I´m getting a new Diswasher

[rolls_rapide]

High Spin Speeds in the UK...

...are primarily there to get as much water out of the clothes as possible, due to our extremely changeable weather.

You can safely say, that from October onwards, outdoor-dried laundry requires finishing off in the drier.

As Launderess says, it was the norm to use kitchen pulleys, clothes horses and even drape the laundry over the central-heating radiators (water-filled, heated by gas or oil-fired boiler).

These days, tumble driers are widely available, but for least drier-use expenditure, it is recommended to spin the clothes at a fast speed.

My grandparents visited my grandmother's brother's family in California, in the early 1970s. My gran had some clothes in the US washer, and when they were spun they were still soaking wet! But that didn't matter, as the Santa Ana winds dried things very quickly indeed - except one side was white, and the other was filthy brown, due to the desert dust!

 

[hoovermatic]

I have tried some of these 'glass protection' devices that hang in the machine and also detergents that claim to have it built in and have come to the conclusion, that in my personal experience, they are ineffective. I have a couple of everyday wine glasses which now have quite pretty etched designs on them courtesy of the DW and I bought highballs that were already frosted so it takes care of that problem on a day to day basis. I have stopped putting good glassware in the DW and prefer to wash it by hand, takes a bit longer, but I feel it is worth the tiny sacrifice.

 

[rolls_rapide]

Glass Corrosion

Several years ago when I was visiting my grandfather, I was cleaning his kitchen sink with 'Domestos' bleach. The cloth still had bleach on it when I wiped the inside door glass of his Hoover 'EcoLogic' 1300.

As soon as it dried, I noticed that the door glass which was previously perfectly clear, seemed to have become clouded - the same cloudiness that affects drinking glasses in a dishwasher.

It could not be cleaned off, so my conclusion at the time was that chlorine bleach knocks seven bells out of glassware.

I also gather that household chlorine bleaches also employ a strongly alkaline detergent to assist the bleaching action; namely sodium hydroxide.

So it might be the alkaline detergents that mostly affect glass (this would tally with the corrosive sodium metasilicate used in the older dishwasher detergents). Chlorine bleach might just have an additional effect.

Modern dishwasher detergents are supposed to employ a gentler sodium disilicate formulation.