General opinions on dish washers?

[Mukluk]

I had never used a domestic dishwasher and never thought that I would. After my washing up time increased to about 45mins most nights Mrs Mukluk convinced me that we should buy a dishwasher. I was not sold on the idea, but it did promise me more time to spend with the kids so I agreed.

After having used it for a while now I thought I would share my opinions and ask others what they think about dishwashers too.

Electricity wise they use a little bit more than washing by hand (except in winter when our wood stove heats our water, then they use heaps more electricity).

Water wise they do not use as much more water as I was expecting. I think my machine uses about 12L plus rinsing water, by hand I was using about 8L. If I had a really messy load I would do two lots by hand and use 16L, but that was very rare.

I used to wash up in a tub and use the grey water on the orchard, now the water goes in our septic which has an absorption trench out into the orchard. This gives me less control of where the water goes.

Time wise I am still not convinced either way, I would like other people’s opinions. A messy load needs a lot of prep to be put in the machine and uses a bit more time than hand washing, a cleaner load is far better on my time than hand washing.

The cost of detergent seems higher, but I do not remember what it used to cost so can not compare.

I look forward to reading other opinions!

[df418]

My dishwasher does an excellent job. Uses no electricity, cleans perfectly everytime, and looks good whilst doing it.

And as a special treat I sometimes do it for her. 🙂

Cheers

David

[Anonymous]

for me they use power, been a bit of bad publicity if recent times regard to them catching fire, another appliance that need room space, and as far as i know no capacity to enable you to cycle the water to gardens, in times of drought, we had one in a house we bought for 6 years never used it. even when we had daughter and her 4 living with us.

len

[Jenoka77]

Hi, over 12 year i have had 2 dishwashers. When my children were young I thought I could never live without one. My dishwasher stopped working about 3 months ago, I have not bothered to look at what needs fixing on it. I find the “prep” work needed before packing it and the fights and arguments over who’s turn it is to empty it were not worth the hassle. Now the kids take turns in wiping up and it gives us about half an hour to just chat about things. Some days I wish my dishwasher was working, however I do find in my “time poor” life washing up the old way is just as fast, definately more economical, and allows me time to chit chat with my children.

definately not rushing out to get the dishwasher fixed.

[froot_loopz]

I have an electric dishwasher which only gets used occasionally

the manual dishwasher (me) is incredibly tempremental when doing them and they tend to throw knives and forks at people when getting harrassed while doing them

[BlueWren]

I have an incredibly fast dishwasher – DH !! – but fast is not always thorough!! Not game to complain though – just do some touch ups when he’s not looking!! :kiss:

Sorry Mukluk.We’ve twisted your thread.I have only ever had one dishwasher,in our first Oz home,but the town water was so terrible it left white film over everything, and ate dishwashers and hot water systems but fortunately not children.

[Miaowzen]

The first thing I did when moving into our ex-govvie house was get a dishwasher installed!! (well actually I did a bathroom reno first, then the plumber did the dishwasher)

I love it and use it every day.

The main reason for me is I can’t stand having things piled up everywhere and unless I manually dry the dishes there will be a pile of clean ones and a pile of dirty ones that can’t be cleaned because I’ve run out of drying room. It drives me nuts and then DH and I fight if I ask him to do it as he says I use too many things to cook with (never mind the fact that I have to cook separately for him because he’s fussy).

With the dishwasher I fill a sink with water and water wash everything, stack it in the dishwasher, run the Eco wash and it’s all done. Minimal drying to do and putting away the dishes is quick. I guess I use it as an extra big hidden dish rack of sorts :laugh:

[Miaowzen]

And I should ad, my husband is a very slow dish washer. He will do it thoroughly for an hour and a half and complain every single minute of that :pinch:

On a manual system I’m a lazy dishwasher. I let them stack up until I’m stressed out or have no forks left.

