Dishwashers... food grinder mandatory!

Art Mulder

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Location
London, Ontario
Just a bit of a minor rant, and passing on my advice for anyone shopping around...

About 9-10 or so years ago my wife and I needed a new DW after moving into our house. We settled on a Bosch unit (SHU-300) mostly because it boasted high energy efficiency. It was a low water use unit, and other good stuff that we thought was worth the price premium.

The big pain, we learned, was that this unit does NOT have a food grinder in it. I believe that is because of the water recycling aspect of the unit.

After living with this thing for ten years... There is no way that I would buy another Dishwasher UNLESS it came with a food grinder. Every 3-6 months I have to remove the screen/filter at the bottom and dig around in the pump intake with a thin piece of metal. Usually one of the kids has dumped a bowl in the DW with an unpopped popcorn kernel (or 3 or 5!) or maybe a peanut, or perhaps a bit of orange or apple stem is down there blocking things up.

Tonight was the worst yet. After lots of digging around inside with no success I finally had to disconnect the drain line where it connects to the plumbing and there I found a 1-2" long "plug" of greasy chunky gunk. Fortunately it was at the end of the hose and not somewhere else!

Never again. When this thing finally dies, the next unit WILL have a food grinder in it. We'll figure out some other way to save water! ;)

So there's my bit of dishwasher advice to everyone else out there.
 
I don't know if ours has a grinder or not, but we don't really need one here. We end up rinsing things off pretty thoroughly before they go into the dishwasher. With just the two of us, it might be a couple or three days between running loads, so if we leave much stuff on the dishes the ants will be all over the place.
 
Oh yeah, been there done that. The GE I had did that about every 10 teenager loadings. Had to pull the screen and suck out the inlet with the mini shop vac. We finally changed to the liquid detergent, which helped some, but still got the clogs.
 
When we moved to our little compound here in the desert, one of the things we liked was the kitchen. Decent cabinets, nice counter, new appliances.

Tried using the dishwasher. Just wouldn't work at all. Found out that the idiot who installed it and hooked it up to the garbage disposal didn't knock out the knockout plug on the garbage disposal!

And don't get me started on the microwave/vent. It was trying to vent the air up into the cabinet above the microwave, instead of out through the front. (Putting a real vent to the outside is on my project list one of these days...)
 
I'm with vaughn, we rinse all the food off b4 it goes in. Never had a problem.

Interesting that about 4 months ago I was reading an article that discussed water conservation and dishwashers, and they maintained that a good dishwasher is actually saving you water over handwashing, but only if you don't rinse the dishes beforehand.
 
Ya ain't got dogs, do ya, Art? :) :) :)

When stuff goes into our dishwasher, it's already been tongued so clean it's hard t'tell if a load's been run or not. I hafta' feel in the tops (bottoms) of the coffee mugs to see if there's a puddle of water in each. If there is, it's a clean load. If not, it's dirty.
 
Art I had a good laugh when i saw your post. Made me feel great. No not because you having a tough time with the DW. Just because i felt i was no longer alone with my beast.:rofl::rofl::rofl:

We never had one of these things in our life before coming to Canada. It has been a most interesting experience having one. Cause it is treated as anything but a dishwasher.:rofl::rofl: Yup ours is the protected queen of the kitchen.

SWMBO (at the moment she aint loml:rofl::rofl:) insists we put clean dishes in there. :rofl: For your very reason and because in the beginning we put semi dirty dishes in and the tough stuck on stuff got hardened onto the dishes and could only be prized off with hard scraping. That was the end of the dishwasher doing any hardwork and in my opinion any work at all.:rofl:

I gave up the fight to save water. And coming from a place where droughts could go on at extreme for 10 years we sure were conscious of it. But it simply causes me too much grief to be at "General Custer's Last Stand" every time its a mealtime. No matter what i try "Custer (me) looses the battle of little Big Horn."

