To make dishwashers great again? (2020) | Hacker News Reader

To make dishwashers great again? (2020)

greenbuildinglawupdate.com

130 pointsMichaelZuo566 comments

For anyone who is upset with the performance of their dishwasher there is a really really easy thing to try.

First, replace your pods with a box of powder detergent, then add some detergent to the prewash cup on your dishwasher in addition to the normal dispenser. If your dishwasher doesn't have one you can just put some on the door before you close the washer. This gives your dishwasher detergent to work with on two of its cycles rather than just one and in my experience it makes all the difference on really difficult dishes.

The pods are effectively identical to the powder detergent but at a huge cost premium and don't give you the ability to adjust your amount of detergent to match the water hardness in your area which can result in a film on your clean dishes.

for more info there is a great Technology Connections video covering it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

Alternatively you can test this by just throwing an extra pod in the bottom of the dishwasher to start with. If it works well then you can consider switching to powder to save costs.

Technology Connections' videos are a bit long for my taste. This one and its follow up really only have a few takeaways:

Dirt sensors might mean that deliberately leaving crud on the dishes (rather than rinsing first in the sink) leads to longer and better washes

Run your kitchen sink hot water a little before starting to get warmer water into the dishwasher

The first cycle is just water, before the detergent tray pops open, so put detergent into the pre-wash tray or just straight into the tub to make it do more cleaning in that cycle

But don't put two pods in, i.e. one in the detergent tray, and another detergent pod into the tub because these pods are very concentrated and harsh and will damage plates. Only add a little extra powder

> Run your kitchen sink hot water a little before starting to get warmer water into the dishwasher

Note: this only makes sense in the US (or wherever else it's common for your dishwasher not to heat its own water).

> But don't put two pods in, i.e. one in the detergent tray, and another detergent pod into the tub because these pods are very concentrated and harsh and will damage plates. Only add a little extra powder

I'm not sure damaging your plates is the reason to avoid the extra pod. Plates are often made of some glass-like or ceramic-like material and not that easily damaged by chemicals.

Don't know about the pods, but for a while we used DIY dishwashing powder with soda crystals as the main ingredient, and after a while you could definitely notice slight scratching of glassware, and any printing would fade pretty heavily. Not sure if that's a chemical process or simply the abrasiveness of the powder.

> > Run your kitchen sink hot water a little before starting to get warmer water into the dishwasher

> Note: this only makes sense in the US (or wherever else it's common for your dishwasher not to heat its own water).

I don't think this is a US-vs-world issue. Other countries' dishwashers are also connected to the hot water supply.

Rather, Technology Connections is suggesting a hack.

Your dishwasher, wherever in the world you may be, will start up by using whatever water it can get for an initial rinse of the dishes, and it will measure how dirty the water is after this initial rinse.

Normally this water will be tepid. But if you make it hot by running your hot tap first, the hot water will rinse more dirt off the dishes than tepid water, the dishwasher will detect more dirt, and so it will assume the dishes need more aggressive cleaning, and adjust its program accordingly.

> Plates are often made of some glass-like or ceramic-like material and not that easily damaged by chemicals.

A ceramic is a glass (or the other way around), just of a different material composition. And yes, a dishwasher can easily damage both glassware and ceramic dishes depending on how the glass (or glaze, in the case of a ceramic dish) was formulated.

A common durability test for ceramic engineers is indeed — placing it in the dishwasher.

> this only makes sense in the US (or wherever else it's common for your dishwasher not to heat its own water).

American dishwashers heat their own water too - I think this is for cases when the dishwasher has a time limit on how long it will spend heating up the water (perhaps to meet expectations on cycle length).

> Plates are often made of some glass-like or ceramic-like material and not that easily damaged by chemicals.

The edges/sides of my Corelle plates (a layered tempered glass) are rough due to the dishwasher. Also, those with prints have faded significantly.

My US-sold, 2015-purchased Bosch dishwasher handles its own heating.

The first water cycle does not get heated, but all subsequent ones do. I’m tempted at switching it to the cold water line.

The initial rinse cycle never heats water. Running hot will help.

>But don't put two pods in, i.e. one in the detergent tray, and another detergent pod into the tub because these pods are very concentrated and harsh and will damage plates. Only add a little extra powder

This is a strange optimization choice. I'd much rather replace plates slightly more often vs. spend time each night handwashing or rinsing dishes. My philosophy is to put everything in the dishwasher regardless of 'diswasher safe'. If it breaks, I replace it with some other dish/cup brand. In a short time you are left with durable cook and glassware that the dishwasher can clean by itself.

> In a short time you are left with durable cook and glassware that the dishwasher can clean by itself.

While I quite like this Darwinistic approach, I've not actually had this problem other than with printed or gilded patterns. Although I need a better solution for my grandmother's EPNS spoons.

There’s also doubling the environmental impact of already pretty nasty dishwasher detergent.

This method fails with aluminum baking sheets and other cookware.

FWIW, his videos are long because they're not designed to convey a few practical takeaways—they're usually deep dives into the way that the tech works, and he gets into all kinds of details that aren't useful if all you want is the tl;dr "what should I do with this" information.

However, those details are exactly why I follow his channel! I'm a million times more confident repairing my own appliances than I was before I found his videos, and it's not because he has videos on how to repair my specific appliances, it's because his deep dives into a wide variety of appliances have given me a good intuition for how these kinds of machines work.

He also shows off good features that are worth owning, making us more confident buyers as well. For instance I feel his video on smoke detectors should be required viewing to any responsible homeowner/renter. And he showcases the decline/lack of adoption of proper features in consumer appliances, i.e. all toasters should be variations of the Sunbeam T-20B IMO.

Also, try using less soap. Too much soap can interfere with the cleaning or leave soap residue.

good dishwashers heat their own water

But not for the pre-wash cycle.

I really don't understand why people espouse this channel. If you watch it for entertainment sure, I suppose this video is better than watching some guys video essay about Man of Steel, but if I just want to learn about something asking me to watch 30 minutes of drivel makes no sense.

I almost always learn things for fun, not because I'm deliberately trying to better myself (turns out self improvement comes easily for me when I don't overthink things).

I'd much rather watch a 30 minute video that's entertaining and teaches me something than skim read a document for a few minutes.

He also tends to go into all sorts of interesting tangents that I probably wouldn't have even found out about if I was researching this stuff myself.

I love his videos. They are not tutorials and so do not need to be concise and to the point. They are video essays from which I learn many things in a good amount of detail, and i have a fun time doing it because he writes entertaining scripts.

Most youtube videos stop at the "what", whereas his also go into the "how" and "why". Some of us are interested in answering those questions.

Learning how's and why's also gives you tools to think about future things you encounter as well. You get a greater understanding of the world.

I think his videos go much deeper into topics I didn't realize I cared about and I find them fascinating for it. It's not about the destination it's about the journey.

Different people have different tastes. I like his videos.

Many people also don't clean their dishwashers regularly. You need to remove the filter on the bottom and wash it clean once a month, at least.

Also, the nozzles on the spray arms can become clogged. The easiest method to clean everything is to add one of those "cleaning" tablets to a normal wash. These are just Sodium Hydroxide, which chemically converts accumulates fats and greases into soap.

Disclaimer: I live in EU.

I don't like cleaning the dishwasher during normal cycles. I don't like eating more chemicals than I have to.

I clean the (German made) dishwasher when it tells me to using products designed for this.

https://shop.rema1000.dk/varer/145820

and

https://www.fjordbutikken.dk/sterling-citronsyre-til-afkalkn...

The first on removes dirt .. mostly fat I think.

The second removes lime using citric acid crystals. You could use vinegar instead I think.

The water hardness has something to do with the amount of salt the dishwasher uses so it needs to be set correctly.

I don't have any issues with the dishwasher.. I had it for 5 years.

I just do a wash with CLR once every year or so.

https://clrbrands.com/Products/CLR-Household/CLR-Calcium-Lim...

This is probably a 'different problem', in that I have hard water, and calcium buildup is a thing here. It also builds on the plates and everything. So.. I do a full load, all dishes, with CLR. Yes, I do a second wash after.

To give an idea, if I put a pot full of water on the stove, and boil it to empty, I'll end up with a solid disc of calcium and other elemets at the bottom, about 1mm thick!

I have owned my current dishwasher for about 15 years, and I have never once cleaned it. It's working just fine.

Some dishwashers have a built-in grinder (similar to garbage disposal units). Yours might be one of those.

Conversely, my wife insists on not pre-rinsing the dishes and that filter gets real gross, real quick. Unless you mean the spinny arms, never cleaned those before.

> need […] once a month, at least

This strikes me as an abuse of the word “need”, in my opinion.

I keep telling my customers that they don't "need" to patch their Internet-facing Windows web servers in the same sense that they don't "need" to replace the oil filters in their car.

Look, yes, you ought to replace the filter every six months to a year, but will your car stop dead the very next day if you don't? No!

It also won't stop the day after, or the day after that. Ergo, by induction, we come to the conclusion that the 2012 R2 server on RTM patch level is not professional negligence.

It's just simple logic.

Phosphates keep the dishwasher clean for much longer. I just add the phosphates back to my powder. So much simpler and the environmental concerns have proven to be total bullshit. Phosphates can be managed at the waste water treatment facilities. Unless you are washing dishes in a river, the regulation should happen at the discharge point.

There's an entire follow-up video to this that points to errors in his original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll6-eGDpimU&t=2223s

None that go against the thesis- though there's a lot of additional information that's pretty interesting.

That's incorrect -

1. He points out that a powder Detergent by itself is less effective than a combination of powder and gel. Something that the pods provide built in.

2. His own experiment with the prewash were completely underwhelming, showing nearly identical results in addition to not proving any different in the final result.

