Dishwasher white stuff - driving us nuts!!

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Melt In The Sun

Melt In The Sun

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Oct 29, 2009
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Tucson, AZ
From time to time, with no way of predicting when, we've been getting this white crust on our dishes from the dishwasher. :rant: Looks like scale to me; can be removed by vigorous scrubbing, but dissolves easily with vinegar. This has happened intermittently with three different detergent brands...

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Is there some trick to stopping this :?: It's quite a pain. Thanks!
 

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Well you just need to be doing all the dishes by hand then! :hammer: Ok I knew that wouldn't work!

The fact that Vinegar will dissolve it readily tells me it's hard water stains. Looks like it might be time for a softener.

The good news about that is that you can use it to refill your pool from evaporation & splashout and not add hardness. :goodjob:
 
MITS,

From your description, it sounds like it happens suddenly. My hard water deposits are a slow accumulation on glassware that may take a few months before it really starts to accumulate. Is that glassware in the pic or metal?

That doesn't look at all like what I get and I get no deposits whatsoever on metalware.

If it's occuring suddenly, I would suspect a malfunction in the rinse cycle of the dishwasher.
 
Thanks all!
Dave, it is sudden and intermittent, and deposits the scale on everything (metal, plastic, glass) equally. Probably 19 of 20 cycles things will be fine, then out of the blue everything will come out splattered with white. I really don't relish the idea of installing a softener.
 
Do you use the drier cycle when the wash cycles are done? Which soap do you use? When my former dishwasher was malfunctioning sometimes it would leave a layer of soap on the dishes and if it ran through the drier cycle it would bake that stuff on!
 
MITS, I get the same thing and I have been blaming the dishwasher soap. This all started for me after switching to a gel soap instead of powder. I hope we both get it figured out because it is a royal PITA...
 

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Shane, it's a whirlpool gold; don't know anything beyond that. We never use the heated dry, or any other of those special things.

I'll have to ask DW about the rinse aid, or rinse cycle(s). She's the boss of such things; I try to keep my distance from dirty dishes.... :-D
 
Also, if you read the instructions it will say that you must leave some food on the dished for the dishwasher soap to attack. Otherwise it etches your dishes. Still can't convince my husband of that one, "Please, don't wash the dishes so clean before you put them in the dishwasher." You do need to remove eggs and oatmeal and rice, which all get harder with hot water, and peanut butter. But most everything else can stay.
 
My water is not exceptionally hard but hard enough. With just the two of us we only need to run it every few days. When I do a rinse/hold I frequently use some vinegar in the water and then do another clear water rinse. This accomplishes two things; keeps calcium scale down on the internals of the dishwasher, and keeps it from getting smelly for the couple or three days the just rinsed dishes sit in there. Our dishwasher was new last year and uses very little water.

I, also, alternate, between two different detergents every other time. For some reason it seems to get them cleaner. We only have a four gallon tank to feed our dishwasher so I, also, use the heated water function, but not the heated dry. I once used the sani rinse (almost boiling water) and it deformed some microwavable plastic containers.

Rinse Aid is great.

gg=alice
 
OK; problem appears to be alleviated. We'll be using a rinse aid from now on, and managed to get all the scale off the dishes by running the dishwasher through a normal cycle with a cup filled with vinegar sitting upright in the bottom rack (found that tip in the owner's manual :hammer: ). It worked perfectly.
 
Melt In The Sun said:
OK; problem appears to be alleviated. We'll be using a rinse aid from now on, and managed to get all the scale off the dishes by running the dishwasher through a normal cycle with a cup filled with vinegar sitting upright in the bottom rack (found that tip in the owner's manual :hammer: ). It worked perfectly.
Click to expand...

Great. :whoot: Good ole white vinegar comes through again. Around my place white vinegar is almost as important as duct tape. :lol:

gg=alice
 
Gosh I'm glad you solved this because we started having it suddenly about a 4-5 months ago. I ended up tossing our fancy plastic bowls :lol: , but couldn't bring myself to get rid of the pans! WIsh I'd held onto the bowls now that I know how to get the stuff off.

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anonapersona said:
Also, if you read the instructions it will say that you must leave some food on the dished for the dishwasher soap to attack. Otherwise it etches your dishes. Still can't convince my husband of that one, "Please, don't wash the dishes so clean before you put them in the dishwasher." You do need to remove eggs and oatmeal and rice, which all get harder with hot water, and peanut butter. But most everything else can stay.
Click to expand...

This is what we were told too Anona, that the detergent is designed to breakdown the food and when there is no food (cuz dishses were rinsed, it leaves a residue on the dishes...
 

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