If you’ve got a dishwasher that you think kinda sucks,
there’s a good chance that with just a few tweaks to how you use it you can get truly clean dishes with very little effort.
Hi.
I’m apparently the internet’s weird appliance guy,
and a few years ago I made two videos on dishwashers and more specifically dishwasher detergent.
Together, they’re the length of a feature film!
And you don’t have time for that, so I’ve created this new version.
Which begins… now.
First, I want you to know that you can absolutely load a dishwasher with filthy stuff just covered in crap.
I do it all the time!
The only prep you should need to do when loading a dishwasher is scrape off large pieces of uneaten food.
The machine can handle a lot on its own, even burnt-on stuff.
But it’s important to understand that dishwashers are actually very simple machines doing a very simple thing.
If you ever looked in there at the spray arms and thought “that looks an awful lot like one of those twirly lawn sprinklers”
you were having a correct thought!
This machine could sincerely be described as a couple of those sprinklers inside a waterproof box.
The box has racks which allow you to conveniently position stuff you want to clean like plates and bowls and flatware above those sprinklers
so that they spray all that stuff with lots and lots of water to get it squeaky clean.
But dishwashers don’t use lots and lots of water.
In fact they use very little because the water inside is recirculated.
The bottom of your dishwasher is actually a false bottom:
below the mesh surface is a sump which holds somewhere on the order of a gallon of water.
That’s 3.8 liters, though I’m not being that precise because the amount varies from machine to machine.
When the cleaning cycle begins, an inlet valve opens to allow clean water to fill the sump, usually through a hole in the side wall.
Once full, the valve closes and a powerful pump driven by an electric motor starts running.
That pump forces the water through the spray arms and… that’s it.
That spraying action is what cleans your dishes.
It just has to go on for a while to be effective, hence the recirculation of water.
In some machines, the water is screened through a washable mesh filter before it reaches the pump.
Which brings me to Tip Number 1:
check your dishwasher’s bottom for a removable filter and clean it.
If you’ve never done this and you have a filter,
I’m very sorry for what you are about to find.
It will be unpleasant.
You should be cleaning that filter regularly.
In other machines, the pump doubles as a macerator:
small blades at its intake break down bits of food like a mini garbage disposal.
Those machines usually don’t have a filter, just a grid to catch stuff that’s too big for the macerator to chew up.
And, for the record, those are the only kind of dishwasher that I will ever purchase because cleaning those filters is gross.
Now, you might very well have realized that if it's the same water being recirculated
then as the dishwasher runs the water inside of it is going to get yucky from all the food residue it's knockin' off the plates and whatnot.
And yep! That water gets real nasty real quick.
So the machine periodically stops the main pump and starts up a second pump which pushes the dirty water out of the machine through a drain hose.
and it may also add some clean water at the same time
to help purge that drain hose and the sump of all the nasty water.
Once empty, the dishwasher fills itself up again with another gallon-ish of clean water and the main pump starts back up to continue cleaning.
This fill, pump for a while, then drain sequence is going to repeat a few times
and by the end of the fourth or fifth fill and dump, all the food residue will have been removed from the items inside the dishwasher
and the water in the sump is clean.
On the last fill the stuff inside is simply getting rinsed,
and after one last draining, the cycle will end and your dishes are clean -
all while using only a few gallons of water.
In this case, 4.2 gallons or 16 liters.
I’ve described the basics of what the machine does to clean your dishes but I’ve skipped two important helpers:
heat and chemicals.
Let’s start with heat.
If you’ve ever hand-washed a dirty kitchen or food thing then you’ve probably discovered that the process is a lot easier if the water you’re using is hot.
This is especially true if what you’re trying to clean is at all greasy - the hotter the water, the more that grease softens
and the more easily it will come off whatever it’s stuck to.
So, a dishwasher has a heating element to heat the water inside.
In many North American dishwashers that heating element is exposed at the bottom and used for a heated dry option, but top tip -
you might try turning that off.
I never use the heated dry because it feels like a waste of energy, it can damage items especially on the bottom rack,
and the final rinse is quite hot anyway so if you empty the dishwasher right after it finishes,
that water will evaporate quickly unless you live in a swamp.
Even if I don’t get to it until the next morning most stuff inside is dry
and I just use a dish towel for what few things might still have a bit of water on them.
But that’s just, like, my opinion.
What isn't my opinion though is that it takes a while to heat up a gallon of water with the power output of that heating element.