Also worth checking your dishwasher manual to see if it has a minimum temperature requirement for the incoming water. If it does, run the kitchen faucet till the water gets as hot as it can before starting the dishwasher. Many cheap dishwashers have a heating element which cannot heat the water to the required cycle temperature unless the incoming water is hotter than a certain temperature. More expensive dishwashers can work with cold or hot water.

My belief is that manufacturers use the same heating elements between europe (240V, but often piped to the cold water line) and North America (120V, but usually piped to the hot water line).

No matter what, North American dishwashers will only be able to draw 1500w, and probably less because they're not always on a dedicated circuit, and have other power needs than just heat. So it's probably not a "cheap diswasher" vs expensive one issue.

The amount of water heated up in each cycle is small enough that 1500W is not the limiting factor. Maytag recommends connecting to the hot water outlet and recommends a minimum temperature of 120F [1].

The Miele user manual for their USA models recommends connecting to the cold water inlet unless the hot water is known to be heated by a very efficient source [2].

[1] https://producthelp.maytag.com/Dishwashers/Product_Info/Dish...

[2] https://media.miele.com/downloads/05/c4/00_96106053F20B1EDDB...

I haven't checked code - but since my wiring had the dishwasher and garbage disposal shared on a single 20A, I would expect that each now have a requirement to not consume more than 1200W.

At 1200W and a 2.5 gallon wash cycle, I'd expect heating from 70 to 130F would take about 20 minutes. Unless the pre-rinse cycle was extended, I would expect this would mean the soap was released at the start of the wash cycle before the water was to temperature.

I’ve seen no models that are the same across the US and EU market, do you have any evidence for this?

... And don't forget to check that your dishwasher actually is hooked up to hot water, not cold.

I don't think many people outside of the US actually hook their dishwasher up to hot water? And dishwashers work just fine in eg Germany.

(Though they might have different dishwashers in Europe with better heating?)

America's Test Kitchen, back when it was good (AKA when Chris was in control), said that the easiest thing to do was just use the pods that had as many colors of liquid as possible. With that advice, I've had good results 100% of the time.

> America's Test Kitchen, back when it was good (AKA when Chris was in control), said that the easiest thing to do was just use the pods that had as many colors of liquid as possible.

1. I don't see any/much difference in pre- and post-Christopher Kimball ATK. The rest of the senior staff is basically the same, so I'm not sure what would have changed.

2. What exactly is so special about the colored liquids? What is the chemical make-up of them and their purpose? And are the liquids the same between difference brands? Is the red of one the same as the red as another? Or is the red of one have an equivalent to another (brandA->red = brandB->blue)?

Because unless you know what the liquids are/do, you're just cargo culting. By some account the liquids to nothing practical:

> Chemistry expert and former detergent chemist here, chiming in. Modulo some small semantic differences, you're 100% spot on. Functionally, there is zero difference in the formulations. Every powder dish detergent on the market comprises the same functional components, though the exact chemicals selected may vary. It's always some combination of detergent, anti-deposition agent, water conditioners, strong base, oxidizers, enzymes, buffers, "processing aids", and what I call "foo foo juice" - colors and fragrances.

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll6-eGDpimU&lc=Ugxn7pFkryB_j...

> Because unless you know what the liquids are/do, you're just cargo culting

Right. Specifically, its the kind of advice that even if it works on the market at the time it is written, if it gets popular, it is very trivially subject to gaming in the way that gives truth to Goodhart's Law. "More colors of liquid in the pod = sells better" is an obvious target for trivial optimization with no change in substantive composition.

> 1. I don't see any/much difference in pre- and post-Christopher Kimball ATK. The rest of the senior staff is basically the same, so I'm not sure what would have changed.

The direction completely changed. Now it's all about fancier foods and restaurant stuff. Compare an episode from 2010 to now. Complete difference.

> Because unless you know what the liquids are/do, you're just cargo culting. By some account the liquids to nothing practical:

Uh, yeah, by definition I'm appealing to authority. Namely the authority of the people who did the comparison testing in America's Test Kitchen. That's literally why I watch it: because they know better than me and they put in the work.

Those colored pods made little sense to me. Do those different liquids get released at different times? Saw someone test it out on YouTube that showed not be the case. Or do they have some sort of unstable reaction when they get mixed? If not, then, what's the point?

>said that the easiest thing to do was just use the pods that had as many colors of liquid as possible. With that advice, I've had good results 100% of the time.

this seems like bad advice. Setting aside the question of whether the colors actually do anything, once this "advice" is known it's only a matter of time before inferior brands add a mix of food coloring to their detergent pods to look more premium.

I found good results with the pods too - either cascade platinum or the finish powerball ones.

One other thing made a difference between good and bad cleaning in a load - plates near the dispenser.

The detergent dispenser is in the door and putting plates on the bottom rack sort of between the bottom rotating arm and the dispenser seemed to interfere with the pod. It would prevent or delay dissolving the pod and mixing with the water. leaving some free space in the bottom rack in that location was key.

That was probably their brand-neutral way of saying to use Cascade Platinum. Not to sound like a shill but that’s the only product that’s actually worked well for my current dishwasher. Everything else leaves a lot of residue or doesn’t actually clean.

I switched to buying powder from Amazon because the local supermarket only carries pods now. Huge cost premium is right.

The same for washing machine detergent. Why anyone would pay $$$ to have water come with their detergent is beyond me.

In the same vein, antifreeze now comes "premixed" with water. Gaaaaah. I just keep looking till I find the lonely 100% antifreeze jug.

> The same for washing machine detergent. Why anyone would pay $$$ to have water come with their detergent is beyond me.

Because powder detergent (no matter if for laundry or dishes) has a nasty tendency to pull in moisture from the air, leading to it clumping up and getting ineffective. If you have a family with small children that produce a lot of dishes and laundry, you may get away with it but if you're single / DINK no way.

> In the same vein, antifreeze now comes "premixed" with water. Gaaaaah. I just keep looking till I find the lonely 100% antifreeze jug.

That one is because most people don't use distilled water to dilute, but tap water instead... which can carry serious issues, either because it dissolves the piping (see e.g. Flint water crisis) or because limescale builds up in the engine where it's hot and eventually clogs up, leading to engine failure.

I've never had any trouble with either of your points.

> Why anyone would pay $$$ to have water come with their detergent is beyond me.

I pay so that I don't have to add yet another thing to my increasingly limited free time. The older I get the happier I am to pay extra so I have to do less.

I'll have to try Amazon. Anything other than tablets seems to have gone outright extinct in UK supermarkets. Some brands (e.g. Morrison's value) have their tablets in tear-open plastic sachets, so I can break it and put 1/3 straight in for the pre-wash, but I expect they'll switch to the dissolvable wrap type soon (which is probably a good thing for the environment)

> to match the water hardness in your area which can result in a film on your clean dishes.

Or invest in a water softener. They’re a one-time expense and almost no maintenance (aside from a small expense/maintenance for salt), and are beneficial for a number of things:

- improved appliance longevity

- eliminating scale buildup on toilets and faucets

- improving the health of your skin and hair

- everything cleans more easily

When I was setting up our Bosch dishwasher, there was a water hardness option. The machine has a built-in salt tank and is fully capable of regulating water hardness on it's own. You just have to top it up every now and then.

I wouldn't say almost no maintenance—the water softener is the single highest maintenance appliance I own. I can never manage to stay on top of the salt input that's required.

I fill mine twice a year, with about 5-6 bags each fill. Maybe there are different sizes, but when I was shopping around, most seemed to have about the same capacity.

So for me, I'd say something that takes me about 30 minutes to do (including the trip to get the salt) twice a year is fairly low maintenance.

Not an option for renters, who also don't have the luxury of the option of fixing or replacing bad dishwashers.

Also, when I lived in the Midwest I could barely tell the water softener was there. I would descale my kettle and the first pot already had a thick layer on it. I now use a countertop RO system.

> when I lived in the Midwest I could barely tell the water softener was there

I guess it depends on how hard the water is, I suppose, but could also be the type of softener. I'm not sure, I haven't done a lot of research on it, as it seems to just work.

But in my experience, I can tell a huge difference (vs. the house we moved from that didn't have a softener). I never see any scale on our appliances, faucets, shower doors, etc.

When showering, I can tell when I've forgotten to refill the salt just from the feel of the water.

I think that this advice from Technology Connections is bad advice. I was having huge problems getting my dishes clean in early-mid 2020. I thought my dishwasher was broken and needed to be repaired, and then it started working again.

What made it stop washing? I had switched to powdered detergent because I couldn't find pods due to COVID shortages. When I found pods again, I bought them. I've never had problems since.

This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me if it’s true that pods are just water-soluble wrappers around the same detergent.

Is there a case that they’re something else?

I don’t know if this happened here, but sometimes if the soap door is time released water infiltrated the chamber and it cakes up and doesn’t release properly. My observation is this happens less often with pods likely because they don’t dissolve rapidly enough.

The colorful liquids (or equivalent) in the pods are surfactants and other fun things that are not practical to formulate as powders. So they really do clean differently.

Of course, there are other ways to formulate things, but they all have tradeoffs.

I can't find any pods that are just water-soluble wrappers of the powdered detergent. All of them have additional compartments in the pods for other chemicals, and all the pods do clean a hell of a lot better than just powdered detergent.

I had switched earlier this year after seeing the Technology Connections video, and I'm ready to switch back. The pods are just better.

I stopped using tablets and started using powder after watching this exact video by Technology Connections. Highly recommend the watch.

The advice from that video to put powdered detergent in the prewash has been a huge improvement to our dishwashing. We now put the powder in the prewash section, but keep using tablets for the main wash just because of inertia I suppose, but it works great.

Also helpful: running the sink's hot water before you run the dishwasher, until it heats up, so that the dishwasher has access to hot water from the moment it starts.

The world outside the US just hooks dishwashers up to the cold water supply and it washes just fine. Are US machines different?

Yes. North American dishwashers don’t heat the water during the prewash cycle because the duration in time is too short and the 120V electrical service can’t supply enough power to heat the water quickly during that time.

