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Comment by balefrost | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related: if you want to watch a 32 minute video about how to properly use a dishwasher, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

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Beware that his advice about extra detergent for the prerinse stage doesn't apply to all dishwashers: some let a little water rinse through the detergent compartment during that part of the cycle, so some is released even if you're using a tablet. Once they get to the main part of the programme, the compartment flips open to let the tablet fall out so it can finish dissolving completely. This totally solves the problem described in the video. Unlike the type he describes, these dishwashers don't even have a separate place for prewash detergent (because it would be redundant).

I'm in the UK, and all dishwashers I've seen work this way, even really cheap ones. So it's probably a country thing (most likely Europe vs US).

Should be straightforward to figure out which kind your unit is (look and see if it is sealed off or not).

Note that a further complication is that some don't have a compartment but literally an indent on the tablet compartment where you're supposed to pour some prewash/detergent and it just gets incoporated into the mixture as it runs down. I suspect you can "boost" any dishwasher's prewash detergent amount by adding a bit on the door/in the bottom.

I'm in the US using a GE dishwasher. It is similar to the ones in UK - no pre-wash compartment.

Alec is a truly amazing obsessed individual, I love his videos. His recent adventures into how oil fueled lamps is tremendous, no detail left behind.

I love this video. The one part that didn't seem to work for me is the "don't pre-rinse your dishes" part -- perhaps my dishwasher's fault, but I was really disappointed when, after several washes and varying degrees of gook on plates and bowls, stuff was still coming out dirty. I quick pre-rinse works best for me and my dishwasher, combined with the other tips in his video.

Yeah. We stopped giving the dirty dishes a quick rinse and scrub after watching that video and all that happened is the dishdrawer drain blocked and the kitchen flooded. (First time ever.)

We’re back to giving the dishes a quick rinse and scrub before they go in the dishwasher.

While you don't need to pre rinse the dishes, you should at least probably scrape any leftover food off of them. I don't think I've ever had a load of dishes with enough physical matter on them to actually block a drain, and I've never pre rinsed.

That runs contrary to my experience as well. Fats, syrups, and greens - you don’t necessarily have to rinse and scrub but try to leave some starchy sticky rice or eggs to dry on the plate and that stuff may not come off, it will be dried and cemented even further.

It really depends on your dishwasher. I recently upgraded an old dishwasher to a Bosch 500, stopped pre-rinsing, and the end result is better than what the old one could do with pre-rinsing.

One of my favorite parts of that video is how he goes into how stupid an idea those "Tide Pods but for dishwashers" are. They don't do nearly as good of a job cleaning in my experience, and missing the whole pre-rinse is likely a large part of why.

Now, getting family/friends to stop using them has proven to be a challenge, because Alec can have quite the dry video format for those who are being told to "stop doing a thing you deem convenient, and watch this 32 minute video to see why".

Alec is a master at turning a three sentence concept into a 6,000 word exposition. I'm glad he's found success and seems to be enjoying Youtube, but I feel he missed his calling in academia.

Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes:

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11

> Want to see my book report? "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes." Academia, here I come!

Ever since I watched that a few months back, I run the tap go get the hot water closer to the washer for the first cycle (as recommended in the vid), and I do notice a difference. So much so, that I've completely eschewed the pre-rinse (also recommended in the vid).

This must be a country-specific thing. Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference.

(Source: bought a new one a couple of years ago! I assumed a hot water feed would be more efficient, but very few models had it and they weren’t necessarily cheaper to run. Thinking about it, an electric heater inside the washer that heats exactly the amount needed is going to be way more efficient than getting hot water at a random temperature from a gas combi boiler.)

Mine says using hot water will work but only do it if you have a renewable source of heat. Otherwise, it’s more efficient to just heat up those few liters.

> Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference.

Ya, I think the same is true in America. Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. So, it wouldn't make sense to rinse your clean dishes with water that may contain bacteria and spores. Of course, you don't want to rinse hot glass with cold water either (potential breakage), so now you have to heat the water. So, you may as well just have cold water as the only source and heat it.

It's the same reason coffee machines tell you to fill them with cold water -- it has nothing to do with the temperature of the water, it's all about the potability of the water.

> Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water.

As a consumer of residential hot water tanks for 40+ years, this is news to me. How is the water in a residential hot water tank not potable?

I’ve heard: Higher levels of dissolved minerals, which might be harmful, and a low chance of being a breeding ground for brain-eating microbes, which will be harmful.

I think it’s specifically Legionnaire’s disease / legionella. Hot water tanks should periodically be heated over 50C to kill off the bacteria. See e.g. https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/hot-and-cold-water-stora...

It was a surprise to me when I first read it about 10 years ago too. I'm having trouble finding the source for the (potential) bacteria breeding problem. But, I did find an EPA document warning not to do it for another reason:

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-09/documents/20...

I take the opportunity to wash all the hand wash items with the water I am running to get to the hot water for the dishwasher. The water is nice and hot for the final rinse of the hand wash things, and to then start the dishwasher.

Beware, some dishwashers will throw an error or work improperly if the temperature doesn't match what it should be at certain points in the cycle. Same for some washing machines.

This video changed my life, and my parents lives. They always struggled with under-cleaning and pre-washed everything. Once they started using a little bit of detergent in the pre-wash, everything comes out clean with just the suggested scape off of solids. Pre-wash detergent is critical!

Wait, wtf is a pre-wash detergent? And why I have never heard of it?

