Reply #14
Hi James
I found that the Fairy Platinum Plus pacs I purchased in March this year didn't suds up anything like they used to. I tested this in several dishwashers in several countries and got the same result when tested against slightly older Platinum Plus pacs I still had.
I have found that some pacs seem to suds up very badly if dispensed into cold or cool water. But if they are dispensed into warmer water (around 50 °C or 120 °F) then they don't seem to suds at all, or only a little. If there is food residue, especially oil, then this also seems to stop them from sudsing.
Exposed heating elements do not need to be immersed in the wash water. Having the water circulating and falling over and around the element works fine and all the element's heat goes into the water.
The filters in Euro dishwashers do a good job of preventing debris from circulating and then most of it is flushed away during the drain. Generally no cleaning of the filter is needed, or rarely. But that's as long as you're not putting larger chunks of food in or large volumes of food. A few tablespoons of cooked rice should disappear by the end of the cycle, but a couple of cups of rice can overwhelm the filter and may take a few cycles to be flushed away.
All of my machines in the US have self-cleaning filter systems (they all work in very different ways to each other) and they all filter the circulating water just as well as a European machine except for my GE Potscrubbers -- they chop everything up and circulate all of it over the dishes. But there is a filter at rear of the tub that slowly but surely catches the circulating debris and stores it in its holding tank which is flushed during every drain.
My Whirlpool Power Clean dishwasher can gobble up massive amounts of large and hard food waste and it is all chopped up and held in the accumulator and is not sprayed onto the dishes. It is all flushed away during the drain.
Here is tonight's load in the Whirlpool. For this load I used one Cascade Complete pac only. Nothing for the prewash this time.
Interestingly, CR rates detergent pacs higher than liquids and powders (although they don't test powders anymore). I assume they only use one pac per load of course. While Cascade powders and liquid say to fill both the prewash and main wash cups completely -- which I assume CR does. Yet pacs and tablets still win. But I do still regularly use powder too.