European dishwashers use 240V (like everything else in the house) and so they can heat water much more quickly.

This electrical difference is also reflected in the fact that electric kettles (for boiling water) aren’t nearly as popular in North America as they are in Europe. Technology Connections also did a video on this topic [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/_yMMTVVJI4c

Which can waste a bunch of water. I do mine by hand and am often done before the hot water arrives.

Then your house was built badly. But you can repair it by installing an instant water heater that goes under the sink.

The follow-up to the video is worth linking to, if only because it explains why liquid detergent is crap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll6-eGDpimU

Although I generally like Technology Connections, I've always found that particular TC video hilariously wrong. Every dishwasher I've ever owned has been basically a sterilizing machine, not a cleaning machine. I always wash all my dishes by hand to the point where there is no visible food on them before I put them into the dishwasher, because if I don't do that half my dishes come out of the dishwasher with food crud still on them.

And no, I'm not talking about crappy, dirty, worn-out dishwashers. I'm talking about state-of-the art modern dishwashers. I thought it was normal for everybody that you had to wash all your dishes by hand before putting them in the dishwasher. I thought TC was basically making a big joke, but after TFA I'm thinking maybe dishwashers do exist (or did exist?) that actually ... wash dishes?? And don't take 4 hours to do it??

Dish washers clean dishes. If they aren't doing so for you, you're doing something wrong. I have never rinsed dishes. The only time something comes out dirty is if it's an oven pan that has something fiercly burned to it, or a pot of milk or something that I burned.

I think some dishwashers are somehow worse performers than others. In the flat I was in before, the landlord installed Ikea dishwasher was terrible (I don't know who was the actual manufacturer). If I'd put a butter knife in there that still had traces of butter going in, they would still be there coming out. Somehow, this even happened when using the 70 ºC program. I even tried using the most expensive pods, for the same result.

In the new flat, equipped with some mid-range Siemens, I don't have this problem anymore. I use the exact same pods, same butter, and same knives. Hell, even the "quick 1h 45º" program gets rid of pretty much everything, even using the cheapest pods.

Are you mis-loading them? Unusually hard water? Wrong detergent?

Every surface you want washed needs line-of-sight to a sprayer, so it's quite possible to load a dishwasher in a way that doesn't work properly.

Certain things are particularly sticky. People used to make glue out of fish for a reason; the one thing I will pre-wash off plates is fish skin.

What are you talking about? This is either a US thing as usual or you are being duped.

I've always thought clothes washers washed clothes but dishwashers don't actually wash dishes and everybody knows it. I thought it was just a universally shared joke that everybody was in on, like "Grape Nuts contain neither grapes not nuts, and dishwashers don't actually wash dishes because of course they don't."

Only now I'm beginning to think I've been out of the loop.

Using modern, mid-range dishwashers, I barely need to touch them before loading them. It was hard to break the habit of pre-washing, but that uses up a lot more water than the dishwasher itself (and energy, if you use hot water).

When I did clean them before washing them, so to speak, the short wash cycle would be enough. (Now I use the sensor cycle.)

I've never done more than scrape the large bits of food off my dishes. My current dishwasher is probably 10 years old.

What you're describing just isn't normal. There are some possible explanations. You might have really hard water. You might not be using high-quality, enzymatic dishwaster detergent. It's also possible that there's something wrong with every dishwasher you've owned, I guess.

Our dishwasher washes dishes just fine, and it's just a small crappy countertop model

Sounds like you are choosing appalling dishwashers. I don't even rinse my plates and they coe out absolutely fine. If they don't I know the filter needs cleaning or the machine needs servicing.

Having used dishwashers on three different continents (US, Europe, Asia), I can attest that they definitely do wash dishes. The only caveat I would add is that when my mid-1990s vintage US dishwasher broke, the modern replacement seemed to be far worse. The cycles took longer and dishes came out dirtier. I always suspected it was some energy efficiency mandate that ruined the dishwasher experience in the US as I have had no such issues in Europe or Asia. Maybe I'll try different detergents next time I'm back in the US...

> I always suspected it was some energy efficiency mandate that ruined the dishwasher experience in the US

The three biggest changes I've experienced:

1. Water usage has gone WAY down, especially for energy star washers. You may see 2.5 gallon pre-rinse/wash, 1 gallon rinse cycle usage now. Heavily soiled dishes are relying on the filtration system to remove the particles rather than spraying gunk back on the dishes.

2. Post-rinse drying cycles use hot water and evaporation/condensation (via stainless steel tubs) rather than hot air. For ceramic/glass this is perfect, but plasticware will not get properly dried.

3. Pre-wash detergent cycles have started to go away. I suspect this is because the additional agents in pods have made the pre-wash cycle less effective. However, this means there may be even less time before the main wash cycle for water to heat - it is hard to tell if there is a rule whether to delay washing until it has water to temperature if the source water was cold.

Energy is a factor for sure ( most of the article goes into why), and also environmental.

Dishwashers (and clothes washing machines) used to use phosphates, but those detergents have been banned for residential use at least in the US.

I will routinely make pancakes, have a glass measuring bowl with pancake batter still in it, throw it in the dishwasher, and it comes out clean.

Did you test the recommendations?

I’m able to put dirty dishes in mine and have them come out clean.

There's industrial dishwashers used in kitchens that do it in minutes!

I still use the pods in the main dispenser, for convenience, but after watching the TC video, I started dumping a spoonful of loose Oxyclean into the washer before closing the door. That also provides detergent during both cycles, and the difference in cleanliness is night and day.

is oxyclean alright for your dishes / dishwasher?

It's fairly hard to find a cleaning product that's not okay for dishes. Glass is very unreactive and quite hard.

Dishwasher maybe less so, but they're usually pretty sturdy too.

Does anyone turn the powder into tablets at home? I want to do this because I like the convenience of just grabbing a thing out of a bucket rather than dealing with loose powder. Do you do a mechanical press, or make a slurry in an ice cube tray and wait for the water to evaporate, or some other thing?

Either one sounds like more effort than just pouring the powder into the detergent compartment.

I can understand the convenience factor of pre formed pods, but if I have to spend 15 minutes a week making my own pods from powdered detergent, it seems like I’d be better off just using the powder as intended.

The convenience for me would be in time shifting the labor. Sometimes (read: often) I want to sit and zone out for 15 minutes, but I almost never want to deal with transferring a powdered substance from one container to another, especially not after the rigamarole of loading the dishwasher. In theory the powder could go in first, or at some other time, but my brain just isn't like that.

Pods aren't just "effectively identical to the powder detergent" they contain the rinse agent in the pod.

Using just detergent without rinse agent has always had poor results, and it's frustrating running out of rinse agent. Pods don't really cost that much more unless you're buying the ultra family size from Costco.

I use powder in both trays, pre-heat the water, clean my filters, and run citric acid regularly. I still had issues when I lived in a place with hard water. I still sometimes get an occasional garbage smelling result now that I don't.

No amount of "aww shucks" and tier 1 support level of suggestion changes or downplays my observations.

I have found that the bad smell is usually a result of water sitting in the bottom of the dishwasher. and I think it may be due to water dripping off all the dishes after it has finished draining. I try to remember to push the drain button a few times a few hours after a cycle has completed to get all the water out of the bottom.

The pods are not the same, in a modern detergent formulation there are some chemicals that can only exist in liquid form and others in powder form. You can get hybrid pods.

( Myself I prefer Whole Foods 365 brand pods because they have all the detergent + enzymes but none of the ethoxylated alcohols or the worst chemicals)

Where I live you cannot get powder dishwashing agents in super markets and Amazon suggest weird imports at 10 times the premium.

I smash between a quarter and half the pod for prewash and the rest in the compartment following that technology connection video where he talks about the problem.

I find little life of quality change.

In my experience it is not the amount but the composition of the pod/tablets that makes a huge difference. My machine (Miele) on the same cycle program has excellent results with Dreft pods, Ok'ish with Sun tablets and very poor with Finish.

I've heard that adding a teaspoon of TSP can be helpful because a lot of the dishwashing detergents are now phosphate free.

N.b.

TSP == Trisodium phosphate. Available at many stores.

If your water is hard, this will prevent water spots or scale from forming.

Do not use TSP! Use sodiumtrippolyphosphate, aka STP, STPP. TSP is as caustic as lye. You can find STP on Amazon.

Mix 30% STPP with powder for hard water. 10% for soft water.

I'm not sure how I would go about adding a teaspoon of Thrift Savings Plan.

Actually they mean a teaspoon of a teaspoon

Isn’t the problem that they regulated the phosphates out of the powder detergent, so it stopped working too?!

Good advice! What are they thinking when they get rid of the pre wash cup?

The article is IMO quite unclear. I tried to understand what's actually going on. From the actual rule in the Federal Register (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/10/30/2020-23...):

> Moreover, the current standard requires standard residential dishwashers to not exceed 307 kWh/year and 5.0 gallons per cycle for the “Normal” cycle. 10 CFR 430.32(f)(1)(i). Consistent with the results of the Department's evaluation of dishwashers offering a 60 to 90 minute “Quick” cycle, DOE's has identified an innovative opportunity for the further development of a dishwasher model offering a “Normal” cycle of one hour or less.

I think the issue is that manufacturers struggle to get good cleaning performance subject to the 307 kWh/year, 5 gallon per cycle rule unless the cycle is very slow, and the DOE has indicated that it will allow more water and/or more energy usage for faster dishwashers.

(Speaking of water usage, I find it odd that dishwashers don't seem to do a final spray with fresh (non-recirculated) water. I would gladly use an extra 1/4 - 1/2 gallon per load to get a freshwater rinse at the end.

P.S. What's up with kWh/year anyway? Surely it should be kWh per cycle with an added restriction on additional power used when not running.

