bosch

Things I’ve learned about running a dishwasher

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A photo of our dishwasher, with the door open and some crockery inside

I’m lucky enough to have grown up in a home that had a dishwasher, which in the 1980s and 1990s was much less common than nowadays. And since 2010, Christine and I have rented flats, or owned a house, that has had a dishwasher. We also made sure that a decent dishwasher was part of our new kitchen.

My own experience, along with this YouTube video embedded below and some guides from Which? are what I’m using to inform this blog post about what I’ve learned about running a dishwasher. And, more importantly, how to get the most out of it.

1. Some dishwashers are bad

Specifically, the dishwasher that was left behind in our house by the previous owner, which was manufactured by Indesit. It may have been age, or just bad design, but frequently the glassware in particular would come out dirtier than when we put it in. We tried giving it a thorough clean a few times but this never seemed to make much difference. So we were glad to see the back of it when we had the kitchen re-modelled.

Its replacement was manufactured by Bosch, which is one of the better quality appliance manufacturers. In the two years since, it’s done a very good job. If you’re in the market for a new dishwasher, check the professional reviews and maybe consider paying a bit more for at least a mid-tier model. We nearly went for a cheaper model – it was going to be built-in and so the ‘brand’ didn’t bother us – but I’m glad we didn’t.

2. A good dishwasher will clean just about anything

Because our old dishwasher was unreliable, we didn’t put anything too testing in it – just cutlery, crockery and glassware. Whereas we know we can rely on our new Bosch dishwasher, and so we put more challenging items in it. This includes pots and pans, and even oven trays with burnt-on food. Whilst it can’t always get rid of all burnt-on food, it does a pretty good job. As such, we run our dishwasher with a full load every day.

Not having to wash these things up manually saves a lot of time.

Just make sure that whatever you put in is dishwasher safe – many plastics are, but avoid putting anything wooden in like spoons or chopping boards. Knives can also lose their sharpness if they’re regularly put in a dishwasher – whilst this is fine for standard crockery, we tend not to put cook’s knives in the dishwasher.

3. You still need rinse aid and salt, even with all-in-one tablets

Most dishwasher tablets are ‘all-in-one’ nowadays, and include small amounts of rinse aid and salt. That should, theoretically, mean that you can ignore the low salt and rinse aid warnings in your dishwasher. But it doesn’t.

You should still fill these up, but many dishwashers will have some way of limiting how much is used. We use all-in-one dishwasher tablets from Smol (referral link) which are posted to us regularly. But I’ve also configured our dishwasher to use a smidgen of salt and rinse aid as well. As we have a smart dishwasher, I was able to do this using Bosch’s Home Connect app, but your dishwasher’s manual may have a way of doing it using some combination of buttons on the front.

4. You can just put the dishwasher tablet in the main body of the dishwasher, but you probably shouldn’t

Some experts say that you needn’t bother putting a dishwasher tablet in the dispensing tray. This is contradicted by the above YouTube video however, and I’m siding with that. The reason why you put the tablet in a dispensing unit is so that it’s released after the pre-wash cycle. The pre-wash is essentially a rinse to get rid of dirt on your plates before the main wash starts. If your tablet is in the main part of the dishwasher during this time, then the detergent will be partly consumed during the pre-wash, leaving less behind for the main wash.

The differences of opinion here suggest that the impact of not using the detergent dispenser is minimal. And, if your dishwasher has a broken dispenser, then you can still use it with the tablet in the main body of the dishwasher. One other suggestion is to consider putting the tablet in the dispenser, and some dishwasher powder in the bottom of the dishwasher. The powder will be used in the pre-wash, and then the tablet in the main wash.

5. The ‘auto’ or ‘standard’ programme is probably the best one

Most dishwashers offer a range of programmes, which optimise for either speed, cleaning or energy, or a balance of the three. For example:

  • Eco will prioritise energy efficiency over speed and cleaning. It’ll use the least amount of water and electricity, but won’t clean as effectively and will take a long time.
  • Intensive is the most powerful cleaning programme, which may be good for heavily soiled items or pans and oven trays with burned-on food. But it’ll use more energy and may take longer.
  • Rapid will be the quickest, but to do so it’ll use more energy and won’t give as good cleaning results.
  • Standard is a compromise of the above. It’ll offer the best balance of energy efficiency, cleaning and time.

