Hi guys
I tried to fill up the salt container on my Smeg dishwasher tonight and to my horror found that it is full of water. The web has not supplied any answers, so I wondered if anyone has any suggestions please... Thanks in advance...
My Hotpoint salt dispenser is always full of water that's how the salt gets into the wash. I guess this is the first time you have had to top it up - just pour the salt in and it will displace the water.
Peter
The message from "larry" contains these words:
It's supposed to be.
The machine uses salt solution to flush the "hardness" previously taken from the water by the built in softener device. It can't use the salt dry to do this - it has to be wet. That's why the salt container is full of water.
They're all like that - but it can be a bit alarming first time.
Add the salt slowly so that the water being displaced doesn't wash the salt out as fast as you're pouring it in.
Don't worry about all the very salty water now sitting inside the machine, it's designed to cope with it.
The message from "Peter Andrews" contains these words:
The salt never actually gets into the wash. It's used as brine to flush the water softener. The outflow from that should go straight down the drain.
This is why DW tablets with "salt action" don't make much sense.
I think it usually works like that. Our Bosch spills water from the salt filler, into the sump, as salt is added. No problem.
This is marketing speak, as they believe that the general populace is too thick to realise how it works.
The tablets contain phosphates that attempt to reduce the worst effects of hard water. However, they prefer to call this "salt action", so that people equate it with putting salt in the softener. Of course, it can't be anywhere near as effective as a proper ion-exchange softener, so you should continue to put salt in the chamber.
Christian.
And the phosphates contribute to eutrophication. After having radically reduced the amount of phosphate in laundry detergent to improve river and lake water quality, it's now being put back in again by increasing usage of phosphate based dishwasher detergent. It's mad.
Is also a darn sight more expensive than the older method of salt + detergent + rinse aid. Also, on most dishwashers, you can minimise the usage of salt by setting the dispenser for the appropriate amount depending on your water hardness. The three-in-1 tablets cater for near-on the worst case, and so most people will be dumping an excess of phosphate into the drain that they didn't need to. It's Calgon all over again.
Sigh.
Sid
The message from snipped-for-privacy@mail.com contains these words:
Which is probably why plain simple DW detergent is becoming hard to find 'cos all the shelf space has been given over to 17in1 tablets "Removes even dead elephants without scraping even in hard water areas" etc.
Asda's value brand tablets seem the simplest, cheapest and most effective at the moment.
£ shops can be a good place to buy rinse aid, and in the past I've got boxes of 20 tablets that work fine.
cheers, Pete.
An ex-business associate of mine is a chemical engineer for a major cosmetics company. Being the kind chap that he is he explained all the ingredients in all the "soapy" products - including the science of dishwashers. He buys the cheapest dishwasher tablets you can get - and if it's a particularly nasty load just puts a squirt of fairy liquid in the base of the machine (the least foaming variety he can lay his hands on) to act as the pre-treatment. Apparently this is effectively all the "powerball" and all the other great inventions are - plus it invariably also leaves the dishes with more of a hand washed finish on the glassware than just a dishwasher tablet on it's own* In reality this is what the new fairy tablets are - they have a reduced foaming mix of fairy liquid in the capsule too - they work quite well IME but are firghtfully expensive so once the ones that we got cheap when they were introduced run out it'll be back to cheap tablets and a suirt of fairy :)
Cheers dan.
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