A socialite who hated washing dishes invented the automated dishwasher

You're onto something here

That's how I remodeled my bathroom. I opted against materials that require grout lines, among other things. It looks boring and utilitarian but its a hell of a lot easier to clean.

Bathrooms need to look nice. Tile floors, walk-in showers, fancy sinks, these are all status symbols.

The maid cleans the bathroom anyhow.

Frances Gabe built a self cleaning house https://youtu.be/h95O5dQkoD4

Self cleaning toilets exist https://www.americanstandard-us.com/bathroom/toilets/acticle... I don't know if they work well or not.

As you say, this is already a thing for public toilets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanisette

For a whole bathroom, it would be quite expensive; you'd need a fully watertight room (most bathrooms, even wetrooms, are not) and you'd risk contamination. Would also be difficult to retrofit unless you had a wetroom already. Also the failure modes are quite bad; what happens when the drains clog? You'd need the whole thing sunken to prevent water egress to the rest of the house.

Definitely not saying it's impossible, or even impractical, but it wouldn't be cheap.

After visiting Asia a few times, I can't look at American bathrooms the same way.

Why can't I just turn a hose on in the bathroom to clean everything? Argh!

It seems a bit counter-intuitive, but dishwashers are not necessarily self-cleaning. Dishwasher owners really should spend some time every now and then to scrub and clean out their dishwashers, along with running some kind of cleaner through their dishwasher. Mold, scale, and food debris will eventually build up throughout the dishwasher, even if you try to let it air out completely. Proper cleaning and maintenance of your dishwasher will help it last a lot longer than assuming it is self cleaning. I should know, I recently came into ownership of a 12 year old dishwasher which "didn't work". Scrubbing and cleaning the machine led to the machine working for quite a while after.

Dishwashers spray hot water around an enclosed space, how would a bathroom work?

Would teach component (bath/toilet etc) have an enclosure, or the whole bathroom? How much hot water would you need for that? What liability would there be for being inside when it went off?

Probably a tile-crawling robot would be a better bet.

Autoclaves! They're used in industrial kitchens and life science labs.

I used to work in a restaurant where we had one! So good

There's a blog post somewhere in the web of someone that installed a commercial dishwasher in his kitchen. It requires 220 V and uses an enormous amount of power, but it cleans a load in 90 seconds.

I could tell I'd been out of back of the house food service long enough when I no longer put my home sink all the way over, because it was too hot.

(Our dishwasher and washing machines run when we're not at home, so they could run for twice as long and be twice as loud and I wouldn't care.)

There is a long, detailed rundown of someone who did just that:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2l7z90/installed_a_co...

... some installers and people who maintain such machines for restaurants chimed in. Fairly interesting.

> Does anyone have experience with big industrial dishwashers?

Yes, they're a mainstay for high traffic kitchens. And while the allure of having your dishes pressure washed in 1-3 min cycles sounds cool its actually a much bigger PITA than you can imagine as the maintenance costs on those things is pretty high. In my experience most kitchens don't actually own them, they rent them with a maintenance and supply cost attached to them, which get very costly.

We had to double the capacity of ours in my last kitchen, the problems was that this double sized machine had lots of downtime as the sensors were not reading the cycles correctly, it would randomly shutdown or just freeze, which would create pauses in the middle of service, and this was an old part of town (150 years old?) with tons of other restaurants so the plumbing was less than ideal which created an issue with backups and sudden floods of waste water coming from the machine into the kitchen.

So unless you're regularly hosting banquets in your home and have issues with limited pans, cutlery and flatware I can't see this making any sense and is incredible overkill. The company might love you for the low costs they'll incur, though.

I will say this: after having spent time working in kitchens I really hate doing dishes at home now by hand. But that could be easily solved with just having a domestic sized dishwasher machine and increase my flatware and utensils. Even a high pressure sprayer attachment to a deep sink would make a much bigger improvement and likely save on water as You could just compartmentalize the process.

When I used to take part time jobs, I've noticed that the dishwashers in the restaurants are quite different from those used domestically.

Especially for glasses, the job would be done in about 30 seconds, it will come out quite warm and will be ready for re-use as soon as you wipe them (roughly, like for a second or two) with a cloth. Spotless every time.