If your dishwasher offers an ‘auto’ mode, then it should use its own logic to work out which programme is most appropriate. As long as you don’t mind some unpredictability about how long the dishwasher will take, this may be your best option.

Which? compares the various cycles and finds that the standard programme offers the best results overall, with the rapid programme the worst. But whilst the eco programme performs a little worse than standard, such programmes typically use significantly less energy – about 30%, and typically saving around £15 per year. There’s some hard data here, if you’re interested.. For the most part, we use Eco or Auto.

6. You need to clean your dishwasher regularly

Our Bosch dishwasher sends out an app notification via Home Connect when it decides it needs a clean – usually every couple of months. It also has a dedicated ‘Machine Clean’ programme. But if yours doesn’t, then you can still just run it empty on a standard programme with dishwasher cleaner in it.

However, just using dishwasher cleaner isn’t enough on its own. You also need to clean the filter regularly – Which? reckons weekly, but I tend to do it at the same time as the machine clean, so every couple of months. And, less often, it’s a good idea to clean the spray arms – they can get clogged up with bits of food which prevents them from working properly.

7. There’s no need to manually pre-rinse your crockery

If you have a good dishwasher, then you don’t need to pre-rinse your items before putting them in. That’s because your dishwasher will do this for you during the pre-wash cycle.

That being said, it’s best to scrape off any bits of food on your items before loading them in the dishwasher. We have a selection of silicone spatulas that we use for this, with any leftover food going in our food waste bin. Leaving lots of food on your items will clog up your dishwasher’s filter and spray arms more quickly.

8. Your dishwasher may work better if you run the hot tap first

This one depends on how your dishwasher is plumbed in. Generally speaking, in the UK and Europe, dishwashers are plumbed in with just a cold water feed, and then the dishwasher heats the water to the required temperature. But in the USA, there’s a higher likelihood that there’s a hot water feed as well.

This is worth bearing in mind. When you turn on a hot tap, the water is sometimes cold and takes a little while to warm up. So, if your dishwasher has a hot water feed, then it may initially be getting cold water at first. Therefore, if you run the hot tap before starting your dishwasher, the water that comes into the dishwasher will be warmer.

We’re in the UK, and our dishwasher and washing machine just have cold water feeds, so this doesn’t make a difference to us.

9. Use time delays to take advantage of cheap electricity

I know I drone on about our solar panels, but to make the most of them we tend to run things like the dishwasher during the day. Bosch’s Home Connect app lets you specify times when you get cheaper energy, and so it can default to running the dishwasher at those times. For us, this is during sunlight hours, but you may be on (for example) an Economy 7 tariff when it’s cheaper to run overnight.

The smart features of our dishwasher make this easier, but most should come with some kind of time delay programme. If not, you can make a regular dishwasher ‘smart’ using a ‘fingerbot’ and an energy monitoring plug.

New boiler

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A photo of our new Bosch boiler in our kitchen

In addition to a new downstairs bathroom, we’ve also invested in a new central heating boiler for our house.

This was mainly a necessity, rather than a desirable enhancement. The existing boiler dates from 1976, making it 40 years old. This is far older than most boilers – by comparison, my parents have had their boiler replaced twice in this time. If it broke down, I doubt we would have found anyone able to fix it. In which case, we would have needed a new boiler anyway, so we might as well get a new one at a time that’s convenient for us. With Christine still on maternity leave, and the weather warming up, last week seemed like a good time to do it.

The old boiler was a so-called ‘back boiler’, located in one of the chimneys in the house and with a gas fire in front; there were also two other gas fires in the house that we had removed in the summer. We also had a large hot water tank upstairs in what will be Elizabeth’s room.