I had an old Bosch dishwasher with a pre-heater and a macerator. It heated the water hotter than modern ones. What I noticed was there was no need to prewash dishes. Slob roommate left spaghetti sauce in a pan all week while you were gone. Dishwater would strip that right off.

If you compare the energy efficiency of my old one with a new ones where you have to pre-wash your dishes with warm water the old Bosch wins both in energy and water use.

My parents have an older Bosch from before the present regulatory lack of efficiency by design. It's amazing how well it performs. It's been repaired a few times and hopefully they can still keep getting replacement parts for it for a long time.

We had a Bosch eco-friendly dishwasher for a while. It was absolutely useless. We had to run all the plates through two cycles to get them clean.

I now tend to avoid anything labelled as "eco" as it invariably means "worse".

Try a commercial dishwasher if you get the chance, they heat the water to near-boiling and will clean a load of dishes in about 60 seconds.

Not exactly friendly for your electric bill though.

Commercial dishwashers are only sterilizers. They don't do the cleaning that a residential dishwasher does. They expect as input dishes that are visually "clean", having been scraped and sprayed by hand before going in. The 60 second cycle just cuts remaining grease then kills all the germs with harsh chemicals and then rinses.

If you think residential dishwashers are bad at getting plates clean of dried-on gunk, commercial dishwashers are 100x worse, as that's not their job. The pre-washing everyone gripes about shitty residential dishwashers now requiring is an expected and designed-for staple in a commercial dishwashing process.

Also not friendly for your delicate dishes.

The rinse aid might not be the best for you either.

And the irony is that hand prewashing eats away all your savings of water and energy. Hand washing is tremendously wasteful relative to dish washers.

Might be a Bosch thing? I have a fairly new one (7 years old now) and it's fantastic about not needing a pre-wash for everything except egg yolk and oatmeal. Those two are evil.

The cycle is very long, though. Mostly I don't mind, as I tend to run it overnight.

Did you use to prewash dishes by hand?

> P.S. What's up with kWh/year anyway?

I think that now DOE appliance standards, for all appliances, are now in annual consumption terms. They used to use different terms for different appliances that could convert to annual consumption (e.g., for dishwashers, it was "Energy Factor", which was cycles per kWh.)

> Surely it should be kWh per cycle with an added restriction on additional power used when not running.

That would be strictly more complicated, though I don't think passive draw is a big things for dishwashers.

To add to that. kWh/year obviously defines an underlying assumption of the number of cycles. That definition just allows to also account for standby time. Hence it's a better overall number to target.

307kWh/a and 5 gallons are a lot. Nowadays there are dishwashers that use 2.2 gallons and 76kWh/a (assuming 0,46 cycles per kWh which I think is the DOE limit) and they clean a full load adequately.

Even the cheapest models should be able to meet the DOE limits and clean the dishes completely.

Just bought a new European made dishwasher which cleans perfectly at 0.55kWh / 2.2 US gallons per “Eco” cycle. But it takes 4 hours.

The quick 65C cycle takes an hour but uses 1.1kWh and 10 US gallons.

Yes, the Eco cycle often takes a very long time. However, modern machines are significantly better than the DOE limits even on a one-hour cycle (I assume your machine uses 10 litres, not gallons).

kWh/year is always inane regardless. That's what kW are for

Only if you run your dishwasher continuously.

I wonder if the kWh/year factors in some information about the size of a typical load.

People sometimes prefer more convenient units.

You probably measure your temperature in something like Kelvin (or Celsius or Fahrenheit), too? Instead of taking the ideal gas law pV = nkT serious and measuring temperature in units that are implied by T = p V / n * k, ie energy per degree of freedom.

307 KWh/cycle would be over $30 in electricity costs, per cycle...

Obviously GP means the units should be converted to whatever they actually want usage/cycle to be.

No, it's not obvious at all as various models can have different numbers of modes, so even averaging them out for a usage/cycle average number wouldn't yield any meaningful info.

e.g. A fancier model with several 'Eco' cycles and only one higher power mode will appear better than simpler models with fewer modes, even though the simpler model might actually use less energy.

In fact it would be very counter-intuitive and highly misleading.

I don’t understand how this is a problem that I don’t have.

I bought a new dishwasher like 2 months ago and it’s the best I’ve ever had. The eco mode works great. A few times I’ve had very greasy pans so I switched to the 60°C mode instead and it’s great. My dishes are very clean.

Do y’all use the correct amount of detergent? Regenerating salts, with the correct setting ? Rinsing fluid? Do you correctly put the detergent in the trap and not directly in the dishwasher? (I’ve seen tons of people do that, of course it doesn’t work, all the detergent is used in the prewash) Do you organize it correctly?

If so there’s no reason for a dishwasher to not do it’s job.

The topic of dishwashers comes up regularly on HN and it's always the same, comments are mostly filled by people complaining about dishwashers not working well, environmental regulation, etc.

I assume most people who don't actually have a problem just don't comment.

Anyway, for another datapoint I have a rather recent dishwasher (in the EU) and it works about as well as the older dishwasher I had before, or the one my parents had 20 years ago. It does take 4 hours to run a load, which is fine, I've always run my dishwashers at night so I'm not even sure how long it took the others.

So I don't think they're getting worse. But as a sibling comment said, I wish the buttons were more responsive, not sure why it takes about two seconds for the thing to wake up after pressing the power button.

4 hours is not fine in a lot of circumstances.

How so?

If you run it at night, not an issue.

If you run it after lunch, not an issue, everything is available before it’s time to prepare dinner.

If you’re organized I don’t see how 4 hours is a problem, unless you cook every 3 hours?

And if you need things right away, even a 1hour dishwasher would be too long, if your issue is time just hand wash your dishes.

The fast program takes 30 minutes and works fine, I've used it once or twice maybe in the last four years.

I live in the UK, so our appliance standards are different. However, I just looked at my current dishwasher - it uses 0.85 kWh/cycle and 11.5L per cycle. I think the assumption in the US is 215 cycles a year - so that means 183 kWh/year and 3 gallons / cycle. That seems to be less than this limit.

And, it's totally fine? It cleans dishes. It takes a few hours - but then it's pretty rare I need all my dishes immediately anyway. I've got enough so even if it's full there's a glass or a plate available. I use the all in one tablets - it has a special tablet mode that opens the door pretty much immediately. I never pre-rinse plates. I think I clean the filters every 3-6 months under the kitchen tap. Takes about 2 minutes.

This article seems to be conservatism (in the sense of "change is bad") for the sake of it.

>I bought a new dishwasher like 2 months ago and it’s the best I’ve ever had.

I bought a new one just this year. And yes, it does do a pretty good job.

But if you read the article, one of the complaints is that it takes a lot longer, and that is true for me as well. Way back in the 90s, I had a new dishwasher that was really cheap, and pretty noisy, but it would do a load of dishes in about an hour. My new one is 2+ hours.

Keeping the dishwasher quiet, which is a consumer demand, not a regulatory demand, affects your wash time. If you don't care about the noise, you can have a more powerful pump spraying a harder stream of water, and as a bonus, less sound-deadening insulation means you can cram more dishes in there.

My dishwasher takes 4 hours in eco mode but I don’t see how that’s a problem? I either run it at night when it has plenty of time to run, or right after lunch so that the dishes are clean when it’s time to prepare dinner.

I feel like if you need them quickly, 1 hour would be too long anyway, no?

If you've got a big family and cook a lot, you might run the dishwasher a couple of times a day. Not everybody's use case is the same.

But would you accept 100% slower, or 400% slower in your case, if it was your computer?

Think it's more to do with efficiency / eco reasons that it takes 4 hours. It soaks the dishes then turns off and waits, and does this multiple times. This minimizes the actual amount of work needed.

It's not spraying continuously like an older dishwasher might.

I felt the same reading this. I'm in the EU and have a very middle of the road Bosch dishwasher. I run it on the Eco program at night (when I pay a lower energy price) with a 3-in-1 tab in it. I start it around 23:00, sometime during the night it finishes, in the morning I have clean dishes...

The whole temperature thing doesn't make much sense to me either. Mostly dishwashers are designed to run at 30, 40 or 60C, depending on what you clean.

If they wanted to make great dishwashers, the cleaning isn't the problem, it's the stupid mushy buttons. Give me actual good buttons.

The article is from 2020, maybe the regulation has come into effect.

same here. i'd assume it boils down to common sense which some folks are blessed with while others lake in this department. if you place your stuff keeping in mind where the water comes from, don't wait with washing until food is surface dried and remove excessive grease and fat before hand then results should be fine. also there is a place to put salt and rinse aid for a reason if it isn't provided by the tab.

Where can I get black market dishwashers that use three times as much energy and water for my new build?

I've already manually removed all of the flow reducer bottlenecks in my showerheads.

If you want me to use less water or power, tax it more, don't render my appliances nonfunctional. Alternately, heavily tax the inefficient machines so they aren't cost effective for normal consumers/builders.

I really hate how poorly modern appliances work.

Just buy a Miele dishwasher. They actually work and they work well. No need to bother with black-market or "vintage" or commercial stuff. Just pay the high price (ok, it's all relative) and enjoy never having to care about this crap again.

Source: owned too many dishwashers over the last decade. Paid money to make problem go away and to my surprise it actually did.

We have a Miele dishwasher (and washing machine).

It works really well, but it's not magic.

Eg it still benefits from adding a bit of powder in the special compartment that opens immediately (or alternatively, directly in the body of the dishwasher).

You also have to clean the Miele's dirt trap every once in a while. I'm informed American dishwashers have different arrangements that don't need cleaning?

I don't think Miele has any special loophole that will allow them to bypass the new 2023 energy/water requirements for dishwashers sold in the US.

Perhaps I will ship a German SKU Miele from Germany, and figure out how to get 230V/50Hz to it. I wonder which 60Hz market has the highest power/water limit Miele SKUs.