The plates and everything first go through a larger machine that looks like a carwash for mechanical cleaning, then go to the dishwasher. Comes out hot and ready for use just as quick as with the glasses.

I asked if they use any chemicals and the manager said yes but it was not immediately obvious where they put it and I did not notice any smell, just how water.

I now wonder if attaching a second pump+heater set to a normal dishwasher would work :D.

I mean, you'd have to modify it so it's taller (because the extra parts won't fit), but it would increase the pressure and decrease the heating time.

In Norway we have ASKO Professional. They are built for commercial use. In Norway they can be bought at the big consumer electronics shops. I plan to buy their cheapest commercial dishwasher DWCBI231.W during Black Friday in November. They also have the industrial DWCFS5936.S

https://static18.asko.com/files/default/Nordic/Professional/...

I am very pleased with their washing machine WMC743PS. It has shock absorbers. The drain pump makes the most noise. This machine is not afraid of unstable loads such a single wool sweater. It is fascinating to look at the door getting tossed around while the the rest of the machine is stable. In most consumer machines this heavy wool sweater would come out soaking wet as the safety features of the control board would stop the machine. Check out the door seal on ASKO compared to normal washing machines. It is very hygienic unlike the common deep rubber seal that will get moldy over time. I managed to get it for ~1700 USD.

The ASKO Professional vented tumble dryer does not reverse the spin direction, so I got the Miele T 8302 vented tumble dryer instead. I toss the exhaust hose out a window, temporarily. It had to be vented, non-negotiable :)

Miele Professional was too expensive.

Unless you can uninstall someone else's broken one, fix it and install it in your home without F-ing it up you likely have no business owning industrial appliances. These things aren't made to plug and play anywhere any everywhere like consumer appliances are and you're gonna have to consider a bunch of little details in order to make them deliver good service. If you don't already know what that entails you're probably out of your league and the ownership experience will likely be less satisfying than several $500 disposable consumer models of the same time period.

Also if you're not gonna do all your own maintenance just forget about it and buy cheap disposable appliances. Skilled labor is just too expensive these days to do anything else. Also, many commercial operations that are small enough to not be able to do maintenance in house (hotel laundry is a good example) buy a fleet of consumer appliances with the extended warranty and buy more than they need to that when one or two are down at any one time it's a non-issue because doing that is actually cheaper than maintaining commercial equipment.

I washed dishes, by hand and with the industrial machines, for a couple of different sorority houses in college long ago. The machines worked well, but required supervisory maintenance like would be expected for most industrial equipment. They also take a while to heat the water chamber to washing temperature.

A good friend of mine has an under counter version of the Hobart (https://www.hobartcorp.com/products/commercial-dishwashers/u...) machine in his kitchen, as well as a conventional consumer dishwasher. The commercial machines are electricity hogs, unless you use them constantly. He only uses the Hobart for dinner parties or entertaining. It is a nice setup.

Speed Queen will sell you a nice domestic version of their laundromat front-load washing machines for about a 20% premium over a high end unit at Home Depot or Lowe's. Our family is considering one. (https://speedqueen.com/products/home-products/front-load-was...)

Edited to provide product links for clarity

In addition to the downsides noted by other responses like electricity and maintenance costs, it's worth noting these industrial machines don't clean food residue nearly as well as domestic machines.

There simply isn't enough time in contact with the chemicals to break down things like starch and protein. You're meant to preclean dishes that go into these things quite well, then they degrease and sanitize them.

And I thought that situation lead to the invention of Correll...

Both are true. FTA:

"As a socialite, she was expected to hold frequent dinner parties. She served the meals on her expensive, heirloom china. When the household staff hand-washed the dishes, the delicate china often got chipped. She opted to wash the dishes herself, but after she damaged many a plate, she decided to design and build a machine that could handle the task—faster and more carefully."

Or she could have paid for more careful servants (or more of them so they could spend more time being careful)

Well converting sucky work into cool and fun work that eventually saves everyone time is a win for all involved. :D

Commercial units have racks that are separate, you stack the racks when done and they can dry and be stored.

