6 ms·

Somewhat related: if you want to watch a 32 minute video about how to properly use a dishwasher, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https:

Somewhat related: if you want to watch a 32 minute video about how to properly use a dishwasher, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

teh_klev 5y ago
Alec is a truly amazing obsessed individual, I love his videos. His recent adventures into how oil fueled lamps is tremendous, no detail left behind.
uxabhishek 5y ago
This was quite long but informative. Thanks for sharing. He suggests not using the pods and using dishwashing powder in both the pre-rinse and regular dispensers. No rinsing with hands needed before loading even with weeks old, dry caked dishes.
jitl 5y ago
This video changed my life, and my parents lives. They always struggled with under-cleaning and pre-washed everything. Once they started using a little bit of detergent in the pre-wash, everything comes out clean with just the suggested scape off of solids. Pre-wash detergent is critical!
- aynyc 5y ago
  Wait, wtf is a pre-wash detergent? And why I have never heard of it?
  - whoisburbansky 5y ago
    It's no different from normal wash detergent, it's just normal dishwasher detergent put into the pre-wash slot of your washer. The video goes into more detail, but it basically ensures that the first rinse cycle that the washer does still has soapy water.
    - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
      Or given that it is just dumped out of that slot (assuming you have one) when you shut the door, I'd say you could just toss a couple of spoonfuls of detergent into the bottom of the washer.
      - Scoundreller 5y ago
        I just recommend being a spilly pourer of detergent. Save time and get better results through haste and sloppiness.
      - delecti 5y ago
        He actually mentions that in the video as well.
  - Forge36 5y ago
    It's normal detergent, placed in a space where the pre-wash water cycle can use it.
    - aynyc 5y ago
      Regular Dawn detergent or "dishwasher" detergent?
      - jffry 5y ago
        Dishwasher detergent only (i.e., stuff specifically marketed as for going into dishwashing machines) Absolutely don't put dish soap like Dawn into your dishwasher - it will foam up, shoot out of the dishwasher, and absolutely wreck your dishwasher and surrounding kitchen with foam. If you're curious what this mishap would look like, check out this image search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=put+dish+soap+in+dishwasher&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=put+dish+soap+in+dishwasher&t=ffab...
    - svachalek 5y ago
      Normal dishwasher detergent. Never put dish soap like Dawn in a dishwasher, I've seen at least 3 kitchens flooded as a result of people not knowing this.
      - Retric 5y ago
        It does works in a pinch, just use about 3-5% as much as normal and skip the drying phase to rerun. A related issue is people just use way to much detergents in general, presumably because commercials show people using excessive quantities. Plop Plop Fiz Fiz for example just about doubled Alka-Seltzer’s sales.
stronglikedan 5y ago
Ever since I watched that a few months back, I run the tap go get the hot water closer to the washer for the first cycle (as recommended in the vid), and I do notice a difference. So much so, that I've completely eschewed the pre-rinse (also recommended in the vid).
- iainmerrick 5y ago
  This must be a country-specific thing. Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference. (Source: bought a new one a couple of years ago! I assumed a hot water feed would be more efficient, but very few models had it and they weren’t necessarily cheaper to run. Thinking about it, an electric heater inside the washer that heats exactly the amount needed is going to be way more efficient than getting hot water at a random temperature from a gas combi boiler.)
  - baq 5y ago
    Mine says using hot water will work but only do it if you have a renewable source of heat. Otherwise, it’s more efficient to just heat up those few liters.
  - bonestamp2 5y ago
    > Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference. Ya, I think the same is true in America. Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. So, it wouldn't make sense to rinse your clean dishes with water that may contain bacteria and spores. Of course, you don't want to rinse hot glass with cold water either (potential breakage), so now you have to heat the water. So, you may as well just have cold water as the only source and heat it. It's the same reason coffee machines tell you to fill them with cold water -- it has nothing to do with the temperature of the water, it's all about the potability of the water.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      > Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. As a consumer of residential hot water tanks for 40+ years, this is news to me. How is the water in a residential hot water tank not potable?
fbrchps 5y ago
One of my favorite parts of that video is how he goes into how stupid an idea those "Tide Pods but for dishwashers" are. They don't do nearly as good of a job cleaning in my experience, and missing the whole pre-rinse is likely a large part of why. Now, getting family/friends to stop using them has proven to be a challenge, because Alec can have quite the dry video format for those who are being told to "stop doing a thing you deem convenient, and watch this 32 minute video to see why".
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  Alec is a master at turning a three sentence concept into a 6,000 word exposition. I'm glad he's found success and seems to be enjoying Youtube, but I feel he missed his calling in academia. Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11 > Want to see my book report? "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes." Academia, here I come!
zeroonetwothree 5y ago
I don’t follow this advice at all and my dishes always come out perfectly clean. So it seems totally arbitrary to me. Or at least depends on which dishwasher you have.
romanhn 5y ago
Watched the whole thing, got really excited (as I always pre-rinse) and then discovered that my dishwasher doesn't have a pre-wash basin. More research is needed, I suppose, to convince me to move away from rinsing (which I would love, but have not been impressed with unrinsed results thus far). UPDATE: So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. Turns out there is a place to dump some detergent for pre-wash after all! Instead of living next to the main basin, it's built into the exterior of the dispenser latch itself. Really, just a little concave area that allows detergent to just fall out when you close the door and get used in the first cycle. Will be experimenting with this!
