a monitor on my meter), and it's easy to use much more than that just rinsing the dishes before you put them in.
This follow up was so helpful. I switched from the cascade pods to the cascade powder and couldn’t figure out WHY it was leaving a haze still.
Pre-running the hot water is not just commonish knowledge.
Older dishwashers had a feature called hot start that did this for you.
I've used the Cascade Complete gel for years, and I've always liked it. I tried the powder after watching your original video, and I had the same results as you with it leaving a white residue on everything. I threw the rest of it away and went back to the gel. I'll have to try the Great Value powder and see if it works for me.
you made me dig out my dishwasher's manual, only to find out that the program i've been using doesn't do a pre wash 😅
i now have a copy of the program table taped to the kitchen cabinet lol
Target also has powdered dishwashing detergent. Works great an inexpensive.
I'm not sure if this applies to all makes and newer models, but there is usually a tech sheet taped on the inside of the front access cover at the bottom of the dishwasher. It has information for diagnostic modes and sometimes has a simple electrical diagram.
I have a Siemens (Bosch) dishwasher, about 4 years old (Australia). It has two main cycles (as well as a few others): Quick wash 65C and Auto 45-65C. It also has a standalone pre-wash cycle. After your first video, I looked into the cycles, prewash etc, and I also don't have a pre-wash detergent dispenser.
After the last video, I discovered that Quick does not prewash. I also discovered that Auto will prewash only if it detects turbidity. Therefore, to trigger turbidity, I add a little bit of detergent powder (kudos to first video) to trigger the prewash cycle by helping get the water dirty. If I decide I need to do a quick wash, I may run an independent prewash cycle first with a little bit of detergent.
Love your videos, keep them coming.
I hate Walmart with a passion but their store brand bodywash is one of the few that works well and doesnt irritate my skin.
Hi,
Is wm soap repranded Dove? I think I heard that when I worked at Costco. Costco has Pantene make their shampoo n we started talking about name brand stuff being made into generic. But wm soap is probably less expensive than Dove. I sympathise with your sensitive skin. I'm sorry about that.
@@kg-Whatthehelliseventhat It's either rebranded or a copy. It's very similar. But I've had better experiences with the Walmart brand, interestingly. Could be coincidence.
@@dspiffy right on. Yea, they will change it just a bit.
I used to use this amazing soap with 2 sides. One side was...what is it?? Carbon? Idr... it was black and the other side was blue. The black side would scrub and the other side would moisturise. I loved that stuff.
Thank you for the chat. Have a great week.
Soaps have a PH and that combined with your local waters' PH and your skins PH makes your preference. Search "The pH of Popular Soaps" to find alternatives to try or buy. I've always used Dove bar soap and I love the clean smell.
As someone who formulated dishwasher detergents I'm always excited for these videos. I'll have to update this post once I'm done with, well, both videos, but needless to say, I'm so curious if your findings have lined up with the issues I've encountered (or if consumer grade dishwashers have similar technologies. I know we would often bolt on and program dispensers).
Ooh. You'd know this --- is DIY dishwasher detergent (one part of salt and citric acid to two parts of borax and sodium bicarbonate) at all comparable to the commercial stuff? Does it even have the same ingredients, disregarding stuff like perfume?
@@bewilderbeestie Most commercial detergents also have enzymes, emulsifiers, surfactants. Stuff to make it perform the specific role of cleaning in a dishwasher better than a simple generic detergent.
Your videos have knocked some really needed common sense into this household. I found your channel a few years ago, when looking up space heaters. Love the content!
To me the best indicator of the quality of a dishwasher is how well the baskets are made. If they are well made, then it's likely the rest of the machine will be too, and it's usually the baskets that start failing first in my experience.
I live in an older house, with no provision for a dishwasher, and I am definitely not in a place in my life to remodel the kitchen just for that. All this to say, I have one of the rollaway dishwashers. I always run the water to hot before hooking it up. My wife loves her pods, so, since seeing your first video on this, I bought a bottle of gel for the prewash. That thing has worked flawlessly for me for years now. Thank you for how in-depth you've dug into this subject!
My wife and I literally changed our dishwasher usage because of your first video on this.
"it's mee from the future": Looks like you have the same hairstylist as Emmett L. Brown.
*MaRtY!!*
@@JobyFluorine-ru4bd are you kidding me? I'll up my Patreon pledge ten-fold if he does!
Great Scott!
@@JobyFluorine-ru4bd I do have boxes of pinball machine parts...
Regarding the "Don't bother pre rinsing"advice.
I'd do it for stuff that contains curry or lots of red sauce.
I've had plenty of stuff turn orange after putting it in a dish washer with stuff that contained curry powder.
Like cutting boards or Tupperware.
Guess heat and pigments trend to mix very well in a dish washer.