> I wish they invented the dual side-by-side dishwasher.

Have you considered buying two dish washers? I don't think this needs an invention.

Have you looked at a double drawer dishwasher: https://www.fisherpaykel.com/us/dishwashing/all-dishwashers/...

What you're looking for is called a "kosher kitchen"

Buy two slimline units. An ex colleague of mine did that years ago.

I think the calculus changes when more than one person eating is involved, especially when the ratio skews more eating than washing

It depends what you are washing.

If you live by yourself and only have to wash one bowl and one spoon every day, a dishwasher can be overkill.

But that's not the situation for everyone. If you have a larger family with babies, a dishwasher can be very useful. Baby bottles have many of different parts and washing them by hand can be time consuming, baby toys can be washed in the dishwasher as well...

And if you cook your own food rather than buying prepared food, you'll also be washing a lot of stuff: frying pans, pots, cutting boards, blender cups, etc.

Same. I live alone. I have a spot for a dishwasher under my counter, and I could afford one, but I've chosen not to own one. The problem is that there are many things you can't wash in the dishwasher, and it often does a poor job, you have to pre-rinse some things. At the end of the day, it's like, whatever, I can spend 5 minutes a day washing dishes. But I agree with others, it might make more sense when you have a family with several people.

a lot of people tend to think you need to pre-rinse dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. no, you don't: in fact, this can remove the substrate that's needed for the detergent to be most effective.

most of my dishes, which I have a lot of: finish eating/drinking, straight in, no sink stage.

I'm looking forward to the dish washing robot to be invented. Something that can actually scrub a dish, not just spray it. Combine it with an automatic cabinet so you don't even need to unload it.

If you cook for 4+ people they are super useful. It's not just the time saving, you also can just eat your meal and relax for the rest of the evening, compared to having to wash stuff up - even for a small time.

> ... is pretty easy

It's not that it is complicated, it's the amount of it. Your threshold may vary, but I find that with 3+ adults, or 2 adults and children (one or more) then I prefer the dishwasher.

To me a dishwasher is the equivalent of asynchronous execution: load it up, start it and come back a few hours later to clean and dry dishes. In the meantime I keep on doing whatever else I need to do, which is something probably more important than doing dishes.

Another thing that helps is having extra dishes and silverware. That way I keep on loading during the day and turn it on only once before going to bed (pots and pans that are not solid metal we still have to do by hand though).

Also therapeutic if you view it as natural upkeep.

> anyone here, like me, not find automated dishwashers very useful?

No, when we got our fist dishwasher after our second child was born the dishwasher was like a miracle. We got so much time back each evening. It was life changing.

> same amount of soap exposure, and time at the sink, to wash dishes by hand.

What are you doing with your dishwasher that requires any soap exposure? With ours there is none. Scrape the dish into the bin/compost, stick it in the dishwasher. Every once in a while something will require a cursory rince with cold water before just to dislodge any stubborn food bits, but most of the time no prep is required.

I did my dishes by hand for years after moving out; on my own, it was just once a week, took about 20-30 minutes.

Now I own a house and have a small (3 person, 4 animal) household, and the thing runs daily. To me it makes a ton of difference; to the family I wouldn't be able to rely on the others, because the one is a teenage child and the other has debilitating joint problems.

I'd rather load / run / unload the thing every day than do things by hand again.

Fair enough, the engineer was doing work for hire.

It's a good saying; every once in a while there's a post on HN about yet another household robot, but people forget that things like washing machines and dishwashers are the only robots that will actually end up in people's homes in the long run; things that try to be more generic will remain hobby / research projects for a good while longer.

DAAS, interesting concept. However, I'm now left wondering what type of work or jobs you could not turn into an "xxxx-as-a-service." Dishwashing was something I never expected to see offered in this model.

Could work for large volumes, but TBH I feel like the logistics involved make it overly complicated; the industrial dishwashers mentioned elsewhere take like 90 seconds for a run. Why spend the time loading, driving, unloading, cleaning, loading, driving, unloading for a 90 second cycle?