- sparker72678 5y ago
  My dishwasher doesn't have a pre-rinse basin, either. But, I've found that for heavily soiled loads, if I throw an extra pod into the bottom of the dishwasher before I run it, that helps. (The extra pod will be dissolved in the first rinse, giving a boost.)
- DeRock 5y ago
  Mine doesn't have a pre-wash basin either, so I just pour some directly in the dish compartment before closing/running. I feel its equivalent and it seems to work great.
  - morsch 5y ago
    It's strictly equivalent, dishwashers with a separate receptacle just dump it in the compartment, too.
- leviathant 5y ago
  >So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. I had gone through life either using dishwashers that came with my apartment/house, or installing used dishwashers, because I was otherwise punching above my weight. My current home is the first place I've owned where I've bought all new appliances - which all came with manuals, which all have really good instructions for using the devices the way the product engineers intended them, and I can't believe it took me so long to come around to rtfm for day-to-day stuff. I'd basically leaned on techniques I learned as a kid in the 80s, for decades, even as technology changed. I know not to do this at work, but it was funny realizing what an oversight I'd made in my home life.
quietbritishjim 5y ago
Beware that his advice about extra detergent for the prerinse stage doesn't apply to all dishwashers: some let a little water rinse through the detergent compartment during that part of the cycle, so some is released even if you're using a tablet. Once they get to the main part of the programme, the compartment flips open to let the tablet fall out so it can finish dissolving completely. This totally solves the problem described in the video. Unlike the type he describes, these dishwashers don't even have a separate place for prewash detergent (because it would be redundant). I'm in the UK, and all dishwashers I've seen work this way, even really cheap ones. So it's probably a country thing (most likely Europe vs US).
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Should be straightforward to figure out which kind your unit is (look and see if it is sealed off or not).
- loser777 5y ago
  Note that a further complication is that some don't have a compartment but literally an indent on the tablet compartment where you're supposed to pour some prewash/detergent and it just gets incoporated into the mixture as it runs down. I suspect you can "boost" any dishwasher's prewash detergent amount by adding a bit on the door/in the bottom.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I'm in the US using a GE dishwasher. It is similar to the ones in UK - no pre-wash compartment.
jrootabega 5y ago
I've experimented with some of this advice in my dishwasher, with mixed results. Some of the pod manufacturers explicitly state that the pods are designed to compensate for the lack of a pre-wash, so this isn't a case of Out-of-touch Dumb Companies vs Smart Customer. Whether you believe the makers is another thing, but I think the video is oversimplifying for the sake of making viewers feel smart and achieving factoid popularity.
- beenBoutIT 5y ago
  Pods are a scam. They measure out ordinary crappy dishwashing detergent and package it up in a 'pod' then mark the price up 10x. In the US soap seems to exist in a grey area where manufacturers can make unsubstantiated claims about performance based on 'testing' that they supposedly do internally. The new Dawn dishwashing liquids make claims about having exponentially more cleaning power and yet cleaning anything requires exactly the same amount of soap as it did with the old Dawn.
  - Groxx 5y ago
    Sure, if you buy the ones that cost 10x more per load. The ones I buy are about 15% higher. The convenience is worth it for us for the ~$2/month increase.
IronWolve 5y ago
I stopped using pods/packs/powerballs types and pre-scrubbing after this video. I thought cheaper liquids just didn't work, because I wasn't filling the pre-wash. I tried cheaper store brand liquid detergent with pre-wash, and with pre-wash gels work great. Right now, I'm using Cascade Gel, really happy for the price and amount. 6 bux. It's the same price as generics if you don't buy it on amazon. TIL, use the pre-fill
- beenBoutIT 5y ago
  With dishwashing detergent liquids are superior. Liquid detergent often contains varying amounts of KOH which is about as good as it gets in terms of cleaning power that won't also destroy dishes(NaOH). They can't put KOH in dry detergent so it's made with less effective chemicals that are better at staying in a powdered form without clumping.
dmhmr 5y ago
I knew what this video was before I clicked. I love his content that gets into this type of focus. His Coleman Lantern videos were great too.
- pavel_lishin 5y ago
  Ah, another Dietz nut!
joegahona 5y ago
I love this video. The one part that didn't seem to work for me is the "don't pre-rinse your dishes" part -- perhaps my dishwasher's fault, but I was really disappointed when, after several washes and varying degrees of gook on plates and bowls, stuff was still coming out dirty. I quick pre-rinse works best for me and my dishwasher, combined with the other tips in his video.
- wpearse 5y ago
  Yeah. We stopped giving the dirty dishes a quick rinse and scrub after watching that video and all that happened is the dishdrawer drain blocked and the kitchen flooded. (First time ever.) We’re back to giving the dishes a quick rinse and scrub before they go in the dishwasher.
  - InvertedRhodium 5y ago
    While you don't need to pre rinse the dishes, you should at least probably scrape any leftover food off of them. I don't think I've ever had a load of dishes with enough physical matter on them to actually block a drain, and I've never pre rinsed.
- mynegation 5y ago
  That runs contrary to my experience as well. Fats, syrups, and greens - you don’t necessarily have to rinse and scrub but try to leave some starchy sticky rice or eggs to dry on the plate and that stuff may not come off, it will be dried and cemented even further.
- yencabulator 5y ago
  It really depends on your dishwasher. I recently upgraded an old dishwasher to a Bosch 500, stopped pre-rinsing, and the end result is better than what the old one could do with pre-rinsing.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Somewhat related: if you want to watch a 32 minute video about how to properly use a dishwasher, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