I worked at a food factory once, and the red they use for tomatosauces and things like that is condensed paprika(or bell pepper) oil, it's so lame, because it gets everywhere, and don't forget to wipe your lips after eating either, geez.
I really wish they wouldn't use it, i'd much prefer a 'bland' looking spaghetti, than to end up with red lipstick on after a meal.
I mean... i should just cook my own food anyway, but yeah, that aside.
@@Games_and_Music I would draw the line at having to make your own tomato sauces from scratch.
@Trapperx89 i looked in a dishwasher manual and it says to not pre rinse and to set the temperature higher. (I used a Siemens dishwasher manual since i am familiar with it)
So I wondered what temperature do you use?
@@321Jarn just a no name thing that has a max temp of 65⁰c
Yes, someone had to tell me: after college I lived for 11 years without a dishwasher, then 3 years in an apartment with one, then moved to a townhouse that also had one. In the townhouse I had problems with the dishwasher and a repairman was summoned. He was the one who told me to run the hot water before starting the dishwasher. Since you mentioned hot water recirculation--I bet the apartment building had that feature, so I did not know about hot water to get the dishwasher to work well. Now it all makes sense! I have to fill a gallon jug to purge cold water before running the dishwasher, but at least I understand the problem.
Machines designed with tablets in mind have a perforated tray under the dispenser that doesn't let the tablet fall into the tub (on my machine, it's attached to the top shelf). There, the tablet will only get occasional sprayed water, while powder or gel will fall through the tray. That might give some credence to the tabletmakers' claims.
Okay, probably I should caveat that statement with "some". Mine (a 2007 Electrolux, has an identical dispenser to one shown in the main video, with no prewash slot) does, and it states it's purpose in the manual.
Mind you, I use gel, because 1. No powder on the market here, and 2. I have a central water softener, meaning all tabs would be hopelessly overdosed (and I like to have control over dosing anyway).
if you open the door the dishwasher has to assume that you added some more dirty dishes.
Here’s a hint. If you want to save money on buying that Kitchen Aid Dishwasher. The brand name “Kitchen Aid” is owned by Whirlpool and they sell all their appliances under multiple different brand names (Maytag, Amana, Kenmore, even Whirlpool themselves). So look up the model, and find what name that dishwasher is sold under each name brand and you could probably get a better deal on the exact same dishwasher, so long as you don’t care about the Badge in front.
It's possible, but always be wary of that.
I don't know about dishwashers, but with products I do know about, while they share some components and look the same, other components may be swapped to lower end alternatives or in.
For example, the casing is probably the same as it is dirt cheap to produce once the tooling is set up, but you might have a pump with a shorter expected lifespan or something.
The other thing you can see in some products is that the lower price tier are ones that failed QC for the higher price tier. They are still functional but may not be quite as good in one way or another.
That doesn't mean it can't be worth looking at the lower tier from the same manufacturer as they may be just as good, but just because they look the same and the base specs are the same do not assume they are the exact same product rebadged.
@@88porpoise "For example, the casing is probably the same as it is dirt cheap to produce once the tooling is set up"
And even if it isn't dirt cheap to produce, it's CERTAINLY cheaper to just use the same than set up tooling and production lines for a completely separate, slightly cheaper version. =)
It's kinda like with Toyota and Lexus, it's cheaper for Toyota to make everything shared to the spec that Lexus needs and use it for both rather than make separate versions.
I have a whirlpool it appears to be nearly exactly the same as his
for the new dishwasher he has, all 3 brands (kitchenaid, maytag, whirlpool) have the same basic design. HOWEVER! all 3 have a different 3rd rack (the kitchenaid has spinning sprayers, maytag a stationary one, and i dont know if the whirlpool has one at all), and the maytag/kitchenaid both have the self-cleaning filter design whereas whirlpools has a manual clean filter. aside from that, the dishwashers are relatively the same.
Indeed, I have a Maytag that looks basically identical to Alec's here.
Your previous dishwasher video was my introduction to your channel and I've been hooked since. Learning about purging the cold water before starting the dishwasher from that video has worked great for several dishwashers I've used.
Engineer who worked at GE appliances on the dishwasher line back in 2011. Turbidity sensors are in most dishwashers made after 2005 or so. They aren't exclusive to high end dishwashers. All the eco cycles use this to adjust the cycles based on how dirty the water is.
Thanks to your first video I changed to powder and my dishes have benefitted immensely.
My washer also has a sensor and I've started to always use the auto mode, even though it has other ones, such as eco, extra power, glass care, etc. Eco just runs three times as long and all of them deliver less reliable results than the automatic one.
It also has an additional (smaller) spray arm on one end of the bottom arm.
I love it dearly because it saves so much time and water. Especially since using the cheapest powder is in use.
For those in Germany:
Powder is easily found in stores here, thankfully.