I mean I get it when it comes to laundry (at hotel scale), the volume of stuff is much larger, it's not fragile so packaging and handling is a lot safer, and they use massive industrial laundry machines. One laundry factory can handle multiple hotels too.

IIUC, for all that people explicitly complained about not being able to find good help anymore, "one less gossip", especially in the zero gossips[1] limit, was a strong implicit driver for household automation[2].

    Phone for the fish knives, Norman
    As cook is a little unnerved

[1] especially now that one can verify consumation via the 'gram instead of either doing so conspicously in public or relying upon the servant grapevine to spread the word.

[2] this is a falsifiable hypothesis: it will be interesting to see how covid lockdown in india affects middle class household employment.

> Mediterranean carnivore diet

I'd be surprised if that was a thing. In my experience Mediterranean cooking traditionally revolves around fish, beans and vegetables.

> Convince them clean air is more important for their health than the next Mediterranean carnivore diet and we might start getting the tech we need.

Rich people already have fancy air filters in their cars and homes, they spend several months a year breathing clean air in places like Courchevel and St Barts. In places like London they have special taxes to keep poor people and their nasty polluting cars away from the posh areas.

Unless you’re going to convince them to wear masks, there’s probably not much tech can improve here.

You need a pump (and a filter) to recirculate the water, a heater for hotter water, and you need volume so that you can arrange everything so that they aren't touching and can all be washed. With a washing machine the size of half my sink, I'd be able to wash my largest pot and nothing else. With my small dishwasher, I can wash my largest pot plus almost everything else that's likely to need washing. Plus you'll want a seal that can keep in the steam, and some insulation to reduce the amount of energy you use continually reheating the water. Where does the lid go when you're not washing something? Does it lie flat on the counter next to the sink, taking up space you won't be able to use for anything else? What about the hinges? They'll be splashed with water repeatedly when you use the sink, so they won't last forever.

But sure, you could build a dishwasher into a sink; it's not impossible.

There are half-height dishwashers, and also ones that fit on top of the bench, but they are both generally bigger than would fit in a sink.

Maybe it doesn't dry enough to remove all moisture, and there's mold/mildew in some of the rubber areas, like what happens in washers.

The regulations on the wash cycles, including water volume, time, energy, and detergents, are very restrictive. Older units were not subject to the same regulations.

For example, due to laws in California most commercial dish detergents won’t contain TSP (trisodium phosphate). I’ve been adding a bit of powdered TSP with the detergent pod to each load and it seems to have improved the results.

Are you pre-rinsing your dishes before loading them in the dishwasher?

Have you run a "cleaning" cycle? Here's one guide on google, not sure if it works https://www.today.com/series/how-often-should-you/how-clean-...

Do you open your dishwasher as soon as the cycle is done? For best results, according to my layman's opinion, make sure to open it and even pull out the racks / give the top rack a nice shake / check for any water left in recipients

I have the exact same problem and have gone down the exact same rabbit hole with no real solution.

Fully disassembling (essentially uninstalling), cleaning, and sanitizing everything that touches water seems to fix it for a few cycles, but it slowly comes back over time.

The problem has followed me across states, houses, and dishwashers. I’m assuming it’s modern enzymatic detergent like you suggest.

Slightly more frustrating is that not everyone seems to smell it, or not as strongly as I seem to. It’s like dishwashers everywhere are gaslighting me.

As strange as it may sound, it could be because you use a little too much detergent.

I've noticed that new dishwashers require much longer to get the job done, too.

It's in the name of energy ratings; using less water at a colder temperature will reduce energy usage.

As for the smell "wet dog smell" is usually mold; rinse your plates of food remains before putting it in the dishwasher, clean out your filters regularly (not as necessary if you rinse beforehand), and run a hot, empty cycle with soda crystals. Also, leave it open to air out if it's not running (doesn't need to be open all the way, just enough for the insides to stay dry). All of that also applies to washing machines. Basically, moisture in a closed space will cause mold and smells.

My SO and I have been discussing this for years and everyone we've spoken with about this stared at us like we were crazy. It's weird finally encountering someone who is describing it in the exact same terms.