teh_klev 5y ago

Alec is a truly amazing obsessed individual, I love his videos. His recent adventures into how oil fueled lamps is tremendous, no detail left behind.

uxabhishek 5y ago

This was quite long but informative. Thanks for sharing. He suggests not using the pods and using dishwashing powder in both the pre-rinse and regular dispensers. No rinsing with hands needed before loading even with weeks old, dry caked dishes.

jitl 5y ago

This video changed my life, and my parents lives. They always struggled with under-cleaning and pre-washed everything. Once they started using a little bit of detergent in the pre-wash, everything comes out clean with just the suggested scape off of solids. Pre-wash detergent is critical!

aynyc 5y ago
Wait, wtf is a pre-wash detergent? And why I have never heard of it?
- whoisburbansky 5y ago
  It's no different from normal wash detergent, it's just normal dishwasher detergent put into the pre-wash slot of your washer. The video goes into more detail, but it basically ensures that the first rinse cycle that the washer does still has soapy water.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    Or given that it is just dumped out of that slot (assuming you have one) when you shut the door, I'd say you could just toss a couple of spoonfuls of detergent into the bottom of the washer.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      I just recommend being a spilly pourer of detergent. Save time and get better results through haste and sloppiness.
    - delecti 5y ago
      He actually mentions that in the video as well.
- Forge36 5y ago
  It's normal detergent, placed in a space where the pre-wash water cycle can use it.
  - aynyc 5y ago
    Regular Dawn detergent or "dishwasher" detergent?
    - jffry 5y ago
      Dishwasher detergent only (i.e., stuff specifically marketed as for going into dishwashing machines) Absolutely don't put dish soap like Dawn into your dishwasher - it will foam up, shoot out of the dishwasher, and absolutely wreck your dishwasher and surrounding kitchen with foam. If you're curious what this mishap would look like, check out this image search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=put+dish+soap+in+dishwasher&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=put+dish+soap+in+dishwasher&t=ffab...
  - svachalek 5y ago
    Normal dishwasher detergent. Never put dish soap like Dawn in a dishwasher, I've seen at least 3 kitchens flooded as a result of people not knowing this.
    - Retric 5y ago
      It does works in a pinch, just use about 3-5% as much as normal and skip the drying phase to rerun. A related issue is people just use way to much detergents in general, presumably because commercials show people using excessive quantities. Plop Plop Fiz Fiz for example just about doubled Alka-Seltzer’s sales.

