Cleaner Dishes While Saving Water & Energy

It’s a common misconception that handwashing dishes is more efficient compared to using a dishwasher. Not only will using your dishwasher help curb your monthly water and energy costs, your dishes will come out cleaner.

A dishwasher actually uses less water because it recycles the water utilized throughout the cycle.  You can save additional water by simply scraping your dishes clean before loading. Avoid the temptation to pre-rinse your dishes.  Energy Star says on average, a consumer uses 20 gallons of water per load pre-rinsing dishes. Dishwashers also produce only enough heat for the water to be used, with the heated water sourced from the equipment itself, rather than from the home’s heating system. Since the cleaning job is now left to the appliance, which uses strong jets of hot and soapy water, you are assured of not just clean, but disinfected plates and utensils.

Basic Science of Dishwashing/Taking Care of Your Dishwasher

Your dishwasher needs four essential components for it to work it’s best—a detergents, a rinse agents, a drying agents, and a dishwasher cleaner.

The main purpose of detergent is to remove food particles and stains from the dish’s surfaces. Detergent ingredients that help serve these functions include enzymes and bleaches. Therefore, it is very important to use fresh, high quality and dry detergent. With detergent that has been damp or gotten wet, many of the cleaning enzymes may already have been activated, so the detergent is ineffective. In the case of a poor quality detergent, you are using mostly fillers, instead of the essential enzyme & bleach ingredients. Not only are detergents high in fillers less effective, they can also “gunk” up the mechanical workings of your dishwasher and cause problems. We highly recommend using a high quality detergent, like Finish, for all of your dishwashing needs, and avoid the lower quality detergents.

As the term implies, the rinse agent washes unnecessary substances off the dishes for sparkling cleanliness, while also assisting in the drying process. The two common rinse agents are the polymers, which provide the resulting luster, and the non-ionic surfactants that are responsible for the minerals & particles “sheeting” off the dishes. We recommend always using a rinse agent. This means being diligent about keeping your rinse agent dispenser full at all times.

The drying agents ensure optimum dryness of the items being washed and also act as surfactants like rinse agents.

Finally, the dishwasher cleaner component relieves you of the burden of cleaning the equipment regularly. Dishwasher cleaners have citric acid that help eliminate limescale reside in the dishwasher and surfactants for removing greasy residues. To keep your dishwasher running most efficiently, we recommend using a dishwasher cleaner every 2-3 months to prevent mineral build up inside your dishwasher. This is especially important if you live in Southern California where our water has some of the highest mineral content in the nation.

It is also very important to properly load your dishwasher for optimal cleaning. Fully load the dishwasher, leaving room for water to circulate between each dish. Ensure the sprayer arms can rotate and spray water freely. The spray arms can easily get blocked by large items such as utensils and pan handles so always give them a spin before pressing start.

A couple other general dishwashing tips include:

Use the auto or normal wash cycle as your every day program.

Remove and clean the filters regularly.

Similar to all appliances, your dishwasher’s service life can be extended & optimized if you know how to use and take care of it properly.

If you have questions or problems with your dishwasher, contact a reputable appliance repair company in Orange County like ASAP Appliance Service, which fixes dishwashers and all major brands of major home appliances, like Whirlpool, Bosch and General Electric, to name a few.

Sources:

Dishwashing Science, www.Dishwashingexpert.com

4 Tips to Keep Your Dishwasher from Breaking, Angieslist.com