7 ms·
Best advice from TC: verify the water is hot before starting the dishwasher. Especially if your water heater is located a ways from your kitchen and the pipes a
by relwin 1y ago
Best advice from TC: verify the water is hot before starting the dishwasher. Especially if your water heater is located a ways from your kitchen and the pipes aren't well insulated.
- spiffyk 1y agoNot sure why you were downvoted. This sounds like absolutely crucial advice for people in countries where dishwashers don't heat the water on their own. I've never seen one like that in my life, but yeah, sounds important.
- gwbas1c 1y agoWhen the dishwasher has to heat the water, it's slower than from the water heater. That's because heating water from the 120 volt circuit that the dishwasher runs on is slow. (At least in North America, 240 volt countries might not have this issue.)
- reaperducer 1y ago(At least in North America, 240 volt countries might not have this issue.) Central America, parts of South America, Japan, and Taiwan are also ~110 volt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country#/media/File:World_Map_of_Mains_Voltages_and_Frequencies,_Detailed.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_electricity_by_country#/...
- jchw 1y agoI know this is common knowledge now, but just for people who might not realize it: a typical North American NEMA 5-15R receptacle will indeed deliver 120V 15A electricity, but the electrical grid is split-phase 240V. Right across from my dish washer is an electric range; most of these require 240V 30A or 50A receptacles (I think mine is 30A, but I could be mis-remembering.) So it's not like we couldn't have higher power dishwasher, but if you already have central water heating it's kind of senseless to heat the water at the dishwasher.
- gwbas1c 1y ago> electrical grid is split-phase 240V The electric grid is three phase; 60 or 50 hz depending on where you are in the world. The voltage varies considerably, long distance transmission is in the kilovolts, or higher. "split-phase 240V" happens at the transformer near your house, in North America. I don't know as much about the rest of the world, but I've always understood it to be ~440v split phase because it allows longer wires between the transformer and the house.
- jchw 1y agoYes of course, but obviously when it comes to household dishwashers those parts of the grid are not terribly important and I think we already exceeded the pedantry budget enough. > "split-phase 240V" happens at the transformer near your house, in North America. I don't know as much about the rest of the world, but I've always understood it to be ~440v split phase because it allows longer wires between the transformer and the house. Where I live, we have three phase 480/277V for commercial. I believe that is standard in North America, but I'm not really sure.
- gwbas1c 1y agoOne of the reasons for the NACS switch is because light poles are ~270 volts, and NACS supports that voltage.
- spiffyk 1y agoAh, I forgot about North America being 120 V, that would indeed explain it. IIRC that's also why electric kettles are not really a thing there while being ubiquitous where I live.
- gwbas1c 1y agoThey're becoming more popular as word gets out. Stovetop tea kettles used to be popular.
- Aloisius 1y agoI think that has more to do with Americans not drinking a lot of hot tea. I had an instant 195 F (90.5 C) faucet in my previous kitchen which worked well for the rare times I made tea. Worked fine with a 120V circuit.
- BrandoElFollito 1y agoThis is popular in the Netherlands (the only country in Europe where I saw this)
- vel0city 1y agoMost people I know have an electric kettle here in the US. Every office I've been to has had one in the break room. Anyone who drinks tea or eats a lot of ramen or drinks anything but drip coffee will have a kettle. It's really more that historically Americans have been fine with drip style coffee makers instead of drinking pour overs or tea.
- ac29 1y agoI wonder how much this really matters. For me my dishwasher is far enough from the hot water heater that it generally takes several gallons for the water to run hot. But the wash cycle is 2+ hours long and uses very minimal water (~3 gallons/cycle). Even if I preheated the lines using the tap near the washer, it wouldnt even be lukewarm by the end of the wash cycle.
- ThrowawayTestr 1y agoMy dishes have gotten a lot cleaner since I started running the tap.
- moshegramovsky 1y agoTrying this tonight.
- ThrowawayTestr 1y agoHow'd it go?
- moshegramovsky 1y agoIt worked much better. The silverware were perfect. Usually there are a few that need to be hand-washed.
- ThrowawayTestr 1y agoAwesome, spread the word!
- moshegramovsky 1y agoI told everyone in my family! Even my parents.
- rainsford 1y ago
- gwbas1c 1y agoThe best way to do that... Pre-rinse!!!
- lolinder 1y agoPre-rinsing uses way more water than is typically necessary just to get the water hot, especially given that to be an effective pre-rinse you're going to want the water to be hot already before you even start.
- gwbas1c 1y agoYou don't rinse everything! There's always a few items that need an extra squirt before they go in. (Like pots and pans.) By the time those few items have an extra squirt, the water in the pipes is hot enough to start the dishwasher.
- BeetleB 1y agoDon't. I used to do it till I read an article telling me not to do that. Remove solid gunk. Load dishwasher. Make sure you have Rinse-aid in the dishwasher. Run. Done. Comes out clean.
- OutOfHere 1y agoRinse aids are toxic substances that will harm your stomach.
