Ah, the old breath test.
(FWIW, huffing into your hands and smelling it won’t tell you anything about your breath unless it’s at a peeling-paint level. You want to check? Lick the inside of your wrist and smell it a minute later. I know, gross, but it works. So would the above suggestion.)
do you have any plastic plumbing in your house? If yes, it can breed bacteria. Especially the type of plastic tubing that is used for those cheap sink sprayers - if there’s a similar section of plumbing between the city water and your dishwasher, then it’s just shooting stankwater right into the dishwasher. Running a bleach cycle through the dishwasher would only help until you ran a subsequent load.
I’d follow the plumbing from that dishwasher’s feed line straight back to the city’s incoming line until I found the icky bits.
I took a couple of glasses and washed them in the bathroom sink using the same dish soap and brought them out to air dry in the kitchen. No smell. So I washed the rest in the kitchen sink - no smell. So I guess I have to wait until some kitchen ones smell and then try the bathroom test again.
I hate this.
Oh - and I wash my hands in the same water all the time have never noticed an odor.
I shower in it and think I would notice if my hair smelled like a wet dog.
Really! You’re in Portland? I’m just outside of Spokane. The water used to be really great here (I’ve been in the same house almost 20 years), then they had some kind of E-coli scare about 6 years ago and started chlorinating. And about the same time began the stinky dishes syndrome. In trying to figure out exactly what changed in the last 5 or 6 years,
The mystery remains.
I ran the machine this morning, making sure hot water was there before turning it on. No bad smells.
You don’t get the smell from the water alone, I presume? Not when filling a cook pot or showering? Odd!
Are you using the drip-dry or the heated dry function?
It occurred to me that if you’re using the drip-dry function, it could be possible for the water on the dishes to get funky before they dry.
Also, it probably wouldn’t hurt to try one of those dishwasher cleaner products like Affresh or one of the others. Supposedly there can be buildup and what-not in dishwashers and those products are supposed to clean it out. I haven’t had that problem in the past, but maybe others have.
I’ll second the suggestion to get your water tested. Actually, your local Big Orange or Big Blue box store sells DIY kits on the cheap that may provide some insight.
Regarding the dishes, a quick solution would be to buy five gallons of bottled water and wash them in that. Check the smell after that to see if there’s a diff.
If not, and not ignoring the water test, a long soak in a heavy baking soda solution may draw out whatever’s in there.
Into your home…
No comprendo.
I just had a mental image of the baking soda luring something like Slimer (of Ghostbusters fame) out of the sink and into the hallway toward the children’s bedrooms.
As you were.
To me, it sounds like you need to clean out your dishwasher. Yes, it sounds like it should be the cleanest place in the house…
Start by making sure there isn’t anything caught in the drain at the bottom. (Use gloves, eh?) Then run the dishwasher with a bowl of vinegar in the top rack and nothing else.
I thought I was the only one, weird. I have cleaned out the dishwasher thoroughly, pulled the traps, and the thing under the trap, reached in with gloved hand etc. I actually found that running the dishwasher again does the trick, but I am a single dad (invoking stereotype) so it’s like at least a day between when I first ran it and ran it again.
Interestingly I know my water heater is on a lower temp setting as I changed it to 110 when my first was born, and haven’t changed it back. Some have said this might be part of it, will try increasing WH temp and see if mystery funk goes away.
I have the same problem with hand washing dishes and came on the net to look for answers. It happens most times we do the dishes and only after they have been washed, never emerging while washing. I used to think it was when washing dishes that had egg on them but after washing them separately for a while I’ve noticed no difference. I have tried doing things differently for so long and the only thing that seems to make a difference is washing away the suds straight after I empty the sink. It appears that this curbs the smell (it seems to begin but doesn’t continue).
Last year, when you posted this maybe. Now, not so much.
Tempest in a teapot. Dumping the res was a sop to consumers, nothing more. The fed has mandated that the reservoirs be covered, despite efforts by some local groups to keep it from happening. I, for one, will be happy when it’s in place.
Since someone woke this beast up, I’ll pop in to say that I’ve been doing all the dishes by hand and the problem has greatly improved. Strangely, when the weather is cool and blustery, I sometimes get a whiff just walking by the sink, but only then. I have never found a true 100% solution.
The kind of soap used in an automatic dishwasher. I could always detect it, especially in drinking glasses, at my mother-in-law’s house, where she used a dishwasher. Apparently, the soap doesn’t rinse properly, and leaves a residue.
At home, I never wash dishes with soap. I just run them under hot tapwater and hand-rub them until I no longer feel greasiness with my fingers on them. My dishes have literally not been washed with soap in years. Anything that needs to be scrubbed for stuck-on materials, I use a net onion bag. Burned-on stuff stuck in pots and pans scrapes out easily with an old credit card.
Easy test to eliminate the hot water heater.
Boil water on the stove for your hot water.