Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think rinse aid is a separate issue from the phosphates (please don't use add'l phosphates-- the bay is having a hard enough time as it is).

The new dishwashers do seem to all recommend rinse aid for drying. Any reason in particular you don't want to use it?

Why add one more chemical to our lives that we don't currently use? The rinse aids leave a slight film. I don't want to have that in my foods.

Rinse aid is most often just vinegar. Most dishwasher require it.

Besides the phone phosphates ban was a bit dumb because residential phosphate contribution was less than 1%, 99% was due to farms.

Anonymous wrote:I think rinse aid is a separate issue from the phosphates (please don't use add'l phosphates-- the bay is having a hard enough time as it is).

The new dishwashers do seem to all recommend rinse aid for drying. Any reason in particular you don't want to use it?

Why add one more chemical to our lives that we don't currently use? The rinse aids leave a slight film. I don't want to have that in my foods.

I think rinse aid is a separate issue from the phosphates (please don't use add'l phosphates-- the bay is having a hard enough time as it is).

The new dishwashers do seem to all recommend rinse aid for drying. Any reason in particular you don't want to use it?

Anonymous wrote:Thanks everyone.

Do you have to use the rinse aid to get dry dishes with the Kitchenaide?

That is something we want to avoid.

All dishwashers require it because the government banned use of phosphates.

You can still phosphate additives or commercial cascade if necessary.

Thanks everyone.

Do you have to use the rinse aid to get dry dishes with the Kitchenaide?

That is something we want to avoid.

We just got a high end kitchenaid. I resisted getting a filter based one (vs a "disposer" based one) for a long time but the more I looked into the more I decided that wasn't a big issue (a good filter dishwasher will break the food down enough that nothing remains in the filter, and the "disposer" isn't really that impressive).

We haven't had it that long, but I have checked after dirty washes (with scraping but no prerinsing) and nothing is left on the filter. Also a disposer will always be louder than a filter dishwasher.

Visitors to our house also don't realize our kitchenaid is on, although if you pay attention and you are standing next to it you can tell.

I don't have experience with the Miele-- I have heard that the high end ones are very good but the low end ones not so much.

Anonymous wrote:We've had our $800+ KA for 4 years or so. Love it. So quiet that my parents often don't know it's on. DH and I have better hearing, so we hear it, but it's quiet. We put everything in it and it works great, w/o much pre-rinse. I scrape the large chunks off and that's it. I do a better pre-rinse with banana, avocado, or yogurt - those don't come off as well from the silverwear. Nothing else gives us problems. Plastic stuff is dry w/o spots (we use the finish tabs for soap).

We have a similar age Kitchenaide in our new (to us) house and also use the Finish Tabs... but I've noticed that the silverware seems to be getting some small rust-like spots on it (and it's not old or super cheap silverware) - any thoughts on what could be causing this? The water? Need to switch soaps?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've had a Kitchenaid dishwasher for 10 years now and it's been great, quiet too. The only thing the other day the spring on the door broke. Has that ever happened to anyone? Did you try to fix it?

Ours was so loud I could hear it changing cycles from my bedroom on a different floor, it didn't clean glasses well. Whe the spring broke after one year, we happily trashed it for a Meile.

You must have had a bad one.

Meileis inferior to a good kitchenaide.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/06/2-700-miele-dishwasher-a-middling-performer-in-our-tests/index.htm

I really really wanted a quiet dishwasher. We got a Meile (after hearing the "quiet" top of line Kitchenaid all over the house). Now we routinely have people opening the dishwasher while it's running (it's so quiet that people don't realize it's on). It's that quiet. Our KitchenAid appliances from 20 years ago held up well, but not anymore, in our experience (and 3 home renovations as our personal proof).