Legends of Dishwashing: GE Potscrubber

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GE Canadian Medallion 850 Dishwasher

Hi Kevin, thanks for sharing this interesting DW with us, it looks like it would perform as well as the early 80s GE high end DWs here in the US like the GSD1200, GSD2500, 2600 and the 2800.

 

It is interesting how they added a passive filter in the corner of a Porcelain On Steel tank, we never saw a filter on these Hot Point style machines in the US, but it looks like it would probably work about as well as the much larger passive filter that the US plastic tank DWs used.

 

The POS tanks were cheaper to make and GE continued to use them in the US into the early 90s, interestingly they had a lot of rust issues and were also much more likley to leak around the door and at a few other places where screws had to go through the tank walls.

 

The GE ad proclaiming how much more you can fit in this GE DW is a little miss leading, while it is impressive that the regular size GE broiler pan a grid will fit in the GE DW you have to keep in mind that GE designed all their DWs to hold their broiler pan. By tring to put that BP in these DWs it really cut down what else could be put in a load.

 

It would be easy for any DW manufacturer to come up with a load that fit their DW well and would not fit in a competitors machine, Maytag and Kitchenaid did ads like this as well.

 

All in all a very cool machine, I would expect it to be a little louder than the plastic tub machines and overall a little shorter lived with the POS tank and the plastic control panel, but at least it may be less of a fire hazzard if something goes terribly wrong and the machine is more easily recycled with a higher metal content.

 

John .
 
10 minutes?

This I can not imagine... though I am not saying you are incorrect. In the US the Potscrubbers cycle was often 45 minutes long on average. Even the BOL models (without the extender) after 1982 had a 25 minute main wash. I just can't see 10 minutes being sufficient enough to remove backed on foods.

What temp is this machine rated for filling? Does it do thermal holds in the main wash?
 
It surprised me too that the main wash on the Potacrubber cycle was only ten minutes, the total wash time is about 45. I figure the prewash being 10 minutes, and a five minute prewash rinse is how GE got away with a shorter wash. It's similar to how Maytag programmed the cycles on the RR with the mainwash always being 13 minutes, just adding more prewashes on the front end. Normal and Heavy are only about 5 minutes apart in length, it's finished washing in little over 30 minutes for heavy.

There are timed thermostatic holds on Heavy and Potscrubber on the final rinses, main wash during Potscrubber has a timed thermostatic hold as well. If you add the Sani option, you're extending the whole time by about 20 minutes. I've never used heated dry on Heavy or Potscrubber as the thermo hold does so well.
 
Timed thermal hold

How long is the timed hold? I'd imagine that might help you get away with the 10 minute main wash. But in all honesty if your machine is that fast it makes me love it even more. FWIW, I could be wrong, but that heater looks more powerful then the heater in US porcelain tub Hotpoints.
 
Prewashes

And oh, US GEs usually did 3 on the Potsmasher and normal cycle. Between 1979 and 1985 it was two final rinses and then it went to 3 for about 20 years.

Potscrubber and normal used 11.4 and then it went to 12.1 on the 7 fill machines.
 
What water temperature is your water heater set at? Mine was always 120 to 125.  Once I moved it all the way up to 155 and it still didn't shorten PotScrubber or Normal.  I will admit, PS was a little bit longer in winter than summer. 

 

As described above, my prewash was bout 5 minutes at most, then a 4 minute prerinse, then a 6 or 7 minute prerinse, and then on to the main wash on Normal and PotScrubber.  On light,  the 6 or 7 minute prerinse was eliminated. 
 
I haven't measured my incoming temp, I will when I'm home later this week. I remember seeing another Potscrubber post a while ago where the cycle chart was shown for US machines, my Heavy Wash is your Normal wash.

I plan on doing this as series on every legendary machine, up next will be the Power Clean machines.

Thanks for all the feedback though guys, this is a great community.
 
There was an updated version of the GSD1200 (seen in online manual) and the cycles were PS, Heavy (my Normal); Normal (my light soil) and the rest were the same.  I always used Light and tough stuff was PS.  I'd use energy saver wash for soil that hadn't sat for more than a day or if I was doing a lot of baking/cooking. 
 
Cycle times

GE tweaked those a lot. Literally ever 4 years the cycle sequence was tweaked, fills added or eliminated, time tinkered with and timed thermal holds shorted or extended. Some models would add heat in the last rinse on Potscrubber others would not. If anyone is curious I can post the cycle times to several 1980s perma-tuff machines.
 
I'd love to have that posted too. I'd like to see if the modifications could be show chronically as you said things changed every 4 years or so as time went on.
 