Second this. Just bought a Miele dishwasher in our renovation and it’s by far the best dishwasher we’ve owned. Well worth the extra $$$.

Also make sure you check the traps and clean the rotating heads - that was an issue with our older Bosch after a while.

I have a Miele dishwasher and it does a great job of washing ceramic and glass dishes. But reusable plastic food containers (Gladware, etc.) always come out sopping wet and I have to hand-dry them.

The Miele is nice and quiet, but sometimes I miss my old loud energy-hogging dishwasher that had a real "dry" cycle with a fan.

I have a Miele dishwasher in the US. It works great, but normal clean cycle is 2h37m :( it takes forever. Comes out clean though!

I run it on sanitize (baby bottles) with just pods (and rinse aid, it helps getting the water off/dry) and everything comes out squeaky clean. No matter the gunk on it.

Had a Bosch when I lived in Germany. 1h14min for a normal cycle, pods. Came out squeaky clean too. I miss that machine. The extra time the Miele in the US takes is really annoying

We need a new washing machine and top of the line Miele's program takes 3 hours. Ridiculous. I don't care about power or water, I want it fast.

When I had my bathroom redone, the contractor offered to set me up with an "illegal toilet" smuggled in from Mexico that uses more water per flush.

Why?

The US has had (roughly) four kinds of toilet:

1. The old 5 gallon per flush kind. Didn’t clog all that often. Flushed very very slowly. Contributed to downstream clogs because the outflow was insufficient to get the solids flowing well through the pipes.

2. The early lower-water-consuming kind. These were awful. Replace them if you have one!

3. Modern toilets. They use 1.28-0.8 gallons per flush, they rarely clog, and they don’t tend to clog the pipes downstream. They are generally quite good.

4. Flushometer toilets. They are often messy - they flush loudly and spray water around. Eww.

Why go backwards?

Modern toilets are tested for their ability to flush well:

https://map-testing.com/

Oddly enough, dual flush toilets may have ended up leading to more water use at a macro level to the point that water companies are pushing to have them banned in the UK. They have a common fault which means they can continuously leak water without emptying the cistern (so the owner never notices).

Better quality toilets from Toto and other well-regarded brands can do so much more, with so much less water.

You just need to be willing to spend the money on the better brand equipment.

Yeah!

Have an acquaintance, whom I'll call "Big Shit", whose feces were so voluminous that they required custom (i.e., high-volume, larger diameter) toilets and enlarging the sewer line in the house.

Big Shit's oriental wife has broadcast his productivity to all of his friends, much to our amusement and disgust. Certain asians, unlike Americans, are not at all shy about discussing their (and their spouses') bathroom experiences in excruciating detail.

The high efficiency toilets use less water but higher pressure which means they still work quite well. Apparently they still make toilets which use the old design but still use less water. They have to be flushed a few times though. I assume they are significantly cheaper because why else would an ex-landlord have installed that in my apartment back when I was renting?

Commercial Units don't give a fuck about water and energy. They cost more but will last 20 years plus.

And some units will do the dishes in minutes :)

I always wonder how much saving water and electricity washing dishes actually matters in relation to everything else we do. In the US people run their HVAC basically 24/7 either heating or cooling for a lot of the year. Our televisions, video game consoles, and computers are giant electric space heaters that run all day long. So what's the proportional burden of warming a few gallons of water? And I do mean warming, because people who wash dishes by hand don't make the water nearly as hot as what dishwashers use.

In regards to saving water, there can be huge benefits to doing so. I'm on the Utility Board overseeing the municipal utilities for my city (electricity, water, wastewater, trash). Our city is growing rapidly, and expanding a sewage system is extremely expensive. We're a city of ~60k and are spending ~$200mm to expand our wastewater treatment plants. And densification means current sewage lines can't support the buildings that need to be built.

More efficient appliances mean less water going through the sewer, and less wastewater that needs to be treated. Which means lower capital expenditures, which eventually come directly out of your pocket.

It means something, but if a household uses 300 gallons in a day and 3 are going to the dishwasher, you can only improve that so much.

And if even a fraction of people feel the need to pre-rinse or post-rinse, those gains can disappear.

Side rant. Convenient how we've created a problem that requires huge infrastructure investment. This was a solved problem with septic tanks, that we could have spent many many multiples of money on improving and making ridiculously fancy with sensors and motors and and and. But alas, government is the Big Job Creator. Got to feed that beast.

US takes great pains to reduce power use, like the ones mentioned in the article but as you point out HVACs at offices work 24/7 at a very cold temperature, so much so that most people bring jackets to work. Cranking the cold up by 1-2F in hotels and offices will probably be imperceptible, yet may save a tremendous amount of energy.

> HVACs at offices work 24/7 at a very cold temperature, so much so that most people bring jackets to work.

You can always add clothes. If it’s too hot, there’s only so much you can remove. Particularly in a corporate setting

> I always wonder how much saving water and electricity washing dishes actually matters in relation to everything else we do.

That's always a good concern to have. That's why regulations that restrict consumption for individual appliances or activities are pretty silly.

An overall carbon price (and appropriate water price) would be much more rational than individually banning drinking straws and thirsty dishwashers.

But that's politics for you.

TV, game consoles, most computers (assuming you aren’t mining Bitcoin or something) are basically a rounding error compared to HVAC, and water heating.

It was a lot worse in the 90's, but modern electronic devices sip the juice. I bought a meter to put on an outlet to measure my amperage, and my whole office: Mac, PC, work laptop, cable modem, router, and 1 access point uses 1.5 amps. If I run a AAA game on my PC, it ramps up to about 3a.

People who point to electronic energy usage need to leave my clock cycles alone, and either direct their anger towards the world's elite, with their private planes and yachts, or just shut up completely.

And Microsoft can suck my nuts with their default settings for power savings. Why would I buy a sports car and let someone keep a software governor on the engine?

My cynical take is that companies have offloaded the responsibility for being "eco-friendly" on the consumer rather than the companies themselves that use 1000x the energy.

Washing dishes by hand iirc uses 2-3x more water though.

I have always heard that but I never understood how that's possible. I filled a rice bowl with water and reuse that same water to wet all the dirty dishes before rubbing, then rinse with cold running water from the tap.

The majority of the energy used in dishwasher is from heating up the water. If you wash with cold water, you are using less energy than the dish washer.

From earlier comments, it appears that a dishwasher will consume at least 2.5 gals per cycle. No way does hand washing use 5 to 7.5 gallons of water per wash. Being a single guy, I stopped using my dish washer for the several dishes I dirty every day and always hand wash. I first put in about an inch of hot water and wash the utensils. I turn on the hot water again to rinse the utensils with the cast off water going back into the wash sink. The rinse sink is used only to hold the clean, rinsed dishes. I continue on washing each item this way (from cleanest to dirtiest). Most of the time when I'm done the sink isn't half-full.

Because I can only use water cool enough to put my hands in, the dishes are not as clean as what a dishwasher can do, but, again, no way does a single wash consume 5+ gallons.

Do you have a source for that? I've always heard it, but... I've also watched a lot of people wash dishes in ways that waste lots of water unnecessarily.

I'd be curious how the study was conducted, and if they have video of the study participants washing their dishes.

(Note: All of this applies to Australia, if it's much different for your country, please share!)

The one that pains me is ovens. They are hugely power hungry and here many models have a very tiny amount of insulation (unless you get a "pyrolitic" model that heats up to 500C to burn the oil off, they have better insulation by requirement of that).

We have no energy rating for ovens, so no real incentive to improve. The vast majority are also installed by builders when the house is built, so consumers never even make a choice in the first place. You can also imagine that also pushes most builders to the bottom end of the market. I'm also still always surprised how expensive ovens can be for how simple they are.

Most of them now also have a fan to run air around the the outside of the unit so it doesn't overheat the cupboard around it (but not all) which is perhaps also a hint at the poor insulation. The cheap builder model I most recently pulled apart had such poor insulation and gaps all around it.

Choice's most recent review has running cost per year ranging from $310 to $651 (this is unfortunately behind a paywall): https://www.choice.com.au/home-and-living/kitchen/ovens/revi...

"The running costs are calculated based on running the oven at 170°C for one hour, three times per week for 10 years at 30c per kWh. Where available, the fan-forced function is used, otherwise, the fan-assist is used. For models without either function, the top and bottom elements (convection or traditional bake) are used."

That's also probably generous since you often run a higher temp and I suspect 200-220C might make a big difference in that cost.

It's a good reason to make use of appliances like air fryers (which despite the name are mostly just ovens), they heat a much smaller space and use a lot less power as a result.

Unfortunately the ever shrinking house makes storing and using such things increasingly difficult. Microwaves are also only 50% effeceient (a surprise I recently learnt).

I know why we don't have it, and energy ratings are partly a proxy for it, but I always wished the average consumer had easy ways to be more informed about trade-offs exactly like this article talks about. You can trade energy effeciency for a slower cycle - that's partly why most washers these days have many different cycle options - you're trading one thing for another - but most of the time they just tell you the name of the situation they are supposedly for without even a hint at maybe how much more or less energy or water or delicacy you are trading off. The same reason product reviews are never clear cut because everyone has different priorities :)

I don’t have hard numbers, but: the “7th generation” Miele combi-steam oven heats up absurdly quickly, only uses a 20A/240V circuit [0], and stays hot for quite a while if you don’t let it do its automatic cooling cycle. There’s just not enough power available to it for it to be inefficient — it can’t cost $310/year for electricity at $0.3/kWh to use it for 150 hours per year. The oven itself is not cheap, though.

[0] At least here, a 208V element is not available. It works at 208V but not as well.

> We have no energy rating for ovens, so no real incentive to improve.

If energy prices reflect externalities, you wouldn't need any special regulations or official ratings to give people incentives to get improved appliances.

Energy costs are already giving people incentives to do so, but perhaps they aren't high enough?

