We rent. A couple of months ago, our landlords installed a new dishwasher (GE model) because our older one started leaking heavily. That’s a big minus in a dishwasher.
The new dishwasher … is not as good as the old one was, when it worked. I don’t like the way the dish-holding racks are designed —we can fit fewer dishes in than in the old dishwasher, though they’re in the same place.
But my real issue: 4 out of 5 times we run a load, very small flecks of detritus are left on the dishes, most noticeably on the clear glassware. I actually have to rinse tall glasses in the sink to clear them off.
The detritus is always tiny, and doesn’t look particularly like any food that may have been on dishes in the load. (No pepper, no tomato sauce, etc.)
That said, especially since this started, I pre-rinse dishes way more extensively than we did before, so it’s not that I’m leaving large or even small chunks of food on the dirty dishes. We pre-rinse more carefully than I did with the previous dishwasher, which did not have this problem.
I run the disposal before starting the load. I’ve cleaned out the air lock next to the sink to make sure nothing’s in there.
Any suggestions about what this could be? I assume it’s abnormal, but the manual and the manufacturer’s website don’t really address the issue in much detail (other than the disposal and air lock hints).
Is this something I should just report to the management company for their investigation?
I had this problem intermittently, and I finally figured that it only happened when there were a few grains of cooked rice left on some of the dishes. Somehow it must have gotten pulverized or emulsified in the washing process and then remained as a watery gruel that left crud on the dishes.
I am using a rinse aid, though it feels like it’s not actually getting used — the level doesn’t seem to go down. (Though it’s also really hard to see.)
I’ll double-check the shutoff valve and the water temperature.
I was hoping not to have to check the filter, just because I’ve looked it up and it’s not an easy-access filter, but that’s probably next.
After the final rinse, when the dishwasher is full of steam, open the door and let the stream escape.
My problem was the steam contained a soup of finely ground crud. Letting it out kept it from condensing onto the glassware.
Also: some dishwashers have a machinating (grinding) disk on the exit, others don’t. Whether this does or does not play into glassware crud is an open question.
Mine did have such a disk, and letting the steam out solved the problem.
WARNING:
If you have cabinets with laminated covers (melamine, e.g.), the steam will, over time, remove the laminate.
Clogged filter or a bad macerator/chopper…you’ll have either based on the model.
With a macerator, the food stuff is supposed to get ground up before washed down the drain- there’s a spinning blade that does this.
If it’s not working it won’t wash out and will end up deposited on the dishes. Unless you are putting in dishes with a lot of food on them, you should expect they would come clean with just about any modern washer. Could be a clogged drain, too.
I have a new GE dishwasher (base model) and found I have to run it on the “Heavy” setting and “Sani-Rinse” to get the dishes clean without film. It seems like it runs for 1.5 hours or more but does a pretty good job. I use Sams Club dishwasher pods as the detergent FWIW. Before I started running it on the Heavy setting all the time a rinse aid did help with the film.
If the rinse-aid level isn’t dropping then it and the detergent (if there’s a Main Wash cup w/ a latched door that gets opened during the wash cycle) may not be getting dispensed. I had to open my dishwasher’s door to fiddle w/ the rinse aid and accidentally moved the hook thing down for the dispensers; ran a load that had all those bits on the dishes when done and saw the Main Wash still latched so no detergent or rinse aid had gone into the wash. Had to open the whole thing up again to fix it.
BUT
You rent, so I would call management for anything aside from cleaning the dishwasher.
The instructions for my dishwasher specifically say that you should not pre-rinse, just scrape off the big chunks of food residue. I believe the reason is that the machine senses the dirtiness of the water to adjust the cleaning cycle, and if the water isn’t dirty enough then it confuses the machine and it doesn’t wash properly. Weird, but there you go…
Almost certainly the filter/macerator being either broken, or clogged. It can be a pain to get to, but I’ve had to replace mine a couple of times when toothpicks or other hard, non-choppable debris items have gotten caught and stripped the cheap plastic gear.
Most recently, it was just a mess of accumulated goop under the pump cover. 20 minutes with paper towels and a minimum of wretching and the mess was clean. I ran a couple of empty loads with some Oxyclean through the washer and it’s like brand new again.
You can find videos on how to remove the spray arm, and cover online if you search for your model number. You may need to remove some of the numbers from the end of the model number during your search to find results.