Boiler installation

The new boiler is a combination boiler that provides both heating and hot water, so the old boiler, hot water tank and gas fire were all removed as part of the works. Additionally, we had to have the boiler in a different place, as it wouldn’t have fitted in the chimney and would’ve been awkward to access even if it did fit. So it’s now in the kitchen.

As it’s a newer-style condensing boiler, it should use significantly less gas than the previous boiler. Which is good – we spent a fortune over the winter as Christine was at home all day with Elizabeth during the coldest months of the year. It’s manufactured by Worcester-Bosch – one of the better makes and comes with an 8 year guarantee. There’s also a filter, to remove impurities from the water in the system, thus pro-longing the life of the boiler – that’s the black thing on the pipes in the photo.

Cost

We got two quotes for the work. The first was our current energy supplier – a large British firm specialising in Gas, who quoted us over £6000 for the work. Thankfully a local firm quoted us less than £4000, so we went with them. They managed to do the job in two days, rather than three, and we got an interest-free credit deal for two years.

As well as the new boiler, we also got a new thermostat (more on that later), and four new radiators in the downstairs rooms. One of these, in the kitchen, replaced a hugely inefficient electric radiator; the others replaced existing radiators that were removed and stored during our earlier renovations, but haven’t worked well since they were reinstalled.

Whilst the work has been costly, I’m hoping it will pay off in terms of lower gas bills, and should mean that we’re not stuck with a broken boiler in the middle of winter.

It’s worth buying a new washing machine

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Today, I’m going to talk to you about washing machines. We bought a new one last month, and it is so much better than our old one in several ways.

The new washing machine is this Bosch model, which is normally £399 from John Lewis. We actually paid much less, by combining loads of gift vouches from the wedding and a cashback offer that was on at the time. This is now installed in our new house.

Our old washing machine is the one in our flat. It’s a Hotpoint washer-dryer, so it will wash and tumble-dry our clothes in one process. It’s probably around 10-15 years old as we assume that it was installed when the building was converted from a mill into flats.

For a start, washer-dryers are never as good as stand-alone washing machines and tumble dryers. Indeed, the dryer part of our old Hotpoint machine is pretty rubbish – if you’re lucky, it’ll get a half load mostly dry in around two and a half hours after the wash cycle is completed. Bigger loads will come out wet.

But it’s also not that great at washing either. It’s okay, but takes its time, and the drum can only take 6 kilograms of washing – about 13 pounds in old money.

The new Bosch machine has a much bigger drum that can take 8 kilograms (17.6 lb), so we can wash a third more clothes in each cycle. It’s significantly quieter, and barely makes any noise apart from during the spin cycle, which is still comparatively quiet. This is good for us as the washing machine is in the kitchen, which is directly below the room that will become the baby’s room when it’s born.

As well as being a good price, we also chose the Bosch model because of its energy and water efficiency. It’s rated A+++ for energy usage, which is the highest possible rating, and it required the least amount of water. Indeed, it looks like it uses less water than our current machine despite being able to handle bigger loads.

Despite using less water and electricity, the Bosch machine still manages to be quicker than the old Hotpoint machine – even when you enable its energy efficient mode. So not only does it wash clothes more quickly, it costs less money to do so. And it has a countdown timer telling you how long it has left. Timers these tend to be standard on new machines nowadays but this is the first time I have owned one with a timer, and it’s really useful.

We chose to get a water meter fitted to the house, and so conserving water will save us money in the long term, as will the reduced electricity costs. Furthermore, as we’ve opted not to buy a tumble dryer, this will save us more money on electricity bills in future. The house has a drying rack in the kitchen and space outside for washing lines, which we don’t have in the flat. And with a little one on the way, we’re likely to be using the washing machine far more often than now.

If you have an old washing machine, I would advise you to consider a newer model. The improvements in energy and water efficiency may well save you money in the long term and make up for the cost of buying a new machine. We’re really pleased with ours.

Plus, if you get rid of your old machine, you can create silly YouTube videos like this one.