All ovens (as with nearly all household appliances) in the UK must be displayed with an energy label and include reference to it in adverts.

If the same ovens are available in the UK, then maybe look for the model number on a UK website.

Nowadays the default eco cycle that is used to rate European dishwashers typically takes about 3 hours or more, and drying could indeed be better, but other than that, I can't really complain. You can still select a 1-hour 70° heavy duty cycle if needed.

Same with washing machines. My wife gets annoyed, but as far as I'm concerned, I don't really care whether the default cycle takes 1h30 or 5h.

If you need the dish or garment now (or quickly), it's an issue.

If you're not going to be in, or need to process multiple loads (more likely for laundry than dishes) then long cycles turn the process into an all-day, or multi-day, function.

I still prefer hand-washing dishes in most cases as it occurs in parallel with meal prep and eating (fill sink, soak cooking and prep pots and utensils whilst eating, finish and wash table dishes afterward, pop onto a drying rack. Ten minutes. Can be a conversation / bonding time with a partner, or a good time to listen to audiobooks, podcasts, music, etc., if solo.

With a dishwasher, I'm constantly fishing out, and hand-washing, pots, utensils, or dishes that I need either before or during the wash cycle (which takes > 1 hour). Hand-washing that item alone? 1 minute tops.

If you have a large family, there's potential time savings. Solo or couple? Not so much.

As for efficiency: for dishwashers vs. fill sink / soak / scrub, there's little effective difference in water or energy, and the cycle time is far shorter.

> With a dishwasher, I'm constantly fishing out, and hand-washing, pots, utensils, or dishes that I need either before or during the wash cycle (which takes > 1 hour).

You could also just buy more dishes.

I do the dishes one load at a time (wait for the dishwasher to fill up so I’m not running it empty) and let my European-make dishwasher run overnight when electricity is cheapest and cleanest. But laundry requires being hung or transferred to the dryer immediately after to avoid things getting stinky - and I usually have multiple sorted loads (whites, colors, delicates) that I can’t just throw all together so I actually do get annoyed at how slow my front-loading washing machine is.

While you obviously don't want to leave washing wet for many hours all the time, if they are getting stinky within a few hours you likely have notable bacteria and scud build up in your machine that could be resolved. That has been my experience. Do you do a semi-regular hot cleaning cycle? (My washer has one built in and prompts you to run it every 40 cycles) but you can just do a hot, empty load as a substitute. Possibly ideally with some washing machine cleaner though I don't use that often. There is also the option of pulling it apart for a deep clean.

It doesn't work with every laundry layout (luckily does for me) but I have found leaving the door open so it can dry out is very helpful to prevent mould built up on the doors etc at least. Not sure how much it effects the bacteria/scud/etc - could even make scud worse to some degree since deposits dry out I guess.

Another tip that I only recently learnt is that you can dry washing with a dehumifier at a rate not that much slower than a clothes dryer (6-ish hours). Also at a rate cheaper or comparable to a heat pump dryer. That may be a good option for your staged washing if you're happy to hang the clothes out.

On my washer at least the hour cycle does a pretty good job of things though in theory you're supposed to only wash like 3-4KG instead of 8-11 like in the 2-3 hour cycles.

Two things I am reasonably sure matter but have not looked into the research and need to get around to doing is: - I have to wonder about the impact of long washing loads on clothes longevity and wearing out of the fabric, especially with fuller loads.. that's a lot of rubbing. - The washing powder I currently like the most definitely gets caught and leaves residue.. in particular it builds up -inside- the detergent drawer and becomes so glued on even a pressure washer and screwdriver takes a lot of effort to get it off (clearly needs CLR or some such). I am sure some detergents are much better at not building up SCUD compared to others but this seems to be a not well discussed/reviewed fact.

What I don't understand is why my (most?) washing machine(s) doesn't have a "delay" setting to hold for 6h or whatever overnight and then finish before rates spike in the morning.

Then the water in the water heater is nice and fresh for my shower too.

I had the same reaction as lathiat, if your washer smells bad because clean wet clothes sat in it for a couple hours you "probably" need to clean it. I also think people have a bad habit of closing the front door of front loaders between use.

>But laundry requires being hung or transferred to the dryer immediately after to avoid things getting stinky

This is why you should get a combined washer/dryer. I never worry about this.

If you are doing 3 loads (whites, colors, towels) it means 15 hours vs 4.5 hours.

You separate your dishes by color when washing them?

I suspect (both because of the color separation and the reference to towels) you have confused laundry machines with dishwashers.

One doesn't usually separate dishes by color before washing them in a dishwasher, and even if for some reason one did, one still wouldn't usually wash towels in a dishwasher.

Without kids, we have no need to wash several loads on the same day. We separate colors, whites (mostly bed sheets) and towels, but they don't amount to a full load at the same time and get washed on their own periodic schedule, which never overlap.

It's so horrible that I can't get a washing machine that's fast. I don't care about the other metrics, just get it done perfectly. That's the most important.

I bought a modern premium dishwasher a few years ago. The drying did not work very well, so I called the service. To my suprise only a few hours later a serviceman came plugged his laptop into the machine and prolonged the drying time and everything was perfect. The easiest solution for the manufacturer to get the A++ energy label for this machine was obviously to deliver a machine that does not dry and if someone complains just adjust it rapidily. This is green washing.

Is it greenwashing? The vast majority of people won’t complain to the manufacturer, they’ll just recognize it doesn’t dry very well.

Although my understanding is drying cycles are longer than the actual run time. They heat up the ceramic and glass then turn off the heater and let the moisture evaporate. Opening the dish washer slightly and letting it sit for a while will usually completely dry the dishes.

It's not green washing if it actually reduces electricity consumption. Anyway, Miele dishwashers use unheated air blown over the dishes to dry them with minimal cost if you choose the long cycle (i.e. overnight). Bosch doesn't have that feature but also dries ok if you open it up 10 minutes before emptying it. What brand did you have?

One final tip though is that tupperware is a drying killer. The cheap plastic absorbs oils over time and creates a film that never really dries - making the whole dryer damp. Get rid of those and move to glass for a much better experience in every way.

> few hours later a serviceman came plugged his laptop into the machine and prolonged the drying time

This is the interesting part of your story.

Communicate Directly with Appliances for Real-Time Diagnostics - SmartHQ GE Appliance Service Tool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu02_mvDQEI

APK, probably... https://apkpure.com/smarthq-service-formerly-newf/com.geappl...

Interesting idea re-flashing the firmware on your dishwasher or changing internal settings.

I totally do not agree with the "don't prewash in the sink" bullshit. It's based on specious reasoning about how "well" automatic dirt sensors can work. And, it does not necessarily waste water. "it depends" -eg if you wipe the plates with a cloth, there may be less running water.

Dishwasher checks by consumer groups do not test egg protein, or avocado. They need to test with real world, tight locking protein and fats.

And with lentils: the amount of fine gritty fibre which can remain in suspension is just fantastic. And then in the rinse cycle, it sits in the feet of plates and cups.

I also believe that electro-coupling between different metals in cutlery means they age faster if you don't space them properly. If they touch, they can make a circuit.

If it weren't for the internet, it never would have even occurred to me to 'prewash in the sink', how difficult is it to wash a single plate anyway, at the point I'm 'prewashing' each plate I may as well just wash it in the sink?

The best I can come up with is that maybe it's advocates have a lot left on the plate, and where I would scrape into compost if that happened are using a sink garbage disposal grinder thing?

If it's just some kind of saucy residue like goes into my dishwasher (without any need for any kind of 'prewashing') then any machine that can't cope with it needs returning.

We have an automatic pre-washer that works quite well, the brand is Golden Retriever.

> how difficult is it to wash a single plate anyway, at the point I'm 'prewashing' each plate I may as well just wash it in the sink?

Wife and I came to the same conclusion. We just wash things in the sink, and use the dishwasher as an overpriced drying rack.

The dishwasher already pre-washes.

I've put stuff absolutely covered in peanut butter, egg, bottom of air fryer, hot pot pan, etc in the dishwasher without prewash. Always comes out clean.

You put cooked food into the compost? Aren't you worried about the salt?

What I've noticed is it's heavily dependent on the dishwasher.

I've not had the privilege of having a new dishwasher till my most recent place, all the dishwashers prior have been 10+ years old. This new one though which is a Miele dishwasher has maybe 1-2 dishes that need to be manually washed per week at the very most. Whereas my older dishwashers it was anything from an extra 1-2 dishwasher loads per week worth of failed cleans.

I'm surprised you need to do that much. I end up with probably more like 1-2 a year that need manual cleaning without ever prewashing.

If my dishwasher has a dish in it that didn't get clean I just... leave it in there for the next cycle. It'll get clean eventually.

I don’t prewash and it works pretty well. The problem is if bits of food sit overnight in the washer they spoil and make the whole wash stink.

Maybe it’s your dishwasher or you are not putting powder in the pre-rinse compartment in addition to the action pack or powder in the main compartment. It doesn’t matter how old or baked-on the food residue is, and it can be baked-on cheese, egg, meat, burned gravy, whatever and it’ll reliably come off in the (European) dishwasher each time, every time.

Even when I was in a rental with a crappy American unit from the 80s, it would still get everything though I often had to use the extended “pots and pans” cycles for that to happen.

But yes, utensils can and do corrode in the dishwasher over time if you have different metals thrown together in the high-temp, high-conductivity alkaline bath.

"if you use a 2hr + programme then nothing survives the caustic soda"

Sure. The point is, normalising "you have to wash dishes for 2 hours" and saying "shifts stubborn stains" is really overdoing it. If you can get some of these foods off the plates before they dry, and can do a shorter wash, its win--win

Why even have a dishwasher if you have to (pre)wash your dishes anyway?

Why bother with plates when we have teeshirts to hold the soup in?

Ive never put a dish into the washer without pre-washing it.