You also get a water recirculation unit for domestic homes, that has a pump on the hot water side, and a thermostatic valve by the tap, that allows cold water to flow till the water gets hot, circulating the cold water in the hot line back down the cold water line, so there is always a small volume of warm water instantly at the tap. Wastes power in the lines, so the suggestion is to insulate both water lines all the way, plus a small amount of power to run that circulation pump.
I looked into this and for me, it was more money in electric to keep the water moving warm than it was to waste 1/2gal water when it mattered.
@@buckeye0x0c We usually have sensors near the water heater: You open the hot water and close it again, the drop in pressure activates the circulation pump, so you don't have to have the water running while waiting for it to get hot. When no hot water has been used for a while, the pump shuts off again.
@@buckeye0x0c Ones I have seen you use a contact switch like a doorbell switch to trigger and start it. It only runs on demand and then only until the water is hot. I will admit the water savings unless you are in a desert area like CA or Las Vegas or something probably is minimal. I have an "instant" on water heater which takes a while to heat so I would like the pump.
Thanks for mentioning how the Cascade powder is starting to leave a residue! The last 2 boxes I bought have done that, and I was wondering if it was our old dishwasher going out or something. Our Walmart Market only carries Cascade powder, but it's only a few minutes to a full size store that has Great Value.
I definitly think it's a ploy that P&G have intentionally not improved, or even cheapened their Cascade powder so it doesn't perform well, in order to push people to their ridiculous pods.
Y'all know what detergent for industrial dishwashers looks like? Its just Lye. Pure, solid, Sodium Hydroxide in a plastik container that gets dissolved with some water and cleans basically everything you can throw at it, at just 52 C° within 90s, yes seconds! (inkluding sanitizing cylce of 10s 82 C°)
The reason it isn't used in your dishwasher, except for safety, its just the more expensive materials required for it to withstand this corrosive environment.
plus, at the end these machines add acid to neutralize the lye. I still have one of these around here, but due the reasons you mentioned I definitely won't use that for my dishwasher. Maybe, if ever needed for special cleaning.
I worked with these kind of washers in the medical sectors. Pretty interesting stuff.
Our new dishwasher has a feature that when we were buying it looked like it would be a good idea, but turned out to be freaking fantastic! It has this extra, very shallow pull out tray on the very top. The tray is only about an inch deep and has grooves to line up utensils like forks, spoons, etc. It also has a slightly deeper section where you can put long knives and things. It cleans so much better than bunching utensils in the bins at the bottom, which it also has. It's such a great feature, I don't think I could buy another dishwasher without that tray. It also has bottle jets on the top rack which work great too, but that third top tray is fantastic!
The familiar blazer, the epic long hair, and the topic. Ladies and gents this is peak PEAK technology connections.
Target has cheap store brand powder detergent and I've found it to be effective.
It's honestly upsetting to me that corporations are always trying to manipulate society into the unnecessarily more expensive products, and then killing off the cheaper varieties as best they can.
"finish" has "powder in a bag" (3kg), and it's pretty cheap compared to their tabs.... and WORKS GREAT! (if your local shop does have it, "Jeff's Bookstore" may help you out next day or even sameday.
Jeff's Bookstore... is that the one based out of South America?
They're the only available powder in the UK unless you get the commercial stuff
Oh and Sainsbury's
You're right about the turbidity sensor modifying cycle times and steps
Typically the cycle where the sensor is most invasive is the "Auto" cycle, where the machine can skip the prewash and a couple of the three total rinses
The machines sense the load via how much water is required to wet the dishes, how quickly the temperature rises during the heating step (the smaller the load the quicker the rise) and how dirty the dishes are. Few not so dirty dishes require little water, low wash pressure, few rinses and a lower wash temperature and viceversa
In most European dishwashers (Electrolux, Bosch, Mìele) the turbidity sensor is active in MOST cycles (even the ones that aren't labelled as "AUTO") and you might find the machine might run a prewash and drain none, some, or all the water used in this step. It then might feel the need to perform some sump flushes to remove any debris from the filter. The list goes on...
My dishwasher, a Bosch Serie 6, can do most of what I wrote, and especially in the "Auto" cycle it gives itself some flexibility about the programming. Few not very dirty dishes? It will wash them at 45°C and rinse them twice before drying them, all at low pressure and not flushing the sump. A heavy load with lots of dirt? Warm prewash, 65°C mainwash, three rinses and drying, all with high water pressure and flushing the sump multiple times
The reason behind this? Energy classification for energy labels
You got it right. Portable dishwashers have in the instructions to connect to the hot tap only and run the water until hot. There is a button on the connector too which allows the water to run out of the tap to ensure that it is hot. The certainly explains why I always had excellent results from my portable dishwashers even with powder. I am glad that you explained the residue issue, I could never grasp why following the instructions led to bad results.