Come talk to me about dishwashers, rinse aid and salt and all the other garb please

[shinyshoes]

I will proudly be the owner of a new dishwasher hopefully next weekend..

I've never owned any luxury kitchen appliance like this. I have loads of dishwasher talets at the ready, but what is rinse aid and dishwasher salt?? Do I need it, and how often do I need to use these thing , realistically (no doubt the instuction booklet wiil tell me to use these things daily, thus incurring exorbarant amounts of money).

Thanks hugely

I love my dishwasher, and would not be without it.

You don't need to rinse plates as that defeats the object of having a dishwasher.

However, what you have to remember is that it is a dishwasher, not a garbage disposal, so you do need to scrape plates of any big food objects, or there would be problems.

I believe, you only actually need salt if you live in an extremely hard water area regardless of using all in one.

Luckily, I live in an extremely soft water area, one of the softest regions in England actually (reward for all the rain we have ).

I made the biggest mistake of my life in my last dishwasher, for some reason I decided to add salt, despite years of faultless performance beforehand. After doing that, all my cutlery came out rusty and non glazed pot (trims of bottoms of cups) had orange spots on them.

So I never made that mistake again, and don't need to use salt (suppose even I wouldn't if I weren't using an all in one).

I found THIS website interesting because I am sad :)

We also use Ecover tablets and white vinegar as rinse aid...all our stuff comes out lovely! at terramum
Do use salt and empty filter often though!

PigletJohn Thanks for the update from Which

Learn how to disconnect the spraying arms (and keep a bit of bendy wire handy) because blocked sprayers are the main cause of inefficiency and it's a simple thing to do yourself (but expensive to get an engineer to do it).
NB Rice (especially brown rice) is just the right size for getting stuck in the sprayer holes so always try to remove before using washer.
PS I have a half-size washer and it has no place for rinse aid --- so I just open it up and lob in a capful of white wine vingear about ten minutes from the end of whichever cycle I'm using (ten minutes before it goes onto drying that is). If your tablets aren't fully dissolving, put some vinegar in early and it will soften the water and help break the tablets down.

This is fantastically helpful! Thank you!!!

PigletJohn is that Which report still pretty much the same?

I think I've only topped up my salt once in 3 years.
I use all in one tablets. How often should I put salt in if I'm in a hard water area?It seems to be working ok?!

Soft water here too, never use salt or rinse-aid. (NW)

I use an all in one tablet but always keep the salt added as we have hard water here. Don't add anything else. Would recommend wiping plates/saucepans with kitchen paper before stacking so that machine doesn't get unnecessarily mucky. Also the odd dish cleaner wash freshens up.

Ps. Must add never leave your dishwasher on and go to bed. Our Bosch would have burnt the house down if we hadn't had a smoke alarm and been sitting in the next room.

Can any one help me ??
My dishwasher 'salt ' light is on. I have already refilled it with salt . It's still flashing and will not work!
Any ideas ??