Surprising. I’ve found any dishwasher I’ve bought in the last 10 years has been absolutely _baller_ at washing dishes. Maybe it’s because I’m willing to spend the money on the good ones though.

So what's a good one?

Bosch, Thermador, Miele are typically the recommended ones. Thermador is essentially a high end Bosch.

Only annoying thing about upgrading to the euro dishwashers is that they're not hard-wired. So you have to install a receptacle in an adjoining cabinet and plug into that (or cut the plug and hardwire... but not officially recommended).

I guess it's because europeans typically take their appliances when they move instead of leaving them in place (as they typically do in North America).

Costco had the best pricing on Bosch in my opinion. Cheap delivery and removal of the old unit. Was really surprised how lightweight a washing machine is, but I guess it's just a shell with a pump thin metal+plastic drawers at the end of the day.

Yep, 100% Miele.

My Miele is absolutely perfect. Quiet, convenient, and very, very effective. Stylish, too.

Despite the internet providing a whole bunch of new ways to rate and compare things, the best way is still the same thing your mother and grandmother used:

https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/dishwashers/best-...

My only problems with those listings are that they place a top premium on loudness of the dishwasher, and therefore they recommend Bosch as the quietest ones you can buy.

Whereas I place a top premium on the dishwasher actually getting the dishes clean, and then getting them dry afterwards. Bosch does fine on the first part, but without a heated drying cycle, they're rubbish on the second part.

I will never again buy another dishwasher without a heated drying cycle.

So, yes -- use those tests and listings, but make sure you fully understand the data behind them and assign your own priorities to those attributes that you value. Because what CR values may not be the same thing that you value.

Unfortunately you have to login or signup to view the list (or at least for me that is the case)

I bought a new one to replace a crappy one that did nothing. I can recommend. Bosch.

I bought bosch to replace maytag or whirlpool, forgot which it was. Not impressed with bosch, quality of wash is slightly better than my old one. It is quieter, otherwise I don’t see much improvement.

The most important things is to make sure the tub is stainless steel. Not a mix, all stainless (the outer shell can be whatever) . The detergent (what really gets stuff clean) is super nasty and will eventually eat the plastic.

That being said, next look at the brand. I have a Bosch and its great, super silent. If you hear a noise, you loaded your dishes too tightly and they're banging against each other.

I am a fan of my Bosh dishwashers.

Miele or Bosch.

Why does a 1 hour cycle wash better than a two hour cycle? This article is pretty light on details.

It allows for two runs after a long dinner during normal waking hours, as opposed to just one.

I get that, and I believe most dish washers have an "express cycle" that'll run in significantly less time when you need.

After going through 3 typical dishwashers in less than that many years, I decided to try a high end one to see if was any different. I researched and Bosch and Miele seemed to be rated high for reliability. I picked Miele 5 years ago and damn, this thing is a tank. I do 2 loads a day and it cleans as well as the first day I bought it still.

Not sure what failure modes other folks encounter, but the pumps on my LG, whirlpool and Samsung all died <1yr. Not only that, none of them actually cleaned after the first week or so, instead they just did a poor rinse job and then baked whatever residue was still there onto the dish surface.

Don't know about dishwashers. But I recently tried to repair a washing machine from LG and in the process learned that Miele machines are considered to be very reliable and fixable.

Faster times would be good.

I feel like dishes still being dirty has other factors involved. Many people (my wife) load the dishwasher in an ineffective way. At least for my model, most of the cleaning comes from the center spray arm. Load bowls on the bottom rack and you'll end up full of water or not cleaned. Load the pot like standing up on the bottom rack and the arm will hit it and stuff will not get clean (and you might break the arm). Prewash your dishes and the turbidity sensor won't work right and you'll be left with either dirt or detergent on your dishes. And don't get me started on the unrelated topics of loading in wooden utensil, sharp knives, etc.

Load it right and put it on the right settings and they get clean (and out of frustration my wife will accuse me of prewashing to get them clean). It's not as simple as just piling in the dishes, like some people think it is.

What a weird article.

For example: "And yes, it is crazy, if not also bad environmental public policy that the federal government regulates the robot in my kitchen that cleans and dries the dishes; and keeps changing the rules to the point that the machine first invented in 1886 no longer accomplishes its purpose."

Why is that weird? Not really weird. It might be wrong? Is that what you are saying?

I've used a dishwasher since the 1980's and in my eyes they have only gotten better. I find dishwashers to be one of the most amazing, labor saving and environmentally friendly advancements of modernity. I love dishwashers.

More specifically, with the earlier dishwashers I had to really scrub the dishes before I put them in. This is still important as I don't like getting leftover cat food on my coffee mugs, but the extent I have to do it is significantly less. Nowadays I scrape my plates into the trash and just put them in the dishwasher. Whereas for the first dishwasher my parents had in the 1980's you really had to scrub dishes clean before loading them.

They've only gotten better in my experience. I really don't understand what this article is complaining about?

I have a new dish washer and it works very well of you don't block the jets from the detergent pocket. However, it takes so long that I have determined that its not practical. I just wash by hand. Wondered WTF people were thinking with it taking so long.

It's a GE which has a food grinder in it. Very quiet.

Sure, the dishwasher takes a few hours, but it's rare I'm ever actually waiting on it. Load over the day, run in the evening after dinner, clean dishes ready to unload either right before bed or in the morning. The loading/unloading is much faster and easier than actually washing by hand, and it's more efficient than what I'd do by hand.

Does it have express wash? I have an issue due to low-ish water pressure upstairs and quite salty water from the softener where I need an extra rinse so I do an express main wash frequently.. Still clean dishes.

How many loads are you doing per day?

Depends on the number of kids that are in the house in the last 48 hours

I just want my dishes to come out of my dishwasher without smelling like wet dog.

We are combating this by only using vinegar in the rinse aid reservoir and dumping 2 cups in the bottom after unloading.

At $1.50/gallon for vinegar its not a cost issue just a "why does it have to be like this" issue.

We clean our filter monthly, too.

That’s a bizarre problem. What do you think is causing it?

This whole article reminds me of the absolute nonsense surrounding the EU regulating vacuum cleaner power levels. In the UK, it was not uncommon to see vacuum cleaners rated as high as 2400w (!) prior to the introduction of the regulation. Of course, when the regulation came to power those rock bottom crappy cheap vacuums one could buy suddenly got much worse as they were forced to limit power usage to 1kW. Well, as far as I can tell, most any vacuum cleaner today at virtually any price range does a reasonably decent job on 800w or less, and the regulation was a huge success in preventing ludicrous inefficient designs from finding their way to market.

I bring this up because this was actually a talking point during Brexit, and the excitement that Finally! Brits would be able to buy good vacuum cleaners again now they'd left that pesky EU. I've got no idea of the status of that particular regulation today, but I know that I haven't heard a single person mention it since the days of the Brexit vote.

Power ratings don't correspond to performance if the world irrationally decides that higher power means better. If the low end landlord special dishwashers can't make do on 1500w, then perhaps they just shouldn't exist. My landlord special cheapo dishwasher here in Canada however does a completely fine job using the cheapest powder I can get at the supermarket, as long as I load it properly, and haven't absolutely burnt the shit out of something in a pan.

…and if your dishwasher door squeaks you can fix it like this:

https://youtu.be/r_9AkGSj3FQ?si=jj0iB-pTYC5GZmSZ

Here's a squeaky dishwasher door inside the most expensive ($250 million) and highest penthouse in the world (video at 8:40):

https://youtu.be/aN9DH_GxqEo?feature=shared&t=521

Now that's comedy!

Many commercial dishwashers run only 15 minutes and the dishes come out sparkling clean. Same with cloths washers, commercial units have small, medium and large settings with hot, warm, cold and that's all you need. They actual use more than a gallon of water but your cloths come out clean in 25 minutes. It's insane what has happened to residential household appliances. The only alternative is to spend the extra and by a low end commercial unit.

Commercial dishwashers depend on all the food being scraped off before they get fed. I know because I was the "dishwasher" in my school, and that's how I paid for my lunch. My job was to scrape off all the food and get the dishes visually clean, at which point I would load them into the tray and put the trays into the commercial dishwasher.

The point of the commercial dishwasher is really to get the water super hot (steam, actually), and then sanitize the dishes after they've been cleaned.

Commercial dishwashers make different trade-offs. Eg they typically assume that you wash directly after eating. Domestic dishwashers deal with food that has been dried up and caked on for days.

Many domestic dishwashers spend a lot of time at the end drying your dishes. Commercial ones seldom bother with that.

My understanding was that the regulations applied to a normal wash cycle, but that they don't prevent dishwashers from having additional modes that use more water/energy for a faster clean.

My Bosch dishwasher is only a few years old. On normal mode, it takes 2 hours and 20 minutes. However it has a "Vario Speed" option which uses more water/energy, but performs the same clean in about an hour.

We rarely use Vario Speed. The dishwasher gets stacked after dinner and set on a timer so that it runs overnight. But the option for a fast wash is much appreciated.

One thing I'll say about wash quality is that the detergent matters. In Australia you can check out Choice's list [1]. We did find the Aldi Logix Platinum ones to be pretty good.

https://www.choice.com.au/home-and-living/kitchen/dishwasher...

Anyone know of a dishwasher with serviceable sprayers? The one I have now the sprayers are single piece and cleaning them out is a real task. One of them I ended up splitting open and have modified with threaded inserts to be able to reassemble it.

I have a Bosch dishwasher, try and remove pieces of food left on the dishes, and use those multi-coloured pods. Its "eco" cycle (the shortest) is just 45' and dishes come out squeak clean.

Its "eco" cycle (the shortest)

Funny, on my dishwasher the "eco" cycle is the longest cycle

I have a dishwasher that seems to work fine, except that after it's done it's still filled with soap bubbles. The water has drained, but not the soap. Dishwasher repair person looked at it, suggested replacing the motor, but that didn't work. The repair person even called the manufacturer, but the manufacturer didn't know what was wrong either.