stronglikedan 5y ago

Ever since I watched that a few months back, I run the tap go get the hot water closer to the washer for the first cycle (as recommended in the vid), and I do notice a difference. So much so, that I've completely eschewed the pre-rinse (also recommended in the vid).

iainmerrick 5y ago
This must be a country-specific thing. Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference. (Source: bought a new one a couple of years ago! I assumed a hot water feed would be more efficient, but very few models had it and they weren’t necessarily cheaper to run. Thinking about it, an electric heater inside the washer that heats exactly the amount needed is going to be way more efficient than getting hot water at a random temperature from a gas combi boiler.)
- baq 5y ago
  Mine says using hot water will work but only do it if you have a renewable source of heat. Otherwise, it’s more efficient to just heat up those few liters.
- bonestamp2 5y ago
  > Almost all dishwashers in Europe use a cold water feed only, so running the hot tap won’t make any difference. Ya, I think the same is true in America. Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. So, it wouldn't make sense to rinse your clean dishes with water that may contain bacteria and spores. Of course, you don't want to rinse hot glass with cold water either (potential breakage), so now you have to heat the water. So, you may as well just have cold water as the only source and heat it. It's the same reason coffee machines tell you to fill them with cold water -- it has nothing to do with the temperature of the water, it's all about the potability of the water.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    > Most residential hot water tanks do not produce potable water. As a consumer of residential hot water tanks for 40+ years, this is news to me. How is the water in a residential hot water tank not potable?

fbrchps 5y ago

One of my favorite parts of that video is how he goes into how stupid an idea those "Tide Pods but for dishwashers" are. They don't do nearly as good of a job cleaning in my experience, and missing the whole pre-rinse is likely a large part of why. Now, getting family/friends to stop using them has proven to be a challenge, because Alec can have quite the dry video format for those who are being told to "stop doing a thing you deem convenient, and watch this 32 minute video to see why".

LeifCarrotson 5y ago
Alec is a master at turning a three sentence concept into a 6,000 word exposition. I'm glad he's found success and seems to be enjoying Youtube, but I feel he missed his calling in academia. Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/02/11 > Want to see my book report? "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes." Academia, here I come!

zeroonetwothree 5y ago

I don’t follow this advice at all and my dishes always come out perfectly clean. So it seems totally arbitrary to me. Or at least depends on which dishwasher you have.

romanhn 5y ago

Watched the whole thing, got really excited (as I always pre-rinse) and then discovered that my dishwasher doesn't have a pre-wash basin. More research is needed, I suppose, to convince me to move away from rinsing (which I would love, but have not been impressed with unrinsed results thus far). UPDATE: So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. Turns out there is a place to dump some detergent for pre-wash after all! Instead of living next to the main basin, it's built into the exterior of the dispenser latch itself. Really, just a little concave area that allows detergent to just fall out when you close the door and get used in the first cycle. Will be experimenting with this!

sparker72678 5y ago
My dishwasher doesn't have a pre-rinse basin, either. But, I've found that for heavily soiled loads, if I throw an extra pod into the bottom of the dishwasher before I run it, that helps. (The extra pod will be dissolved in the first rinse, giving a boost.)
DeRock 5y ago
Mine doesn't have a pre-wash basin either, so I just pour some directly in the dish compartment before closing/running. I feel its equivalent and it seems to work great.
- morsch 5y ago
  It's strictly equivalent, dishwashers with a separate receptacle just dump it in the compartment, too.
leviathant 5y ago
>So I just went and read through my dishwasher's manual. I had gone through life either using dishwashers that came with my apartment/house, or installing used dishwashers, because I was otherwise punching above my weight. My current home is the first place I've owned where I've bought all new appliances - which all came with manuals, which all have really good instructions for using the devices the way the product engineers intended them, and I can't believe it took me so long to come around to rtfm for day-to-day stuff. I'd basically leaned on techniques I learned as a kid in the 80s, for decades, even as technology changed. I know not to do this at work, but it was funny realizing what an oversight I'd made in my home life.

quietbritishjim 5y ago

Beware that his advice about extra detergent for the prerinse stage doesn't apply to all dishwashers: some let a little water rinse through the detergent compartment during that part of the cycle, so some is released even if you're using a tablet. Once they get to the main part of the programme, the compartment flips open to let the tablet fall out so it can finish dissolving completely. This totally solves the problem described in the video. Unlike the type he describes, these dishwashers don't even have a separate place for prewash detergent (because it would be redundant). I'm in the UK, and all dishwashers I've seen work this way, even really cheap ones. So it's probably a country thing (most likely Europe vs US).