I guess we could probably start a therapy group for "dishwasher anxiety':rofl::rofl:

My latest attempt at teaching the kids (wait trying to teach my kids:rofl:) to have a conservation bone in their body relates to when to use appliances to save not in the cost of energy so much as the spread of demand to offset having to build more power plants. But i fear this is more like a lost battle before i start. :rofl::rofl::rofl: No one wants the scheduling of DW's start up time for its waste of time water and energy run.:rofl::rofl::rofl:


Take care Art knowing you aint alone in the dishwasher woes club.
 
I can't imagine a dishwasher being built without a disposal/grinder. This would be especially important when the discharge goes into a septic tank. Large particles would not biodegrade as well as small stuff and your tank would need cleaning more frequently.
When/if we replace ours, I'll be sure to ask if the ones we are considering have disposals/grinders.
 
I live in a modular, in the country, on a septic, and after owning this house for 7 years, still don't know if the dishwasher even works... there's only two of us, and we have never used it... I want to pull it out and make a bowl drying kiln from it, but LOML outvoted me one to one... so it sits there just wasted space in the kitchen counter.
 
I pretty much hate those infernal machines. Of course I have to buy one every couple of years. With my bunch (12 kids) most appliances have a short lifespan. I had one guy yell at me because he accused me of using his"semi-commercial" machine like a "COMMERCIAL MACHINE":eek: We are one family that buys the extended warranties. I know the appliance repair guys quite well, and even the regional rep.

The domestic machines I have used are all lacking in some way. Planned obsolescence seems to be the plan. I think of a dishwasher as a "dish sterilizer" not a washer. We always rinse first. I'm not worried about water, Living in the great lakes area, I worry about drowning.:rofl:

I have been eyeballing some commercial dishwashers. I noticed that their wash cycle is as short as 2-3 minuets, but sometimes as long as 7.:thumb: Been watching industrial auctions, can't afford $2000 for dish washing when I have lots of manual labor on hand.

Maybe when I get the kitchen remodeled..................:dunno::huh:
 
I have been eyeballing some commercial dishwashers. I noticed that their wash cycle is as short as 2-3 minuets, but sometimes as long as 7.:thumb: Been watching industrial auctions, can't afford $2000 for dish washing when I have lots of manual labor on hand.

Watch out, they'll melt your tupperware. ;)

We had a commercial DW in the kitchen of my last church -- short short cycle, but the communion glasses would almost burn your hands when you unloaded them.
 
Interesting that about 4 months ago I was reading an article that discussed water conservation and dishwashers, and they maintained that a good dishwasher is actually saving you water over handwashing, but only if you don't rinse the dishes beforehand.

I've heard and read the same thing. If I know we're going to run a load soon, I don't do anything more than scrape the real big chunks off. LOML, on the other hand, still insists on rinsing (with water and detergent, no less) everything. Even a glass that was used for drinking water. :doh: At that point about the only thing the dishwasher is doing is sterilizing the dishes.

And don't even get me started about my wife and paper towels and plates. :bang: That woman thinks they grow on trees. Right there in the forest next to the money trees. :rofl:
 
I live in a modular, in the country, on a septic, and after owning this house for 7 years, still don't know if the dishwasher even works... there's only two of us, and we have never used it... I want to pull it out and make a bowl drying kiln from it, but LOML outvoted me one to one... so it sits there just wasted space in the kitchen counter.
:rofl:

Never seen it put that way before, but I can certainly relate! :eek:
 
Every time I use my 26 year old dishwasher, I ask it if it's going to die yet. It's so loud that I'm relegated to using it only between 8am and 8pm as the neighbors have offset sleeping schedules. I keep trying to find reasons to replace it but it cleans everything I throw at it.:huh: :dunno: Being single with a half-time kid, it's run about once a week or two. The sucker even cleaned nacho cheese off a bowl that hadn't been rinsed for almost 2 weeks. I'm guessing it's not so economical on the water side though. :rolleyes:
 
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