My dishwasher at home has an 800W element and because energy is energy and water is water,
we know that it can only elevate the temperature of the water inside by about 3 degrees Celsius per minute -
and that’s assuming absolutely no heat losses.
That’s a pretty leisurely temperature rise so, in North America, dishwashers are hooked up to the hot water supply at the sink.
That way the water they fill with is already hot and the heating element only has to raise the temperature a little bit
(though it may raise it a lot in the final rinse if you have a sanitize option).
Except - well, you know what your kitchen sink is like.
Unless you’ve got a booster heater under there or a hot water recirculation pump, it takes a while for the water to actually get hot when you open the tap.
The cold water in the pipes between your water heater and the sink needs to be purged
and because dishwashers fill with so little water, if it takes more than just a few seconds to get hot water at your kitchen sink
your dishwasher will begin washing with lukewarm water at best and stone cold water at worst.
And that’s bad, especially because the dishes are at their very dirtiest and could really use the help of heat.
Think about how much harder it is to get butter or cheese out of a pan when the water is cold and thus isn’t softening it.
So - here’s Tip Number 2:
right before you start the dishwasher, run the hot water in your kitchen sink until it’s properly hot.
That way you ensure the dishwasher will actually fill with hot water.
Many dishwashers - like the one you’re looking at now - don’t even bother turning their heating element on at all during the first fill of water.
So that water will only be as hot as it was when it entered.
Running the tap until it’s actually hot may be the most important tip in this video depending on your dishwasher’s programming.
Again, though, this advice is for North Americans specifically.
Many other parts of the world hook the dishwasher up to cold water and the cycle programming is adjusted accordingly.
But here they are designed to fill with (and thus expect) hot water.
If you have a delay start option that might change up the programming to account for that but... it also might not
so again, if you're not happy with your dishwasher, try running the tap until it’s steamy hot and then start it.
That alone can make a huge difference.
And by the way - if you try this and it doesn’t seem to be helping,
you might wanna double check that your dishwasher is actually hooked into the hot water line.
You should see a water line under your sink with a flexible hose heading towards the dishwasher.
If that hose is hooked up to the cold water supply by mistake, the machine’s performance will suffer tremendously.
But you don’t just wash dishes with hot water.
You’re gonna need some soap.
And that’s why you have to buy detergent for your dishwasher!
These chemical products contain a non-sudsing cocktail of dispersants, surfactants, emulsifiers, and enzymes.
The enzymes help to break down proteins and starches in food,
and by the way those enzymes work best when the wash water is up to temperature.
So if you don’t run the tap until it’s hot,
you can shorten the time in the wash cycle that the enzymes are effective which hurts washing performance.
It may seem like I’m hammering that point kinda hard but I am!
Because it’s important and I really want you to try running the tap until it’s hot when you start the dishwasher.
Anyway the other components in the detergent are also important:
surfactants lower the surface tension of the water which helps it clean.
Emulsifiers encapsulate fats and oils which allows them to mix with the wash water.
And the dispersants keep all that washed-off gunk suspended in the water
so that it doesn’t create residue deposits inside the dishwasher or indeed end up back on the stuff it’s trying to clean.
There are usually a few other helper components depending on the detergent product,
and in a moment I’ll tell you the kind of dishwasher detergent I use and recommend.
Spoiler alert, it’s the cheapest kind!
But first I need to draw your attention to the machine’s detergent dispenser.
This little dispenser is critically important to the proper operation of your dishwasher.
If you don’t put your detergent in here and close that door, you may very well be wrecking your machine’s cleaning performance
and I cannot stress that enough.
The reason this is here is because every time the machine gets rid of the dirty water inside of it,
It also gets rid of any detergent that was in the water!
And we need that detergent to clean the dishes!
But - we don’t want it right away.
Think about what happens when you load it up with dirty dishes - say a bunch of plates after a big pasta dinner.
Those plates are filthy and covered in red sauce.
Or maybe Alfredo, doesn’t matter take your pick.
When the machine starts spraying them with water,
a bunch of that sauce is going to dissolve quickly, fall off and end up in the wash water.
That first fill of water is known as the pre-wash, and since it gets dirty so quickly, the machine doesn’t spend a lot of time with it.
My dishwasher only spends 10 minutes in the pre-wash
before it drains that water out and fills again for the next part of the cycle known as the main wash.
If that dispenser weren’t there and holding the detergent back,
then my dishwasher would only have 10 minutes with soap in the water and then it would all be gone!