It's no different from normal wash detergent, it's just normal dishwasher detergent put into the pre-wash slot of your washer. The video goes into more detail, but it basically ensures that the first rinse cycle that the washer does still has soapy water.

Or given that it is just dumped out of that slot (assuming you have one) when you shut the door, I'd say you could just toss a couple of spoonfuls of detergent into the bottom of the washer.

I just recommend being a spilly pourer of detergent.

Save time and get better results through haste and sloppiness.

He actually mentions that in the video as well.

It's normal detergent, placed in a space where the pre-wash water cycle can use it.

Regular Dawn detergent or "dishwasher" detergent?

Dishwasher detergent only (i.e., stuff specifically marketed as for going into dishwashing machines)

Absolutely don't put dish soap like Dawn into your dishwasher - it will foam up, shoot out of the dishwasher, and absolutely wreck your dishwasher and surrounding kitchen with foam.

If you're curious what this mishap would look like, check out this image search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=put+dish+soap+in+dishwasher&t=ffab...

Normal dishwasher detergent. Never put dish soap like Dawn in a dishwasher, I've seen at least 3 kitchens flooded as a result of people not knowing this.

It does works in a pinch, just use about 3-5% as much as normal and skip the drying phase to rerun.

A related issue is people just use way to much detergents in general, presumably because commercials show people using excessive quantities. Plop Plop Fiz Fiz for example just about doubled Alka-Seltzer’s sales.

I stopped using pods/packs/powerballs types and pre-scrubbing after this video. I thought cheaper liquids just didn't work, because I wasn't filling the pre-wash. I tried cheaper store brand liquid detergent with pre-wash, and with pre-wash gels work great.

Right now, I'm using Cascade Gel, really happy for the price and amount. 6 bux. It's the same price as generics if you don't buy it on amazon.

TIL, use the pre-fill

With dishwashing detergent liquids are superior. Liquid detergent often contains varying amounts of KOH which is about as good as it gets in terms of cleaning power that won't also destroy dishes(NaOH). They can't put KOH in dry detergent so it's made with less effective chemicals that are better at staying in a powdered form without clumping.

I knew what this video was before I clicked. I love his content that gets into this type of focus. His Coleman Lantern videos were great too.

Ah, another Dietz nut!

I don’t follow this advice at all and my dishes always come out perfectly clean. So it seems totally arbitrary to me. Or at least depends on which dishwasher you have.

Watched the whole thing, got really excited (as I always pre-rinse) and then discovered that my dishwasher doesn't have a pre-wash basin. More research is needed, I suppose, to convince me to move away from rinsing (which I would love, but have not been impressed with unrinsed results thus far).

UPDATE: So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. Turns out there is a place to dump some detergent for pre-wash after all! Instead of living next to the main basin, it's built into the exterior of the dispenser latch itself. Really, just a little concave area that allows detergent to just fall out when you close the door and get used in the first cycle. Will be experimenting with this!

My dishwasher doesn't have a pre-rinse basin, either.

But, I've found that for heavily soiled loads, if I throw an extra pod into the bottom of the dishwasher before I run it, that helps. (The extra pod will be dissolved in the first rinse, giving a boost.)

Mine doesn't have a pre-wash basin either, so I just pour some directly in the dish compartment before closing/running. I feel its equivalent and it seems to work great.

It's strictly equivalent, dishwashers with a separate receptacle just dump it in the compartment, too.

>So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual.

I had gone through life either using dishwashers that came with my apartment/house, or installing used dishwashers, because I was otherwise punching above my weight.

My current home is the first place I've owned where I've bought all new appliances - which all came with manuals, which all have really good instructions for using the devices the way the product engineers intended them, and I can't believe it took me so long to come around to rtfm for day-to-day stuff. I'd basically leaned on techniques I learned as a kid in the 80s, for decades, even as technology changed. I know not to do this at work, but it was funny realizing what an oversight I'd made in my home life.

It is funny. I keep all manuals around, just in case, on rare occasions throwing away the ones for products that I no longer have. Yet not once have I actually gone back to a physical manual, finding it easier to grab one online (as I did in the dishwasher base as well).

Was going to say, if there's not a pre-rinse basin, just squirt a bit anywhere. As you can see from the one you found, it just immediately falls out anyway.

I've experimented with some of this advice in my dishwasher, with mixed results. Some of the pod manufacturers explicitly state that the pods are designed to compensate for the lack of a pre-wash, so this isn't a case of Out-of-touch Dumb Companies vs Smart Customer. Whether you believe the makers is another thing, but I think the video is oversimplifying for the sake of making viewers feel smart and achieving factoid popularity.

Pods are a scam. They measure out ordinary crappy dishwashing detergent and package it up in a 'pod' then mark the price up 10x. In the US soap seems to exist in a grey area where manufacturers can make unsubstantiated claims about performance based on 'testing' that they supposedly do internally. The new Dawn dishwashing liquids make claims about having exponentially more cleaning power and yet cleaning anything requires exactly the same amount of soap as it did with the old Dawn.

Sure, if you buy the ones that cost 10x more per load.

The ones I buy are about 15% higher. The convenience is worth it for us for the ~$2/month increase.

This was quite long but informative. Thanks for sharing. He suggests not using the pods and using dishwashing powder in both the pre-rinse and regular dispensers. No rinsing with hands needed before loading even with weeks old, dry caked dishes.

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