I have no idea what the problem is ... for now, I've been washing in the sink and drying with a dish dryer from Japan (shokki kansouki).

Sounds like the soap is reacting with your water in a weird way.

Possibly. I should also note that the problem started happening after about 4 years of usage. I live in a hard water area, but use a water softener.

Maybe what you said is a clue, though, and I’ll see if I can find any information phrased in terms of soap reacting with water. Different variations of “soap doesn’t drain” hasn’t found me any hits, like I’m the only one having this issue.

I once lived in a condo with a crappy Ikea dishwasher.

It did a poor job washing the dishes, made lots of noise, and the arm kept falling off.

The fix for the poor washing was so simple: buy cheap Costco dish pods in bulk for CAD 10 (12-13 now) for around 100 pods and just jam two pods in there. Add rinse-aid and voila, sparkling dishes from cheap equipment.

I once had a job as a commercial dishwasher, and those machines did the same thing in about a single minute. Of course the chemicals were harsh and the temperature was high.

This is painfully whiny.

Look, the government has to regulate things and it's sometimes going to be clumsy. If this particular thing bothers you, that's fine. But it's childish to use the tone of "the gubment hates mah freedom" here - ESPECIALLY for us, in a time where more regulation of e.g. tech and cybersecurity would likely be a good thing.

This is simply the American take on dishwashers. It should be done in 5 minutes, make no noise, be enormous in size, and I'll load it up with 2 items multiple times per day. Energy use be damned.

My dishes already stink after going through the dish washer whenever I had food with eggs on plates or pans. Adding sodium bicarbonate to the detergent compartment seems to do the trick though.

Not sure how relevant the energy consumption piece is if you just hook it up to the hot water instead of cold? That's what you're supposed to do anyway to get it to actually clean something, right?

AFAIK dishwashers all internally heat the water. The machines tell you to hook up to the hot line in the US (I've heard they say to use the cold line in Europe but I don't live there), but the chance of actually getting hot water from your line is pretty minimal because they only fill for a few seconds at a time.

Very few models have a bit line feed in Europe.

Maybe because our how water systems are more various, so you can't just assume that's always hot on demand when you want it? If you need a heating element in the dishwasher anyway it's not much of a feature.

Just run the tap at the kitchen sink until the water gets as hot as possible, then start the dishwasher. It'll get nice hot water straight from the pipe that way!

Amazing how much taxpayer money is spent on the minutiae of dishwasher temperature and duration. You'd think the behemoth that is the Federal government had more important stuff to worry about.

NEVER allow dishes in the dishwasher that haven't been wiped off, in any way you choose, into the garbage. (un-wiped dishes allow the food particles into your kitchen drain line where it will congeal. Over time it will trap water and rot out copper drain lines found in older homes.)

Garbage disposals are nick named "plumbers gold" for the same reason above. Only use them to flush water down the sink drain before running the dishwasher, NOT for dicing up what comes off dirty plates.

The kitchen drain line most likely runs below your living room floor in the concrete slab. It is very costly to have the carpet/tile removed and the slab sawed up to replace the line, usually with PVC.

My Bosch dishwasher works well on the 1 hour Speed 60 cycle. The occasional fork or knife that is left with a little debris is not worth the trouble to use the 2:30 cycle

> modern dishwashers don’t clean dishes or cutlery well. Such is not surprising when hand dishwashing relies largely on physical scrubbing to remove food particles, the machine version relies on spraying hot water and heat, such that less water and less heat produce less cleaning over a longer period of time.

That isn't my experience at all. Modern dishwashers are a miracle; I put in dishes without touching them, and they come out clean. Also, the dishwashers use three forms forms of energy to separate dirt from surfaces: 'Kinetic' (the water), chemical (soap), heat (which of course catalyzes chemistry).

A lot of this article is just partisan stuff: Competitive Enterprise Institute, anti-regulation rants, "environmental zealots", etc., and of course 'Great Again'.

A long time ago I took a cooking class, in a commercial kitchen. The Hobart washer took five minutes.

Of course, it was bigger than a VW Beetle. Not exactly something for home use.

It boggles my mind that the federal government of the United States pays bureaucrats to write non-safety-related standards for home appliances (or anything else).

Appliances use a significant amount of resources. It’s a bit tricky to attribute gains to standards versus general technological progress and consumers being more aware of issues like climate change but the amount of energy saved by increased efficiency in appliances is significant.

https://www.aceee.org/blog/2016/01/amazing-drop-home-applian... https://www.vox.com/climate/2023/3/29/23588463/carter-effici...

Yea, it’s weird. There's a whole segment of our population who strongly believe that only the government can fix problems, and that they they know which problems to fix and what the best solutions are. I’ll let you guess which political party they belong to.

Pure capitalism leaves no incentive to protect the environment.

Well, I lick most of my plates clean, our small washer takes 3 and a half hours and everything is cleaned just fine. EU citizen here :)

This thread is super interesting for me as a Mexican. I've never understood dishwashers: expensive machines you buy to wash dishes you've already had to wash in the sink.

I pay a "human" dishwasher $20 dollars a day and she washes the dishes completely, dries them, puts them out, wahes and sorts clothing, mops and vacuums the floor, washes toilets and the backyard with the dogs' dirt.

The wonders of cheap labour I guess

So after 30 days, you've spent more money than someone with a lower cost dishwasher, and as the article mentions, your dishes haven't been sanitized and had allergens removed. You've also used a lot more water. Yes, you have to put away the dishes yourself, but that still seems like a pretty good trade to me.

I rented a few places that had dishwashers and boy did they vary. Good to read that I'm not completely crazy!

My anecdata:

- whirlpool gold with macerator (pre-2012!), absolute destroyer of any and all food waste.

- bosch (2010esque), no macerator, but great cleaner

- samsung (2015) might as well call it dish unwasher, made a nice drying rack

- kitchenaid (mid-2010s) generally great, filter thing sucks (have to keep it washed) and no macerator makes it get a little dirty, but dishes are clean.

If you can even get it, the macerator seems like the way to go for brainless rinse free dish washing. I imagine it's not offered anymore or something under the guise of energy saving.

My galpal has a frigidaire from early 2000s that is so loud it sounds like it is grinding the plates into dust. They come out squeaky clean and so hot you can't touch anything for the first 10 minutes after a cycle.

Dishwashers are excellent time saver, bring on the innovation!

I think Bosch makes the best dishwasher money can buy right now.

The Biden administration reversed this liberalization in 2022, and is now trying to make it tighter than it was pre-Trump.

"The efficiency levels proposed in today’s rule reflect that there are models available today that can meet improved energy and water standards, while providing the cleaning performance that consumers expect from their dishwashers. The new proposal builds upon the groundwork laid by DOE’s test procedure final rule that was published on January 18, 2023, which ensures consumer expectations for cleaning continue to be met with increased energy and water efficiency.

"If adopted within DOE’s proposed timeframe, the new rule for dishwashers will come into effect in 2027. DOE expects the new rule to save consumers nearly $3 billion in utility bill savings over the ensuing 30 years of shipments and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 12.5 million metric tons—an amount roughly equivalent to the combined annual emissions of 1.6 million homes. DOE also expects the new rule to save 240 billion gallons of water, which is equivalent to the water in 360,000 Olympic-sized pools."

https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-efficiency-rul...

----

From 2022:

"The Biden administration this week reversed a Trump-era rule exempting quick dishwashers, as well as clothes washers and dryers, from efficiency regulations.

"A rule issued Wednesday cuts two Trump rules that created separate product categories for dishwashers that took 60 minutes or fewer per cycle, certain clothes washers or dryers that took less than 30 minutes and other washers that took less than 45 minutes."

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/589555-biden-n...

Biden is undoing this: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/regulation/bidens....

In addition to adding regulations to our refrigerators, washing machines, stoves, etc. etc.

> Biden is undoing this: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/regulation/bidens...

I had not heard of the IER, and so looked them up:

> The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization that, according to itself, conducts research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets.[1] IER maintains that the free market provides the most "efficient and effective solutions" to "global energy and environmental challenges".[1]

> IER is often described as a front group for the fossil fuel industry.[2][3][4] It was initially formed by Charles Koch, receives donations from many large companies like Exxon, and publishes a stream of reports and position papers opposing any efforts to control greenhouse gasses. Thomas Pyle, president of the IER and its offshoot American Energy Alliance (AEA), was appointed to the US Department of Energy's transition team after the 2016 United States elections.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research

How does that refute what I said?

This was a Trump rollback of environment rules to please conservative nutjobs. Can we stop posting these here?

Only 'conservative nutjobs' appreciate dishwashers that can actually clean dishes as well as they did in the 1980s.

Did the euro brands like Bosch and Miele ever do a bad job? From what I've read, they've been consistently good over the decades.

The myth that a dishwasher is more efficient than handwashing is perhaps the biggest hoodwink perpetrated on the millennial consumer.

You haven't seen the shit I throw in my dishwasher every few nights. Seriously. It is jam-fucking-packed to the gills with the nastiest, filthiest, greasiest crap you can imagine. That it uses only a few litres of water to clean it is a miracle in itself, not to mention the countless hours it's saved me from scrubbing.

In my house, the dishwasher is orders of magnitudes more efficient than hand-washing.

"Efficient" as in energy efficient, human time efficient, or efficient at preventing mold/bacteria etc.?

I suspect it is more efficient at creating germ-free clean dishes, given the temperatures and steam that the wares are exposed to.

I suspect it is quicker than human time than hand washing

It might be slower than human time from stopwatch dirty dish to clean dish.

It might use more water than a hand washer who is very careful with water.

It almost certainly costs more to use a dishwasher. Capital, costs, electricity, repairs, tabs.

Doing things I enjoy, versus standing at the sink doing dishes is a pretty big efficiency gain for me.

Citation needed...

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