So only after it has drained the nasty pre-wash water out and replaced it with clean water for the main wash
does the dispenser door open and allow the detergent into the water.
The dishwasher will then spend a long time with that fill of water, sometimes more than an hour.
So actually having detergent added at the correct time is crucial to a good cleaning performance.
Although I just discovered that my fancy dishwasher is able to tell how dirty the pre-wash water is and may switch up its programming.
That is not at all a universal thing and depends on having fancy sensors - most machines just run predefined programs so I’m not getting into this here,
but if you're curious what I'm talking about - that second channel video will explain.
So Tip Number 3:
Be sure to use the detergent dispenser and close it.
Most of you probably already are, but I know there are some folks out there who skip it and just throw the detergent in the tub.
If your dishwasher’s detergent dispenser is broken and that’s why you aren't using it, that’s going to really hurt your machine’s performance and ideally it should be fixed -
though there may be workarounds depending on your machine which I’ll discuss later.
But you may also remember from your previous life experience that fats and oils don’t mix with plain water.
You need an emulsifier to make them mix.
Which is in the detergent...
but the machine doesn’t let the detergent into the water until the second fill.
So you might think that first fill is going to struggle with fats and oils.
And yes it will!
And that’s why many, many dishwashers have detergent dispensers like this one - where there are two compartments.
One is sealed by the gasket in the detergent dispenser door and labeled Main Wash.
But the pre-wash compartment right next to it isn’t sealed at all:
there are holes in the door to allow any detergent you put in there to spill right out.
Ya see, before grocery stores were filled with these infernal pod and pack things,
dishwasher detergent came in a box like this.
It was a box of powder, and you were expected to open this little spout
and pour that powder into the dispenser.
And if you put some of this powder in both of those cups,
then the one with holes in the lid would just spill its contents out and so the dishwasher would begin its cycle with some detergent!
That meant it could tackle fats and oils immediately, so the pre-wash was much more effective.
Then, when it drained out that nasty water and filled again for the main wash,
it would open the dispenser and let out a second round of detergent to replace what just got pumped out.
That second fill would have a head-start thanks to the pre-wash detergent getting rid of at least some fats and oils already.
And in case you’re thinking this is some lost art, my much newer dishwasher - a model still on sale - works the same way.
The lid of the dispenser has a divot labeled pre-wash, and if ya put a little detergent there, it cleans much better.
Detergent pods and tablets, while they are a convenient concept,
break this pattern.
And especially if you have an older dishwasher which wasn’t born in the time of pre-dosed detergent dominance,
those products can, frankly, suck.
Now, I know many of you out there are having a fine experience using those products
and by all means you should keep using ‘em if you’re happy.
But if you’re not happy with your dishwasher,
or you’re a value-obsessed Midwesterner like I am,
here’s Tip Number 4:
try a more basic detergent product and place some in both spots your machine expects it to go.
If your dishwasher doesn’t have a dedicated spot to put pre-wash detergent,
just add a little extra along the door or directly into the wash tub.
Something like a tablespoon will be fine.
And if you’re skeptical that this will actually do anything,
well your dishwasher still has that dispenser, right?
It’s still holding the detergent back until the second fill, otherwise the dispenser would be pointless.
So give it a try. It can’t hurt.
Speaking of giving things a try, there’s a brand of detergent which has come out with yet another new product
this time touting CycleSync™ technology:
Right Ingredient ‡
ASTERISK
right time!
What does that mean?
[clears throat]
“Finish® Ultimate is our first ever tablet with CycleSync™ technology that releases the right ingredient ‡
ASTERISK
to act at the right time.”
That sure implies that these will align their vibes with my machine or something.
But is there anything to that implication?
First, let’s put one of these tablets in my dishwasher and let it run for a bit.
Yeah, it all dissolved in a matter of minutes so if I didn’t put this in the dispenser
(which the instructions explicitly tell me to do)
all of it would have drained out after 10 minutes.
So it doesn’t appear to be anything to do with these three sections of seemingly different items.
They’re just making this prettier.
Since my dishwasher doesn’t have a hole in its side,
I’ll pour hot water from the tap into this glass pan so we can see watch how the tablets dissolve.
Yeah it’s just… it’s just all oozing out once the membrane is breached.
I should note I tried this last time with their compressed tablet things and I had the same thing happen -
it completely dissolved in my dishwasher after 10 minutes.
So what do they even mean by CycleSync?
Let’s find where that asterisk leads.
Oh and by the way this is actually called a double dagger and not an asterisk, fun pedantic typography fact.
