I actually used sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP) back a few years ago when I owned a house before I got a water softener. STPP is what was used in dishwashing and laundry detergents before phosphates were banned in many states (and the manufactures pull phosphates from all detergents rather than make two types). STPP works better than TSP (I tried TSP first), and is easily bought off eBay. If you have a water softener it's not needed of course, since the whole purpose of phospates is to bind up the calcium and magnesium so they don't get in the way of the degergents, but water softeners remove calcium and magnesium.
In the EU you can actually buy dishwashers with built-in salt ion exchange water softeners, so you get the benefits of soft water for dishwashing without the cost and potential environmental concerns of dumping tons of salt down the drain by doing whole-house softening (of course compared to road salt it's a drop in the bucket), but like many cool things (in my mind) they aren't available in the US, or very expensive/hard to get if you can. I think I found one model with a built-in softener sold in the US but I couldn't find a store that actually had it in stock.
Our new house already has a water softener so we'll be using that, since in addition to dishwasher performance we enjoy showering in soft water.
In the EU you can actually buy dishwashers with built-in salt ion exchange water softeners, so you get the benefits of soft water for dishwashing without the cost and potential environmental concerns of dumping tons of salt down the drain by doing whole-house softening (of course compared to road salt it's a drop in the bucket), but like many cool things (in my mind) they aren't available in the US, or very expensive/hard to get if you can. I think I found one model with a built-in softener sold in the US but I couldn't find a store that actually had it in stock.
Our new house already has a water softener so we'll be using that, since in addition to dishwasher performance we enjoy showering in soft water.
Isn't the source of most phospates in lakes and rivers farming and lawn fertilizer runoff, not detergents (before they were removed)? Compared to those two I agree that it's unlikely laundry and dishwashing detergents would cause a lot of algea bloom, but I could be wrong.Most commercial dishwashing soaps still have TSP in them.. the deemed public health risk is worse in this case than a bit of fertilizer bloom. There are definitely places that this bloom could be an issue, but as long as your water is treated (i.e. sewer) or live several miles from a lake or river and are on a septic the chance of actually causing any damage doing this is minimal.