Why Does My 'Efficient' Dishwasher Take a Zillion Minutes for a Load?
wsj.com
wsj.com
I am 100% in favour of not wasting energy and water, just not by deception and false savings where people use more water 'pre-rincing' their dishes in the sink than a regular dishwasher used to clean them, or having to manually add 2 extra soak and spin cycles to get rid of detergent residue in a washing machine because the default cycle was 'optimized' for specific artificial test loads not resembling any real world family clothes mix.
Many machines still have a button or hidden option to set them to 'normal' operation. For others you will have to resort to trickery or plain reinterpreting of what the different programs and settings actually mean to get the right result.
But I also fear automotive durability is being lost in the name of fuel economy by using excessively thin oils. Not just in the motor (easy to change yourself, just ignore the label where they can’t recommend thicker oils), but also CV joints, bearings, transmissions and differentials.
I put 87 (US octane system) instead of the “required” 91 because the fuel mileage loss doesn’t make up for the added premium. But of course the manufacturer will never say you can do that because they’ll lose their fuel economy record.
It might actually matter with a turbo, but I don’t have one.
Octane isn’t about gas mileage. It’s about compression. Lower octane gas is prone to auto-ignition at lower compression ratios. Running lower octane gas in an engine designed for higher risks catastrophic engine damage, as ignition can happen before the piston has reached peak compression.
Reality is modern engines adjust timings to make up for lower than expected octane, because they have to deal with other situations that trigger it (e.g. elevation).
But running an engine designed to take advantage of a higher octane at lower octane will have a fuel economy hit. But appears to be a single digit percents difference while reducing unit fuel cost by over 15% where I am.
But if you’re still under warranty and your engine blows up, it suggests a problem with the manufacturing itself. Exceptions could be if you put in E85 that’s not recommended as it has much lower energy and the engine needs to make a ton of adjustments for that which might be out of range.
Correct, but the manner in which many do this is reactive (i.e. piezoelectric knock-detectors), not proactive.
I put max octane in all the cars I own. I don't see a reason to play games with something like this.
I am not a long haul trucker. I put maybe 100 miles on my vehicles per month.
The cost of fuel is not relevant to me.
Of what’s commercially available, that would be E85. I hope you’re not putting that into your E10 max vehicle.
The machine is designed by a psychopath. It will cycle the water solenoid valves at least 100 times per wash session. It is like these things are designed to not only function poorly but also destroy your plumbing over time. It feels intentional. No sane engineer would watch this thing operate in a lab and think "yes. I've done a good job today".
I've got a new machine on the way. No lid lock, EPA defeat switch, et. al. You cannot buy these at the normal box stores anymore. I had to argue with a boutique appliance salesman about my laundry preferences for an hour to get this sorted, despite the fact that I already knew precisely the machine I wanted.
BUT if this is about modern dishwasher taking 5h: yes, the last 2-3 hours are just drying the dishes in an energy efficient way. And it works perfectly fine for me and one cycle takes about half the electricity of my previous washer. Who cares how long a cycle takes, it usually runs over night anyway. This is the Eco program, and you can switch to an express program if you want a 2h cycle. If you have really dirty dishes (burnt stuff in a pot or whatever), you can enable extra hot water and even a high pressure zone where you can put the pot. It's a Siemens iQ300, BTW, but almost all dish washers I've seen now work this way. Is it really too much to ask people to skim the manual and figure out what these buttons do? Apparently so...
I've wrestled a lot with the issue the article is mentioning the last few years. It's Goodhart's law applied to efficiency tests, where unrealistic standardized product tests get gamed in increasingly complex ways, and no one calls the tests on the unrecognized real-world problems being overlooked. Prerinseing, repeating cycles, mold problems, etc.
One of the most frustrating things for me is how everything has become more automatized. Laundry machines are often organized around preset clothing types, for example, rather than cycle settings, which makes it difficult to control your wash correctly.
My LG washing machine has a wifi connection and one of the advertised feature was the possibility to download a custom washing program set from the app.
I thought it kinda makes sense, because building a custom program involves many steps, timers and settings. A mobile UI would be better than the appliance's buttons.
Well, imagine my deception when I got to try the app and the custom programs is just a list of a dozen more niche presets. No customization whatsoever.