- dole 1y agoprevious hn article and discussion: “Gut epithelial barrier damage caused by dishwasher detergents and rinse aids (sciencedirect.com)” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38275060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38275060
- AStonesThrow 1y agoAll restaurants and food service facilities use “rinse agents” or “drying agents”; they simply never have the time or capacity to air-dry dishes and silverware, so eff whatever the training courses tell us to do, from the County Department of Public Health. Just slather everything with chemicals and make sure nobody can smell them from the dining room or taste it on a spoon. And yes they’re toxic. Of course they are! Next, let us coat all surfaces with antimicrobial toxins, starting with everything in the hospital, and your infant’s diaper-changing stations, and your stapler at work. It will be just like Nethack, where you open a spellbook to read it, but it is “coated with contact poison!” so I hope your Unicorn Horn is available.
- robocat 1y agoCold water only connection for all dishwashers I've seen in New Zealand. Dishwashers have an internal heating element. Are modern US dishwashers plumbed into hot water? NZ has 240 Volts (10 Amp 2400 Watt appliances are normal - anything above that needs special wiring). And NZ environmental regulations might be involved too (modern washing machines can be crappy because they try to skimp on water usage - our regulations can be overkill).
- BeetleB 1y agoYes - over the last decade or so they removed the heating element in most US dishwashers. So they either are connected to the hot water line, or have a mechanism to heat the water (or both).
- enragedcacti 1y agoI could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that even today almost all US dishwashers have some mechanism to heat the water, just maybe not the giant exposed element in the bottom like older ones. Water out of the tap is going to be on the low end of usable dish-washing temps at the very beginning of a cycle, let alone 45+ minutes later. The reason cold or luke-warm water is a problem is that the programs are extremely simple and just assume the input is 110-120f and won't stall the cycle for waiting for the target temp.
- johnwalkr 1y agoI forgot about the exposed element. These days most plastic spatulas withstand high temperature. Back in the day I think every North American family had at least one yellow spatula destroyed by the element.
- vel0city 1y agoMy dishwasher doesn't have a big exposed heating element in the pan but it still has a water heater to it. It still gets the water very hot even if I start it without getting the hot water flowing first.
- 1y ago
- ludicrousdispla 1y agoI can't recall ever using a dishwasher that had a connection to the hot water line.
- crazygringo 1y agoI've never had one that wasn't connected to the hot water line. If you've got both available, I can't see any reason why you'd choose to hook it up to cold. That just means it takes longer for your dishwasher to heat up.
- johnwalkr 1y agoWell both are not always available. In many countries, there is no hot water tank/line. There are only inline heaters or very small tanks locally where needed (each bathroom and kitchen sink). Then, you buy appliances such as dishwashers and clothes washers that also have inline heaters built-in (and you don't need to think about this, in such a region, this is the default thing that is sold). It doesn't necessarily take longer to heat up, they are pretty much instant since they are designed to heat as needed locally as needed (don't need to heat a large volume of water) and they are at least as fast to provide hot water as a central hot water tank. They can be gas or electric powered depending on what is available/cheaper in the region and you never run out of hot water with an inline heater. Even if you do have a central hot water tank, it's possible that heating water locally at the dishwasher is faster depending on distance to the tank. Anecdotally, I used to wait for hot water in the kitchen when I lived in Canada and I no longer do in Europe where I have no central hot water tank. In North America, recent high end home kitchens feature a local inline heater for hot water at the kitchen sink even though a central hot water tank exists.
- leoedin 1y agoEveryone in the uk has a central hot water heater, and nobody has a hot-water plumbed dishwasher. Presumably the 230V supply is enough to heat the water up quickly. Do you also have hot water plumbed washing machines?
- neilfrndes 1y agoFor me, moving away from pods to a dishwasher liquid (cascade 3x from Costco) made the most difference. I add some liquid in the prewash and some in the main compartment. I had to figure out the right amount to add in each via trial and error. I don't pre rinse or run the hot water beforehand, my dishes come out clean.
- Loughla 1y agoWe had to switch from pods to liquid because the pods make way too many suds, so the emergency float shut off was getting stuck. Source; that time I replaced my fucking dishwasher because I couldn't figure out why it kept leaking so much everywhere.
- al_borland 1y agoI had the opposite problem. I used the gel and the dishwasher wouldn’t completely drain. I had someone out to look at it and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I tried a pod as a last ditch effort and it worked. I’ve since moved and use the powder with my current one, as recommended by Technology Connections, and have had good luck.
- nonchalantsui 1y agoI'm surprised you made the switch to liquid and not to powder. It's so much cheaper and not as fussy as liquid. That plus a tiny bottle of rinse aid that lasts forever winds up giving me the cleanest dishes.
- neilfrndes 1y agoI tried using powder as well, but the dishes weren't coming out as clean. I will give powder another shot when my current liquid runs out
- rblatz 1y agoWe use pods, don’t mess with pre-rinse, dishes come out clean. Don’t worry about water temp. We do use jet dry otherwise the dishes come out wet.
- BrandoElFollito 1y agoThere are no dishwashers in Europe that can be connected to hit water. I had no idea that this is a thing somewhere. Are US washing machines connected to hot water as well?
- BreakingProd 1y agoYes! US washing machines have dual water intakes: one for cold and one for hot.
- tgaj 1y agoThat's no true - many european dishwashers can be connected to cold or to hot water. I have a Siemens one that has this option.
- BrandoElFollito 1y agoOh, really? I cannot say that I've tried them all, but the maybe 6 or 7 I had (mine or part of a rental) had only cold water connections.
- tgaj 1y agoThere is only one water connection but sometimes it can be connected to hot water instead of cold.