[Rommie]

For us it’s worth it in the savings in water and time (and sanity!); haven’t measured how much electricity it goes through. Our isn’t a big machine (single-drawer Fisher & Paykel) and we mainly use it for crockery/cutlery/utensils and cat dishes. We don’t usually bother running a pots & pans cycle unless we’ve had a really big cook-up. It uses about nine litres of water on the everyday eco cycle.

Our previous kitchen was manual dishes only and they used to pile up quite a bit (with me working full time and Hubby not always well).

[purplehat]

I really like mine. It’s only a small dishdrawer, so doesn’t take up much space under the sink. The electricity use in the house hasn’t increased much, if at all because of it. The water use seems to be similar to before. It’s going to be one of the harder things to give up when we move..

Not only that, but I hated washing dishes by hand. I’ve never had a dishwasher before this one, and it’s lovely having clean bench-tops while waiting for the dishwasher to get full enough to do a load.. I don’t dread walking into the kitchen so much now. 😉

[chareaves]

Do not, ever, under any circumstances, buy an Electrolux dishlex dishwasher.

1. They’re supposed to be quiet. They’re not remotely quiet.

2. They don’t wash the dishes properly, despite trying all sorts of variations of amounts and types of detergents.

3. Many many people have discovered that after 4 years (which I think is 1 or 2 years past the warranty) the heating element, or some part of it, dies. We didn’t know this until, you guessed it, 4 years had past (pretty much to the day). It stopped working. We googled and found that this was a massively widespread problem. Electrolux had done nothing about it. The cost to get it fixed was not worth it.

We don’t have one now and it’s ok. There are definitely times when one would be nice, but overall it’s fine. If we were going to get another one, we would only get a high-quality (probably German) one and we’d make sure it had something like a 10 year warranty.

[Snags]

I have had one for about 25 years and use it about once a week usually

On the weekend when power is 10 cents a KW or after 11 pm midweek if we run out of plates or forks.

It cleans better than my wife or I can and it doesn’t complain

Downside is not being able to reuse the water,I dont think it uses more water than hand (probably less)

and power bill is about $100 a quarter so its not killing me there either

[Miaowzen]

Mine Is a Kleenmaid. Australian company apparently. It is quiet and I got it secondhand for only $100 🙂

[sipi]

with 4 young children, we use ours everyday.

I NEVER rinse or wash things before they go in.

We empty food into the compost bin and then the plates / dishes go straight into the machine. So packing it is no different to stacking plates on the sink.

We have our house fully plumbed with rain water, so in winter it just uses that.

Not sure re electricity costs, but we have gas hot water and have hot water plumbed into machine. So dishwasher isn’t heating the water, so in effect we use a eco cycle all the time. Water goes straight into machine at 45 or 55C depending on cycle I select.

Then children take turns unloading the machine as part of their jobs.

It is a Miele – currently 12 years old and hasn’t missed a beat.

Rarely we rinse or scrub pots before placing them in the machine, or soak them in the sink if something is burnt on, like lasange pans. We can then use that water on pot plants before putting dish into machine.

I won’t live without it. It is better on my hands not having to wash up dishes – less dermatitis. Dishes never left sitting on bench waiting to get washes. Dishes always come out clean.

But I have rented in previous places and I believe you get what you pay for. We paid more, but as I said, nothing is rinsed or washed before going into the machine.

[gypsyoak]

I love mine. In my original kitchen I measured out the amount of water in my sink. My sink was only little and it used 14L of water for 1 load of dishes. We do a lot of cooking and we would use 2-4 sinks of water to wash our dishes in a day (depending on visitors) we then renovated our kitchen and ended up with a much larger sink. Our dishwasher uses 17L of water and does approx 4-6loads of dishes including the pots and pans. I have 2 little kids and not a lot of spare time so it is brilliant in terms of saving me time. It uses electricity, but I am ok with that. The benefits to me outweigh the negatives. When it was out of action, I really felt it. The kitchen was always messy, I didn’t have time to do them all the time and it really was very frustrating. We are also on rainwater and so it saves on water too. it is one appliance that I am very grateful for. 🙂

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