The lower end models were total crap, we had one in our old house, a 1999/2000 almost bottom of the line, and it demanded dishes be thoroughly rinsed, preferably washed before loading, or else any leftover food would be ground up and splattered all over everything. Needless to say we left it there! We now have a 1997 Maytag Jetclean that will wash anything you throw at it!
 
@Dustin

The late 90s/2000s BOL models were pure trash. I had one in my apartment, it was horrific to say the least. This era was GE's rock bottom in the appliance industry. These machines had no filters, greatly reduced water levels, Normal wash where light wash would start on top of that, and these happened to go on recall since I first discovered that after only three years in use, filling the rinse aid dispenser would cause it to literally drain out all over the floor. At first I did not know that, because it started gradually (progressively) getting worse and would dribble down (from the inner door into the tank) while the machine was running causing it to froth and suds to spill. At first I thought it was residual detergent leftover from hand prewashing (you had to literally scrub every food particle away or it would redeposit itself all over the top rack) until I made the connection that filling the rinse aid resvoir would cause the next few washes to overflow. So I thought I was over filling the thing, or spilling it without knowing it... Until eventually I gave up, only to try at a latter time with RA dripping down the toekick. Thats when I knew it was not me lol.

Immigrants. Remember how it has been said here that BOL GEs got immigrants and new users hooked into automatic dishwahsing? Not these turds. Being that a lot of immigrants in the apartment complex, for many it was their first time with a DW. Boy did they think it was a gimmick. Those who tried it would say 'why do people even bother, when you have to wash them anyway' 'whats the point of this?' I do not blame them. Sadly when they would bring this up with US Home owners they would get a two headed look, and some even assumed that Americans ate with dirty dishes at first. (For many it was difficult to fathom that not all DW were created equal)

One immigrant couple had the same problem I did with the RA. First few times they used their machine they used regular dishsoap not knowing better. Of course it caused a ton of suds. Not knowing what they were doing wrong I told them they needed something like Cascade, and of course to fill the RA dispenser, prewash, use the Heavy cycle, expect mediocre results being a BOL GE, ect. It worked out for them, until their machine started doing the same thing as mine: sudsing from leaking RA. Of course they did not know that and could not figure out what they were doing wrong. They returned detergents, tried you name it, until finally giving up. Everyone including myself at the time thought they were somehow getting dishsoap into the machine- they couldn't figure it out- even thought we might be lieing to them. All this was before others started having the same problem.

I swapped the RA dispenser on mine after experiencing it much latter (wish I called the landlord, I latter found out they were replacing the whole machine with RA leaks). Finally before moving out I received a call from the rental office about a major recall regarding "detergent residue and electrical fires" and that maintance simply needed a weekday access to my apartment to resolve it. It was then when I Googled it, and where I thought it had just been a small freak set of manufacturing defects effecting a small batch of machines my complex got stuck with, turned out to affect millions of machines.

As for longevity these did not even come close to the 80s and mid 90s GEs. Being that this was a 1000 unit apartment complex that also had several other satellite properties it had a 24hr in house maintenance team. When ever they threw out water heater or appliances they would set them over by the bulk trash dumpsters where residents could drop of old couches, televisions ect. Needless to say I got to see two dozen machines a week if not in a single day- over the course of several years. Nearly every single one of these late 90s/early 2000s GEs had rusted or calcified drain solenoid brackets. A lot of them also had failed timers according to maintenance. This was of course side by side to 80s perma tuffs and porcelain Hotpoints which looked like they could have gone another 30 years. Why were they being thrown out? Simple, the properties from the 80s were gradually being renovated. Thats not to say that the older machines did not break, but the build quality was vastly different, ie the pump seals from the 80s machines were better with ceramic wear rings were as the 90s were thinner with already rusting metal wear rings.
 
Cycle Sequnce

Give me some time to post them all. But here are the first set. An early 1983 GSD500D (notice the reduced fill times) GSD500D (normal fill times, 1985 machine) GSD600G (extra post main-wash rinse, tweaked water fills, 1989) and GSD500X from 1996. All these are BOLs.

chetlaham-2017032709311006635_1.jpg

chetlaham-2017032709311006635_2.jpg

chetlaham-2017032709311006635_3.jpg

chetlaham-2017032709311006635_4.jpg
 
I love this thread. Thank you.
Grew up with GE dishwashers.
I know they weren't "the best"....they were more a clunky, brute force style machine, but I do miss them.
Not that I'd go back to one....but they mostly did the job.
 

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