Scoundreller 5y ago
Should be straightforward to figure out which kind your unit is (look and see if it is sealed off or not).
loser777 5y ago
Note that a further complication is that some don't have a compartment but literally an indent on the tablet compartment where you're supposed to pour some prewash/detergent and it just gets incoporated into the mixture as it runs down. I suspect you can "boost" any dishwasher's prewash detergent amount by adding a bit on the door/in the bottom.
systemvoltage 5y ago
I'm in the US using a GE dishwasher. It is similar to the ones in UK - no pre-wash compartment.

jrootabega 5y ago

I've experimented with some of this advice in my dishwasher, with mixed results. Some of the pod manufacturers explicitly state that the pods are designed to compensate for the lack of a pre-wash, so this isn't a case of Out-of-touch Dumb Companies vs Smart Customer. Whether you believe the makers is another thing, but I think the video is oversimplifying for the sake of making viewers feel smart and achieving factoid popularity.

beenBoutIT 5y ago
Pods are a scam. They measure out ordinary crappy dishwashing detergent and package it up in a 'pod' then mark the price up 10x. In the US soap seems to exist in a grey area where manufacturers can make unsubstantiated claims about performance based on 'testing' that they supposedly do internally. The new Dawn dishwashing liquids make claims about having exponentially more cleaning power and yet cleaning anything requires exactly the same amount of soap as it did with the old Dawn.
- Groxx 5y ago
  Sure, if you buy the ones that cost 10x more per load. The ones I buy are about 15% higher. The convenience is worth it for us for the ~$2/month increase.

IronWolve 5y ago

I stopped using pods/packs/powerballs types and pre-scrubbing after this video. I thought cheaper liquids just didn't work, because I wasn't filling the pre-wash. I tried cheaper store brand liquid detergent with pre-wash, and with pre-wash gels work great. Right now, I'm using Cascade Gel, really happy for the price and amount. 6 bux. It's the same price as generics if you don't buy it on amazon. TIL, use the pre-fill

beenBoutIT 5y ago
With dishwashing detergent liquids are superior. Liquid detergent often contains varying amounts of KOH which is about as good as it gets in terms of cleaning power that won't also destroy dishes(NaOH). They can't put KOH in dry detergent so it's made with less effective chemicals that are better at staying in a powdered form without clumping.

dmhmr 5y ago

I knew what this video was before I clicked. I love his content that gets into this type of focus. His Coleman Lantern videos were great too.

pavel_lishin 5y ago
Ah, another Dietz nut!

joegahona 5y ago

I love this video. The one part that didn't seem to work for me is the "don't pre-rinse your dishes" part -- perhaps my dishwasher's fault, but I was really disappointed when, after several washes and varying degrees of gook on plates and bowls, stuff was still coming out dirty. I quick pre-rinse works best for me and my dishwasher, combined with the other tips in his video.

wpearse 5y ago
Yeah. We stopped giving the dirty dishes a quick rinse and scrub after watching that video and all that happened is the dishdrawer drain blocked and the kitchen flooded. (First time ever.) We’re back to giving the dishes a quick rinse and scrub before they go in the dishwasher.
- InvertedRhodium 5y ago
  While you don't need to pre rinse the dishes, you should at least probably scrape any leftover food off of them. I don't think I've ever had a load of dishes with enough physical matter on them to actually block a drain, and I've never pre rinsed.
mynegation 5y ago
That runs contrary to my experience as well. Fats, syrups, and greens - you don’t necessarily have to rinse and scrub but try to leave some starchy sticky rice or eggs to dry on the plate and that stuff may not come off, it will be dried and cemented even further.
yencabulator 5y ago
It really depends on your dishwasher. I recently upgraded an old dishwasher to a Bosch 500, stopped pre-rinsing, and the end result is better than what the old one could do with pre-rinsing.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]