My sister and I want a dishwasher installed, but my stepfather and mother keep trying to talk us out of it, saying it’s pointless because you have to wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher anyway, so what’s the point.
Is that true, or do modern dishwashers actually work, and if so how would we find one that does or that doesn’t. And I understand the enviromentalists got all the detergent that worked decent banned, have they come up with anything decent yet for detergent?
Where, in instructions for dishwashers, does it say that?
And there’s no law that says you have to use soap or detergent. You’d be surprised how clean they come out without it.
You have to rinse off the big chunks. The dishwasher still does the actual washing.
I’m not sure why you’d want a dishwasher that doesn’t work, but if you do, go to the town dump and look for one that someone is throwing away because they needed a new one.
But in general, yes, dishwashers work quite well.
I tend to prewash, even though supposedly, it is not necessary…Those that don’t tend to lose their pumps. And that is expensive. For many a pump replacement really means new dishwasher time, unless you do it yourself … And it is a tricky job.
I think the real reason they say it is unnecessary to pre wash dishes is they want to sell you a new dishwasher every few years.
And doing a little precleaning of the worst of the stuck on crap really doesn’t take much time.
OK, this is a bit “IMHO,” but here’s my story.
I never had a dishwasher that worked worth a damn, so I never used mine. When I got married, my wife asked why I never used the dishwasher, and I told her that they don’t work. She made it clear that she wasn’t going to wash dishes by hand, and we should get a new one. So, to humor her (and prove to her that dishwashers simply don’t work), we went out and bought a new one. It was a mid-range GE, and cost around $500, 10 years ago. Well, surprise, surprise - it works!
We still pre-rinse the dishes, and it occasionally fails to remove things like peanut butter from spoons, but by and large, it works very well. We also found out that we need to use a specific type of detergent, or hard-water scale ands up building up on our glasses.
After getting everything figured out, I can confidently say that, yes, dishwashers do work - as long as you have a good one.
They’ve either never used a good dishwasher or their dishwashing skills are so bad they fail to make the distinction between rinsing and washing.
Either way, they’re wrong: A functional dishwasher will take a dish with grease or other stuff you’d have to scrub off by hand and remove it for you using jets of hot water and steam. (This reliance on hot water is why dishwashers have their own water heaters. Otherwise, they’d be liable to use up all the hot water for the rest of the house.) You do have to remove all of the chunks, usually accomplished by running the dish under running water and, in extremis, picking off chunks with your hands. None of that is anywhere near as much work as scrubbing dishes with a rag in hot water and soap, putting yourself at risk for the dreaded dishpan hands. That’s the value proposition of dishwashers, and why people buy them.
My cheap old dishwasher had a built-in disposal, and could handle chunks quite well. My new, expensive one has a screen and a filter, and does not do well with big chunks. Go figure.
Dishwashers use very little water, less than a few sink fulls for hand washing. There’s no way they could drain a typical water heater in a cycle. But because they recirculate the water, which can cool off, heating it internally is a good idea, and potentially allows for heating to a greater temp than the inlet value. You don’t want to scorch your hands under a faucet, but you are glad if the dishes are (almost) sterilized.
I always rinse. But that is a lot less work than actually washing the dishes. I use these cubes that Costco sells and it all seems to work quite well. If only, the dishwasher could empty itself.
I like to keep my water heater shut off until about a half hour before I need hot water…Amazing how much that saves in electricity.
No problem with the dishwasher, since it has its own heater that heats up the water much higher than the 120 degree setting on my water heater.
It does make the running time of the dishwasher much longer…while the element heats up the water.
No. It’s all a scam.
How are you on showers, refrigerators and flush toilets?
I bet they also keep batteries in the fridge (which they refer to as the “icebox”) and have one of those cars with a crank on the front, right?
Why in the world would anyone wash the dishes and then wash the dishes? I got a very very good dishwasher and never pre-rinse or pre anything. Been using it 8 years and even the worst pots come out spotless every time.
WTH? I never do anything other than make sure the big chunks are off the dishes, and I can assure you, I do not buy a new dishwasher or replace the pump every few years. Nor do my parents, or anyone else in my family.
I don’t think I’ve ever replaced a dishwasher because it didn’t work; I’ve replaced them during kitchen upgrades or to match new appliances, but that’s about it.
Come on over to my place some time and I’ll show you. 
they’re all scams
For all but the very bottom of the dishwasher barrel all you need to do is scrape sticky stuff off w/ one of those hard plastic scrapers. It seems handier and cleaner to use water to do that but it’s a waste of water. You still have to rinse the scraped off stuff down the disposal, but you can do that w/ far less water than rinsing uses.
Though the detergents *have *been reformulated, you can still get good results using a rinse aid and filling the open detergent cup w/ white vinegar (along w/ the usual detergent in the lidded cup). Some folks add TSP instead but I’m happy w/ the result I get from vinegar, plus it’s cheaper.
*We’re a chapstick-wearing family, so I find I must go around the edges of glasses w/ a wet scrubber before they go in the dishwasher or residue remains. YMMV
Many modern dishwashers have both grinders and screens that handle larger chunks. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to leave half a uneaten hot dog on there, but knocking off the big chunks is usually adequate with a modern dishwasher.
What happened with the detergent is that the phosphorus was removed, which made many people with hard water start experiencing a lot of issues with their dishwashers, since the phosphates in the water minimize the effects of the minerals in hard water, and let the detergents do their thing better.
Once they were removed, the manufacturers have to figure out a way to get similar performance without them; most of the big-name premium brands are decent these days.
However, washer design & performance is a big deal; my wife and I got a GE in about 2011 that sucked entirely- we had to preclean everything, and even then it didn’t do a very good job.
We got a Maytag JetClean earlier this year, and that thing would probably clean dishes well without detergent- it’s truly an awesome appliance. Everything that comes out is sparkling clean, regardless of what detergent we use- Cascade Complete all the way down to generic Target brand.
Even big chunks aren’t really a problem. They either get filtered out or ground up and drained away (depending on what kind of dishwasher you get). The only pretreating I do is to wipe off egg yolks and other things that tend to harden, and I only do that if I don’t expect to start the dishwasher before the yolk dries.