It’s on the bottom - of course it is.
Enzyme.
That’s it? The word Enzyme?
The protease and amylase enzymes that are also found in this Walmart brand powder?
The Enzymes that work best at high temperatures so will indeed get more effective at “the right time?”
I don’t know if you see how sneaky it is to put that mark after the word “ingredient” but hopefully you do.
The thing is, if it’s not clear already,
these are just tablets of soap dressed up to seem important.
Your dishwasher is the thing doing the work, and there’s nothing all that special about these.
And not to get too tin foil hat on you, but it does feel weird to me that there’s so much differentiation
for a commodity product like dishwasher detergent.
Powders and gels tend to live a sad life on the bottom shelf while the flashy pods get all the attention,
but I sincerely think these are the better products because they jibe with the way dishwashers actually work -
and they’re a better value, to boot.
I much prefer powder because it comes in a paper box and not a plastic jug,
but gels are much more readily available.
However, powder products can contain both bleach and enzymes which aren’t stable together in a liquid,
so powders are usually more effective.
If you can find them.
However - there’s a wrinkle.
But it’s double-edged.
One of the reasons I like powder and gel is because how much detergent you actually need to use varies.
If you have soft water, you likely need to use very little and you can stretch a box like this for months.
But if you have hard water, you’ll need to use more.
Also, how soiled your dishes are affects things, too,
because the detergent gets “used up” and becomes less effective as it tackles food deposits.
I strongly believe that the two-dose structure of traditional dishwasher programs means you can use much less detergent:
you’re not expecting the detergent to do everything with a single fill of wash water.
But the tabs and packs are, though, so they're extremely concentrated to get all the work done at once.
The wrinkle in dosing it yourself, though, is that it’s pretty easy to use too much detergent.
The cups in the dispenser are big for those of you who have really hard water and need a lot of detergent,
but most people don’t.
So if you’re trying out a powder or gel product and find you’re left with a powdery residue on your stuff,
you’re using too much detergent and the final rinse couldn’t get rid of it all.
The boxes don’t explain that - they say to fill the cups completely which is almost always a terrible idea.
You’d be surprised how little you actually need.
I really appreciate being able to fiddle with this
(and I’ve discovered I only need to fill the cup up about half-way pretty much no matter what I’m cleaning)
but your brain may vary.
Detergent packs force a one-size-fits-all amount of detergent on you which very much rubs me the wrong way,
but it usually works and there are many people who would prefer that.
Those four tips:
look for filters and clean them,
run the kitchen tap until the water's hot before you start the machine,
use the detergent dispenser and close the lid,
and finally consider using a basic detergent product and add a little pre-wash detergent,
are what I consider the most important things to try.
I have used some astoundingly cheap dishwashers in my time including the gnarliest landlord special I’ve ever encountered -
that thing didn’t even have a sprayer for its top rack, and boy was it loud.
But it cleaned everything just fine and with Walmart brand detergent!
The only thing I can attribute my seemingly perfect dishwasher scorecard to is actually putting detergent in both places all those machines expected it to go
and always running the kitchen tap until it's hot before I started the cycle.
Now we've blown past the 20 minute mark and this video is supposed to be more shareable than the others
so I’ll finish up with a lightning round of other tips you might try.
If none of what I’ve gone over seems to be helping, try a dishwasher cleaning product before you give up.
Limescale and other forms of buildup can clog the sprayer nozzles or make the pump less effective,
and many products are available which help to get rid of those deposits.
I’m partial to products like this which come in a bottle:
you insert them upside-down and a wax plug holds the product back until the water is hot enough to melt it.
When I use these, I actually don’t run the water hot first to make sure the plug doesn’t melt during the pre-wash,
and I use the machine’s tough setting with the high-temp wash option selected.
I’ve used both this Glisten product and Finish’s version of a similar thing and find them to be great.
Note the Finish product has a heavy perfume which lingers through several washes. I like that but it may bother others so be aware of that.
You can also use a product like Lemishine which is just powdered citric acid.
If a deep cleaning of your dishwasher still doesn’t fix things, your dishwasher likely has a worn out pump impeller or something else is mechanically wrong,
or, you may have the rare actually-bad dishwasher model, and might just have to replace it.
If your dishwasher’s detergent dispenser is broken and that’s why you aren’t using it,
first - you might try your hand at replacing it if you feel up to it.
Replacement parts are often available, and this is YouTube!
I’m sure there are many guides out there, possibly for your specific dishwasher.
Though I won’t be endorsing any of them.
