Everything in the dishwasher is coming out dirty!

[atswimtwolengths]

I've just washed the dishes twice and they're still vile - gritty and with food stains on.

Do I just need to use a dishwasher cleaner? I was trying to avoid going out today - is there anything else I can use? Nothing's bunged up. I don't have white wine vinegar, which seems to be the answer to everything - maybe I should get some in?

Any ideas?

Bung a cup of soda crystals in the bottom of your machine and run a blind hot wash. Also, make sure that the spray arm doesn't have something stuck in it and your salt and rinse aid are topped up.

there's a thing in the bottom that traps food (filter?) - make sure that's clear.

Thanks, but I don't have any soda crystals in, Madlizzy. Just trying to not go out as I'm so busy at the moment. I've checked the spray arm and salt etc.

Yes, I've checked that, Plumm.

Do you think if I empty the dishes, put it on a hot wash with ordinary dishwasher tablet, that would help?

If you have a loo plunger, use that on the drainage hole thing at the bottom - there's almost certainly food/stuff blocking the drainage and so the dirty water has nowhere to go.

The only thing that eventually sorted mine was the soda crystal approach - well worth getting some if you can.

Clean out the drain at the bottom (just seen you've done that

Fill up the salt

Fill up the rinse aid (5 in 1 tabs aren't necessarily all that great in hard water areas - I find I need separates)

Take out the spinny arms and de-gunge the small holes that the water comes out of with a cocktail stick. We had a real problem with this and that was the thing that fixed it

Thanks everyone - will go and tackle all that now.

We had this a fortnight ago with our old trusty Bosch.

We started with running it on hot, empty to see if that helped. We got a hot dishwasher with the powder spread out down the door.

We only have a tabletop dishwasher but it's the mainstay of sanity in the house (there's only so much cleaning a F/T WOHM and WOHD can do!) We then tried a Finish cleaning thing but it came out of the wash as full as it was when we put it in. So hot water wasn't getting sprayed.

In the end I took to sneaking peeks quickly when it had been on a few minutes. No water droplets on top (apart from those which could have been condensation). Then I placed the rotor in one position and put it back on again. Turned out that the rotor arm wasn't going round or spraying. So though there was hot water in the bottom, none of it was going on the pots.

I did the maths (callout fee, several days' wait, exorbitant fee for a 10+ year old dishwasher which may not have had parts available) and came to the conclusion that it was time for a new one.

Then nearly posted my first AIBU as it was darned near impossible to get a new one inside 24 hours! (Internet shopping is actually slowing things down a lot, but it's got to the stage when even main stores don't have stock any more and just tell you to go to their websites)
John Lewis had a four day lead time! None in stores! I nearly melted down at that point.

But my story has a happy (if costly) ending. I took delivery of a new one about 18 hours after the old one officially died. From Boots of all places! (Who knew they had an online, deliver-24/7 white goods dept?) Seriously steep delivery charge but offset by Advantage points, which were almost the same amount.

And the new one is about 50% bigger in usable volume so it's taking some filling!

oh forgot to say, ours was filling and emptying just fine. It was just broken rotors. Yours may well be different on that - best test the holes etc as others have advised; do a trial run and open the door at a point where you should have swishing sounds to check the water has a) gone in and b) heated up ok. I assume from your initial comments that there wasn't water lurking about in the bottom when it "finished".
good luck!

We had this and it turned out to be a tiny bit of plastic (from a yoghurt tube) floating round inside the spray arm - a glance at the spray arm and the nozzles looked clear, it was only when the water was going through, it would force the plastic up to the nozzle and then block it.