Pre-wash

These days a dishwasher is considered an essential home appliance. Most homes are equipped with a dishwasher, but this doesn’t mean that everyone is enjoying sparkling clean dishes. Although there are a lot of factors that can affect dishwasher’s performance, one of the most important is the detergent. Using too little detergent will leave your dishes dirty, but too much can also create problems. So here we’ll delve a little deeper into how much detergent you should be using to get those sparkling clean results. How Old is Your Appliance? The first consideration for determining the correct amount of dishwasher detergent is the age of your appliance. If you’ve recently upgraded from an old machine, you’re likely to have experienced some issues if you’ve not adjusted your detergent levels. Modern dishwashers are designed to be as energy and water efficient as possible, so they use far less water than older models. This reduced water use means that you also need far less soap to complete the task. In the late 1970s when dishwashers had started to become very popular, the average model used approximately 15 gallons of water per cycle. This decreased to between six and 10 gallons per average cycle in the 2000s, but has dropped again with today’s dishwashers that can use as little as 2 gallons. This makes it easy to see how using the same amount of detergent that you’ve gotten used to using in your 1980s model is sure to create a problem in a

Save water when washing dishes We've previously written about ways to save water in your home during this drought. Click on the link below: Saving Water In Your Home Now, we'd like to specifically call your attention to saving water with your dishwasher. Here are three simple ways to save water when washing dishes. 1. Use your dishwasher. Research has shown a surprising number of households who have dishwashers do not use them. Sometimes residents believe that by hand washing they'll get their dishes cleaner, that it's more sanitary, and they'll use less water. Of course, none of this is true. Hand washing dishes uses far more water, is likely to not do as good a job getting dishes clean, and is definitely less sanitary than using a dishwasher. 2. Don't pre-wash dishes. For decades dishwasher manufacturers have been imploring homemakers to forego pre-washing dishes before they put them in the dishwasher. There are two important reasons that we should not pre-wash dishes. First, it's a huge waste of water. You're bound to use as much water pre-washing the dishes as your dishwasher uses for the entire cycle. Also, pre-washing your dishes can actually cause your dishes to come out of the dishwasher dirty, and in some cases it may even damage your dishes (especially glassware). Dishwasher detergent removes dirt molecules from the dishes and suspends them in the water where they get flushed out of the dishwasher. When the dishes are pre-washed, the dishwasher is unable to capture dirt