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Comment by thiht | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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.

If you run it after breakfast dishes aren't available at all before lunch.

If you run it after dinner, dishes can't be finished (put away) until the next morning unless you want to stay up late.

> dishes can't be finished (put away) until the next morning

Nothing wrong with that.

> If you run it after breakfast dishes aren't available at all before lunch.

If you run your dishwasher at night, there's no reason to run it with just the breakfast dishes inside, it's a waste of water and energy.

But still, you can use the fast mode (30min/1hour). And if there's something specific you need (a pan?) just open the dishwasher and hand wash it. Or buy one more.

It doesn't require big organization skills to work around the fact an eco cycle is 4 hours honestly.

> Nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with that for YOU.

Please do not expect everyone to conform to your personal circumstances.

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.

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