Ariston Dishwasher Experiment

[gansky1]

When Nate was here on his way back to San Fransisco a few weeks ago, we went over to Menards to look for a two-wheel cart for him to take (Tip: If you're going to collect appliances, you have to be able to move them about by yourself ;-) They were out of carts, but we naturally were drawn to the appliance department where we spent more than a few minutes perusing the rather thin selection on display. We made our way back to the clearance aisle and found this Ariston dishwasher on sale for $180. We debated a short time (well, Nate looked at me with puppy-dog eyes and talked me into it!) and brought it home. We put it in the kitchen immediately and set about making dinner-dishes to fill it up. It performed OK although we had a bit of trouble with one of the corners of the upper rack and the outside of a bowl. A quick adjustment solved that problem but unfortunately, it was a first indicator of more "quirks" to come.

 

[gansky1]

Here is the machine empty. You can see the lower rack has "cradle" type tines along the front and back of the tray and a pair of folding tines in the center. The cutlery basket can be moved anywhere in the lower rack which is a seemingly handy feature but in reality, there aren't that many places it sits securely. The upper rack has more of the cradle-type tines along both sides and a row of inverted "V" tines from front to back on one side. The multi-level floor of the rack allows for glasses and cups to be angled allowing water to run off. (this is nothing new although some manufacturers would have you think it is!) There is also a shelf (blue) in the upper rack that has small tines for loading cutlery, utensils, etc. - more on that in minute.

 

[gansky1]

Not a BobLoad, but pretty illustrative.

Here we have the lower rack loaded with most of a meal's worth of dishes. The plates on the right side are in the cradle rack, supported by the tines in the center. The front row of tines is folded down to ease loading of larger items. The muffin pans were pretty dirty with a bit of burned bits around the edges and the Corning casserole was from a batch of Au-Gratin potatoes. Everything appeared to be very clean after the Intensive Wash cycle ended.

With the lack of vertical tines in the lower rack, other than the center row which are useless for smaller items, it can be difficult to stack bowls, pans, etc. as they either have to lay flat on the bottom (casserole) or be resting upon one another as in the mixer bowl on the casserole dish here.

 

[gansky1]

Tines, tines, give me tines!

Now is where the trouble begins.

In the upper rack, there is a more serious lack of vertical tines, although the row of inverted "V's" helps some. As in the lower rack, bowls must rest on each other to maximize space. Because of the narrow channels of the upper rack's floor, there are no places where wide-mouth cups, mugs or glasses can sit without tipping over - especially when moving the rack in and out for loading. Most items are leaning on another item, not a huge disadvantage if you are careful about loading and bear in mind that the water sprinkles must reach all surfaces. The blue shelf in the right is very nearly worthless because if attached as you see it here, it cannot be lifted up out of the way for loading and unloading - it hits the top of the tank. If you move it down to the next bar on the side of the rack, it's so low that you cannot get much of anything under it except tea cups. It sure looks pretty though and I did find a few things to lay that I might normally have tossed into the cutlery basket. The lack of tines also proved to be quite annoying when trying to place an item like the salt shaker in the front of the rack. It too had to rest against or under the weight of another item to keep it standing upright. It got the point that I was just laying glasses and other things in the top rack on their sides, etc. as there was no way to secure them until I had a full load and a symbiotic relationship could be established to hold it all in place.

Calling the water action "spray" is a bit of an exaggeration. As with most newer dishwashers today, it is more of a sprinkle when running both wash-arms simultaneously as this machine does. The center wash arm (or top as there is no constant rinse spray at the top of the tank) is very floppy on it's mounting and although the upper rack has two levels (you remove the rack from the slides and lift it up or down onto one of the two sets of rollers) it was very difficult to get things loaded in the bottom rack that didn't stop the top wash arm from turning and thereby negating two hours worth of washing time. I couldn't put a small baking sheet or cutting board in the lower rack that it didn't stop the center wash arm. This was due in part to the length of the wash arm. I was initially impressed that the center arm came nearly all the way to the edges of the upper rack but when I discovered the loading issues with the lower rack, and the propensity of the wash arm to flop around catching on tall items loaded anywhere it was clear that this racking system is not as flexible as it might appear to be. There is almost no place to load tall baking sheets, etc. because of the cradling tines at front and back and the center row of folding tines goes all the way to the edges of the rack.

You can see in the bottom of the tank that this dishwasher has a coarse and fine filtering system and a water softener. (I know! All for $180!) The water softener system worked fine, I have softened water in the house but it didn't hurt anything for sure and with the removal of phosphates from detergents, it will likely become standard on many dishwashers. The filtering system worked fine and rarely was there ever anything in there to clean out. In this pictured load, the stainless mixing bowl in the top rack was used for cornbread muffins. It's hard to see in the pics, but there was tiny bits of cornmeal all over the tank and door (like bits of grit) that I'm sure would have been caught by the filter if it had ever been washed off the walls of the tank and door. Perpetually annoying was the placement and design of the detergent dispenser. Centered high on the door is a smart placement but in the quite likely even that something blocked spray from below or the center wash-arm was stopped at the edge of the rack by a tall time along the sides of the lower rack, the detergent wouldn't get completely washed out. I tried tablets and powders, same results. Since there is no top spray above the upper rack, there wasn't enough water moving down the sides of the door to keep the area above the open dispenser protruding from the door clean and it would be covered with schmutz after most loads.