We do experience it in relation to our dishwasher sometimes, but I don't think the dishwasher is an essential component: it happens with handwashed dishes too. The essential factor, as far as we've been able to determine, is wet dishes which get in contact with outdoor air. However it only happens on some days and more often in some months/seasons!

My theory so far has been that it's a reaction between some molecule in air (something which varies in concentration over a period of days, perhaps a pollutant) and water. But it may as well be that it is interacting with detergent residue.

The interesting thing is that we don't actually manually measure detergent for our dishwasher but use detergent tablets, so the quantity never varies.

Our newer Bosch unit is the best-performing unit we've ever owned. We do follow their instructions to always use rinse aid (it has an automatic dispenser that needs to be refilled every couple dozen cycles), as well as the recommended detergent (Finish Powerball tablets, which we happened to be using already). We scrape off as much food as we can into the compost, but we only rinse things when we know they'll be problematic if they dry out before we run it (such as bread dough, eggs. etc.).

Yeah, it takes a few hours to run, but it's so quiet for most of the cycle we need to rely on the status LED to know it's running. We usually start it right before we go to bed (or better yet, set the timer after dinner so that we don't forget but can still load in dishes from a late snack or whatever).

We had a bad fish smell on glasses; it was due to food particles trapped in the pump housing behind the screen filter. Disassembly and a hose-down of the screen, plus a vinegar load, fixed the issue.

I suspect the offending food particles will tend to always be somewhere near the heating element, aka bacterial incubator.

No. She came up with the idea, she built the prototype, she had the vision. To name some lackey who only did what they were told an inventor is a disservice.

Normally the person who comes up with the idea and basic design is considered the inventor. For anything even vaguely complicated, it's likely that multiple people are involved in building the prototype.

I think we need to know more about the employment details to say whether this is unfair. as an engineer myself (albeit of a different sort), nine times out of ten I would rather be paid a little more than have a patent in my name or receive "credit".

If you need a divine sign to switch to Firefox I think that was it. I did it 2 years ago, never had any issues.

You need to click Continue in the top right (to skip the ad).

Can’t you just use those bulb things?

I am actually looking into building something that helps with watering house plants.

Is your problem that you forget to water them, overwater them or just the sheer amount it takes to water your plants because you have so many? (Or maybe something else?)

We just replaced them all with cacti. There’s a dead one on the window sill in the living room I forgot to water that still looks pretty good!

I feel that you need a hydroponics setup instead

You need one for each plant, unlike a Roomba, but self-watering planters are a thing (and two dozen of them are probably cheaper than one robot)

Not exactly comparable to a Roomba, but there is the Farmbot: https://farm.bot/

Ops, you said house plants. I guess my suggestion isn’t suitable for you, but might be interesting for other people so I’ll keep it here.

Have a roomba-like fill a dog-bowl like resevoir then use an electric pump to circulate to nearby plants? Or just fill the resevoir manually?

Seems nifty.

There's an old time trick where you put a bottle with a wick (like a woolen thread) from the bottle into the house plant. There's pots with a system like that built in; water reservoir at the bottom, wick going to the top part.

I'm sure there's more expensive options involving timers and internet-of-shit as well.

Are all of your plates oversized? Or square so they don’t sit a bit below the level of the bottom rack?

Not that there’s an iso standard for plate size, but I have a hard time imagining this being a common issue.

Most Bosch washers have adjustable racks. It's great.

All recent dishwashers I have own have had adjustable upper drawer so you can move it up or down a few centimeters depending on where your load requires extra height.

Can be hopeless with modern wine glasses also.

Most dishwashers have either adjustment handles or two sets of wheels/rollers on the upper tray. You can adjust the height by taking it out completely and switching to the other set of wheels.

Though I have seen ones that can't be adjusted. You could try getting an adjustable upper tray from a similar make/model. Usually they are interchangeable.

Paris Hilton is famous for:

1) Being a (mildly) successful actress

2) Being a model

3) Being an incredibly successful DJ (she was the highest paid DJ in the world in 2014, with a residence in Ibiza from 2013 to 2017)

4) Owning a perfume line that's brought over 3 billion US Dollars in revenue

I sincerely dislike defending rich people online, but it's weird to see an entrepreneur as successful as Paris being bashed in HN of all places.