It's really like the machines we buy are no longer ours to control.
Yes, back in the day the machine would simply heat the water >60 degrees celcius and just heat the machine to oblivion to dry the dishes. Yes, that kills mold, but it's also stupid. At least here on HN, I would think that people would agree that doing things smarter is a good thing. Yes, it involves a little bit more work on your side, but at least here in Germany, where I pay 35ct per kWh, it actually saves real money.
So I stand by it: don't cheap out on these machines, and RTFM.
And cool “just loaded” porcelain can take a while to warm through, so caked food will release better when warmed up at the contact point.
Eco mode heats up less water, and to a lower temperature and then washes for longer to achieve the same outcome. The heating is the main power draw, compared with the pumping, so it saves energy even though it works for a longer time period.
Spending an extra £100 on a better dishwasher, to wash at 50 °C, will pay itself back several times, over the lifetime of the dishwasher. It adds up. You're wasting a fortune by washing dishes at say 70 °C.
Also, pre rising dishes is an anti pattern, a bad habit which people have gotten into. These days the advice is specifically to not do it. Otherwise you're fooling the sensors, etc. Plus, energy efficient cycles are long, giving plenty of time for the dishes to soak and clean.
If dishes aren't coming out clean, and your dishwasher doesn't have terrible reviews, then buy a bottle of dishwasher cleaner for £3, and put that in an empty hot cycle. That'll refresh the dishwasher to as-new performance. Clean the filter too, obviously.
The previous owners of my house had a very expensive KitchenAid, which we had to replace shortly after moving in due to the stench. There was pink sludge EVERYWHERE, and no amount of disassembly and cleaning fully removed it.
Replaced with a Bosch (forget the model number, but one with the CrystalDry feature, which is awesome), which I like better anyway. I pre-rinse, because enzymes in detergent aren’t magic, and food eventually becomes a pink sludge.
The magic part for the food particles is that they serve as abrasives during the wash process after being ground by the dishwasher grinder.
Re: dishwasher grinder, not all makes have those. My Bosch doesn’t.
Interesting reading about the hacks in the article, I suggest everyone here reads it.
Dunno where the longer to boil pasta part comes from in the article.
What I learned is that the turbo/quick cycles use a lot more energy and water. I guess that’s what’s needed to get the same end-state of cleanliness.
The next dishwasher we buy must have a heated dry mode, and it won't be a Bosch. Can't tell you anything more than that at the moment.
That's not what I want for a home dishwasher.
The guy at the end of the article clearly had one of those (it looks like he probably said this but the wsj reporter cherry picked the quote, as it quotes him saying he could only use it for glasses at parties, not for plates with food residue. Bet he didn't call it a dishwasher since he's a repair guy).
A decade ago in Korea, I had a Samsung top-loader that worked great. Had to replace it and could only get a front-loader. Not only is it slow, I have to run the rinse cycle at least twice to get the detergent out. I now often resort to hand-washing and use the machine just for the spin cycle.
and Tech Connections Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections/search?query=...
God I need to buy a top-loader. I wonder if they even exist in europe anymore. Only comically small ones by the look of it. Front-loaders struggle to even wash a bath towel.
> a commercial dishwasher [...] takes about 90 seconds to clean a load of dishes instead of hours
Imagine a world in which all machines were this good.
As for rinsing that is something that must be done anyway with an average consumer dishwasher. The food clogs the sprayer nozzles and eventually the pump too. Don't worry though because manufacturers conveniently sell you another cleaning product for that!
Your point about hand washing is bordering on true. Government is making automation so poor that labor is considered.
Are you using appliances designed and manufactured by your government?
Ten years and thirty billion dollars later...
> Front-loaders struggle to even wash a bath towel.
A farcical claim.
Too far often I've also had new and nearly-new appliances develop faults. This is frustrating, but if the warranty support is good, then at least I'm left with an efficient and functioning machine, when they're done.
Generally, I'd recommend buying appliances on a credit card, so that the credit card company is equally liable. This is case the appliance breaks, or underperforms so much that it's not fit for purpose.
Nuclear energy is famously forgiving of mistakes caused by rushing.
There is the minor drawback of having to rinse the dishes manually first ...