All in all, it was a fun machine to try out but I hope Craigslist will come through and get it out of my garage now! Thank the appliance gods is didn't toss out all my KitchenAids!

 

[tlee618]

Really a pretty nice looking dishwasher inside and out Greg. To bad it didn't prove to be good. I was really hoping that it might. Well as we both know, there is nothing like a Kitchen Aid!! There is just a different kind of clean feeling to the dishes when you take them out!! Might be all in my head but I know if the KDS 18 ever breaks down it is going to be very hard to go back to a "new" dishwasher.

 

[toploader55]

I 100% Agree...

I love my KDS 18. Eventually

I will rebuild the second one so hopefully I will have a KDS 18 for the rest of my life.

 

[dyson2drums]

looks exactley like a fdw20 hotpoint in UK.
They're only sold in white here.

 

[rolls_rapide]

Hotpoint FDW20

I second that. Looks very like my mother's machine.

I do notice though, that the door liner is fully recessed, like Hoover's 15 place-setting machines.

 

[roto204]

Hee-hee!

Yes, my puppy-dog eyes did all the talking. You can't take me anywhere.

I agree, it's a very stylish machine (I was hoping to see a "body by Pininfarina" sticker on it somewhere), and attractively priced for all the features. And, if you weren't running it ragged with things like dirty dishes or what have you, it'd be a good performer. It is still, I insist, a hell of a lot better for the $180 than you'd be getting with a comparably priced plastic GE turbine-pump machine with bottom wash-arm and tower and no filtration whatsoever (or a Whirlpool DuraWash unit with similar restrictions). Plus, its energy consumption rating is actually extremely low.

Its construction was very reminiscent of an Asko--fully enclosed on all sides, albeit with VERY thin-gauge sheet metal (trying to find a spot to safely lift it without bending-this or breaking-that was challenging). The machine was quiet and seemed to wash well (Greg's annotations notwithstanding).

The racks were funky but well thought-out in most respects, though they were coated with what felt like pool-deck coating. It was gritty and not evenly applied, and the racks came pre-nicked in places. (I'm certain they would have met an early demise.) We both thought the racks were an interesting amalgamation of Miele and Asko design (Miele for the V-detents at the perimeter that held the plates [and did so very well], and Asko for the slanted grey insert in the bottom rack).

It truly needs a constant rinse--desperately--and the QA people (making the grand presumption that there were any) need to spot-check the wash arms and remind the assemblers that you really should sand off all the extra plastic flashing after you pop the halves of the wash-arm out of the mould (each and every machine we encountered had "fuzzy wash-arms," as I termed them, and I spent ten minutes sanding Greg's before we used it).

The fitting of the top-rack arm to the water supply tube was nothing short of astonishingly bad, even though the lockring mechanism that held it in place was clever. The wobble factor was ludicrous and made me wonder if--charged with water--the thing would crash against the top rack as well as tall items in the bottom as it spun (or attempted to do so).

Nevertheless, it was an energy-efficient, stylish machine for a pricepoint where the competition was nothing but crud by comparison, and I was really pleased to see incorporated water-softening too (something that, like Greg, I hope comes standard in the future).

Though I have no idea how Merloni Elettrodomestici and Menard's got together on this (someone must have found a shipping container somewhere and said to themselves, "Oh, wow, I totally forgot about these!"), since we can't find Ariston dishwashers anywhere else (and the machine came with a notice that the original distributor had gone bankrupt, and thus, the warranty actually could not be honored), it was a fascinating aside and a fun little thing to play with, for certain...

 

[rolls_rapide]

Ariston name

I think the Ariston brand has been re-positioned as a water-heater brand, similar to Bosch/Siemens/Neff having "Worcester" as their boiler brand.

My sister has an Ariston slimline dishwasher. You can now only buy Hotpoint or Indesit branded machines in the UK, which once would have included an Ariston range of dishwashers.

Point of interest: does your model have a thin, black rubber gasket in the upper spray-arm mounting? If so, this will eventually perish and leave black marks on the plastic screw mounting. It happened to mother's Hotpoint and sister's Ariston. Both work okay without it.

 

[favorit]

180 $ !!! can't believe it

Here it's impossible to buy a DW for 180 € !! the BOL Indesit is sold for 299 €, while the BOL Ariston-Hotpoint for 399 €

Merloni started the double branding (see link) a couple of years ago.
It's very funny they still make Hotpoint-only branded appliances just for the British market

Another funny thing i've never made up :
why the hell the Merloni Bros don't sell ASKO in Italy ?!?

Back to this Ariston DW : I find it very handy after parties,to wash lots of glasses even in the lower rack
I wish you it won't prove to be a lemon

http://www.ariston.info/landing/