But even without a functional dispenser, your dishwasher may be able to work with a different cycle.
Express or Eco cycles often don’t do a pre-wash fill and open the dispenser right away.
Those are typically options for a faster wash with the trade-off of reduced effectiveness.
I don’t know what dishwasher you have, but you can listen out for it draining and determine how long it spends with each fill.
If some cycles begin with it spending 30 or 40 minutes with the same water, those will be what you want.
But if your dispenser works, the normal cycle (or Auto cycle) is probably what you want to use day to day.
Speaking of cycles, though, you shouldn’t be afraid to try the other cycles and options available to you.
The tough settings don’t make the washing action stronger, they just make it go on longer and might get the water hotter.
So give it a try.
If you have a high-temperature wash option that might be good to try, too,
though I will say that in my experience using it can exacerbate hard water deposits in some situations.
Same goes with the sanitize option - I really only use that if there’s something in the dishwasher that I feel might need it.
Next - rinse aids.
Use them.
This isn’t a scam, and most dishwashers have a rinse aid dispenser right next to the detergent dispenser.
It’ll squirt a little bit of this stuff out in the final rinse,
and all that it is is a very mild surfactant which reduces the surface tension of water, causing it to form a thin film which easily evaporates without leaving water spots.
This is particularly helpful to use if you have hard water, and many machines allow you to vary how much rinse aid it dispenses -
you’ll need more the harder your water is.
This stuff is so simple there’s no need to go name-brand.
Just get the cheap stuff.
And, to European viewers, many of your dishwashers have built-in water softeners and require dishwasher salt.
So make sure ya got that on hand and fill it up if you need to.
If you aren’t able to find powders or gels in your area, or they pose a challenge for you to use for whatever reason,
I would recommend trying the cheapest store-brand dishwasher tablets or pods you can find.
You may very well find they work great!
And if they don’t, try mimicking what you can do with powder and gel by putting one in the dispenser and another directly into the tub.
Pods are quite concentrated so that runs the risk of it leaving a residue, but it’s something to try if your dishwasher isn’t that great.
I honestly wish detergent people would make a two-section pod with a removable baby pod for use in the pre-wash.
I probably still wouldn’t use that because I find powder in a box with a spout to be plenty convenient already,
but that feels like a useful option.
Oh, and in case you might find using this box difficult, you might try emptying it into a storage container you can use a scoop with.
That might also help if you live somewhere very damp and powder will cake up on you
(but, not for nothing, I never have that problem here in the Midwest and I keep this under the sink).
And lastly, I didn’t really want to go here because it’s the source of strife for many a family,
but make sure you’re loading the dishes correctly.
The sprayers are below the racks so the dirty surfaces should be facing down.
Additionally, since the sprayers rotate around the center of the machine, the dirty surfaces of vertical objects like plates should ideally face inward.
When I’m loading it, the left-hand side looks like this, and right of the center-line it looks like that.
Also be sure things aren’t bunching together and blocking their neighbors from being hit by the sprayers, and -
this is important - make sure those sprayer arms can spin freely.
Tall items in the bottom rack can stop the top rack’s sprayer from spinning,
and that’s not good.
A whole lot of stuff will get hardly any water if it stays in one place throughout the cycle.
The top rack is often adjustable and can be raised up to minimize this
so if stuff on the top rack is often dirty for you, give that a try.
And be mindful that on either rack, there’s less washing action at the corners because it’s a square on top of a circle,
so if you’re washing something that’s really dirty, you’ll want to keep it closer to the center.
And I think that’s it.
I want to reiterate that if you’re not having problems with your dishwasher,
you don’t have to change your habits (though you're probably not watching this).
But, gosh, I’d really like more people to just buy plain powder because it feels like this is an endangered species.
My local Walmart keeps just a single slot of shelf space for this stuff and they’re often out.
I'm to the point of checking for it every time I stop in for whatever random thing brings me to Walmart.
And while I don’t want to say pods don’t work (clearly they do for many people) the feedback from the last videos was amazing.
Many people reported that their dishwashers were cleaning like never before and all thanks to trying cheap detergent and using it as their machine expects.
I’m reasonably sure you’ll see many comments like that below this video.
Your dishwasher is responsible for 99% of the work.
Detergents are necessary, of course, but it’s just soap.
And I for one think that luxury soap products which go into a machine and don’t deliver any kind of unique experience but perhaps a vague hint of fragrance…
are silly.
Thanks for watching, and here’s to clean dishes!