New 2018 KitchenAid DW; KDTE304GPS

[johnb300m]

Hello all,
This is a bittersweet post.
As many know, I was a proud owner of a GE PDT720 dishwasher, that has a very long thread of its own, when I bought my house.
I'm annoyed to say, the GE has not held up in the test of time, in what was really moderate use; about 1-3 loads a week.
Upon some close inspection about a month ago, I found that the pump motor had been leaking enough to leave a rather large stain on the drip pan over time.
In addition to it needing a new upper spray arm last year, and after finding a split plastic weld on the lower X arm, I needed to epoxy it shut.
And then 3 weeks ago, I started discovering rack rust far more advanced that is normal on a 3 year old machine IMO.
In addition, the stainless front has been more difficult to keep clean than the SS on my Maytag and WP oven and fridge.
All these things coming to a head, I've decided to let go of it, do what I should've done at first. Not get swayed by GE's bottle jets and reversing sprays, but cross-shopped more when I was originally looking.
I mean, the Profile series DID have very good washing reviews. And it has performed very well over this time. But sadly, the durability is just NOT there. And that was even more apparent when I started shopping KitchenAids this past week.

For the happy news!
I was offered a deal I couldn't refuse from a local KA MT WP house on a shiny, new KDTE304GPS.
Info here:
https://www.kitchenaid.com/shop/-[KDTE304GPS]-6098101/KDTE304GPS/#features

It's got many of the same features as the outgoing GE, but with substantially better Fit and Feel. And a better reputation too.
The racks have a much thicker coating on them, so rust should be a non-issue.
The "door twist" test was nigth and day with the KA being stiffer, with a much nicer engaging door lock.
KA has coated their stainless steel to make it impervious to fingerprints, smudges, water marks etc.
It keeps the bottle jets I love, and adds a 3rd upper utility rack.

Nevertheless I'm quite excited. It arrives on Monday!
Much more to come

 

[appnut]

John, congratulations!!  Sorry you had to discover all the "issues".  After reading your post, made me wonder if Eugene's former dishwasher will hold up any better with the new owner of his former house. 

 

 

 

I love my KitchenAid-produced Kenmore Elite. I look forward to you putting it through its paces. 

 

[lakewebsterkid]

Congrats!

Enjoy the new machine! Please give us updates as you "break her in"! I have grown to love the 3rd rack in my Bosch. The bottle jets are a great feature.

 

[gelaundry4ever]

alternating wash system

Does this dishwasher have an alternating wash system or do they run at the same time?

 

[gansky1]

That's a smart looking panel, KitchenAid has still has some "style" compared with other makes indistinguishable from all others.

Bob, does your Kenmore have the self-cleaning Clean Water wash system or the filtered design?

 

[appnut]

Greg of course it has the clean water wash system. It's the only way I'll have a modern dishwasher no filter to clean.

 

[thomasortega]

Appnut, cleaning the filter is not a dreadful thing.

You need to clean the filter once in a while (maybe once a month or even more than that). and clean the filter is extremely easy. (remove, rinse, put it back. It can be done in seconds.

 

[mattl]

Got a slightly different KA a few months back, don't recall the #, but also coming from a long line of GEs I have to say I'm pleased with mine.  The biggest plus?  I did not have to learn to rerack stuff, it loads almost the same as my GEs. Love the ball bearing glides on both the upper and lower baskets, move so easily, and at 39dB it's almost silent.  Can't say I've pulled more than 2 dishes out in the past months that have not been spotless.

 

Downsides? a few.  Third rack is great 95% of the time , others I have to pull it when I do stemware - but it comes out easily.  Long cycles, common now, but I have seen 2-3 hours at times.  Would love a 30 minute cycle for party dishes, but 60 will have to do.  I clean the filter I'd guess monthly. 

 

Gone back and forth with Cascade Platinum plus and Finish Max, I'd give the edge to Cascade.  Have tried cheap Aldi detergent as well as powdered cascade and both are OK for the most part.  Cascade keeps the stainless interior sparkling, while the others had a film build up, two or three loads with Platinum and it was fine again.

 

Hope you enjoy your machine as much as I have mine....

 

[johnb300m]

off to the races

I got the 304 installed last night, and tonight it's loaded up, and running its first wash!

First off,
This thing was a veritable dream to install.
I'm new to WP machines, so this was a new experience.
It's as if their engineers actually thought about how I would set it up.
From the rear wheels that have 5 preset levels, to the front legs with plastic hex caps that don't mar the floor while I adjust them. Or the hex screws on the front legs with ample clearance for me to use a socket wrench to adjust them.
The water valve is seated with the inlet horizontally, so I can actually use a wrench to tighten it, instead of the 2 vertical inches allotted on the GE, which took a million .5 degree wrench turns to tighten that valve.
The insulation is actually hooked to the rear of the tub, so it doesn't roll over upon cabinet insertion.
My FAVORITE PART; the power box was fully removable so I could wire up everything with plenty of hand space out from under the machine. Once it was all wired up, I closed it, and just screwed it back underneath. Done. No cuts. No blood.
I did however not enjoy the cheap, annoying squeeze clamps. I swapped those out for actual worm gear clamps.
Honestly, everything about the install was a breeze, and almost quite pleasant. All except my crappy counters and cabinets. They will not allow the machine to sit flush, or even square. But I'll have to stomach that till the remodel.

Tonight it's doing it's first load. Normal, Heat Dry, with a Cascade Complete pac.
It did a quick 3min. PreRinse, then right to the main wash. It then did 3 full rinses at the end, since this was the first full cycle, in order to calibrate the optical sensor.
Loading the machine was pretty good. The top rack is a freakin' dream compared to the GE's pretty garbage top rack. However, WP refuses to cant their tines on the bottom rack for plate edges to recess into, so my earthenware plates fall over now. That was the only thing GE got right, was accommodating chunky plates.
Everything else is great. The top rack really fits bowls and glasses nicely.
Spoons and knives are out of the way now in the nifty 3rd rack.

Here's the part that will blow your socks off.
The little "pond pump" runs so quiet. NO motor noise! I HATED the high pitched whine from the brushes on the GE motor.
The encapsulated synchronous motor is practically silent. And no bearings to leak! Yay.
YET. Dang does it throw a punch.
For a mere 35 watts, the bottom jets were so forceful, they were "klanking" the steel tub as they went around, shooting all the way to the top.
And the upper sprays were battering the plastic containers in there.
The amount of force and pressure this machine washes with; it is exceedingly surprising.
Yet it's discernibly more quiet than the GE, which is weird cuz they were both rated at 48db.
When the fridge kicks on, the dishwasher noise virtually disappears.

This is going to be a fun machine to have and to play with.
We shall see the results in the morning.
In the meantime, enjoy the first few photos.

 

[drhardee]

I'm sorry to hear about your problems which ultimately led to the decision to drop the GE Profile DW.  The GE PDT845 Profile unit that I installed about a year and a half ago is still trundling along with no major or minor issues, other than door flex, which has led to my having to check to make sure the door is closed completely prior to starting to wash.

I purchased a 5-year extended service plan through Assurant for $125.00, so I'm hoping that I'm in good stead for at least that long. GE still sells that model, but I noticed that they did change the wash arms; they're no longer the "X" pattern that I have in mine.

 

[johnb300m]

Thanks and best of wishes with your GE, Drhardee.
Even though my experience went south, the GEs are quite capable machines, and there are a few aspects of it I will miss.
That nice warranty on it is great peace of mind.
It's certainly news to me that they changed up their x-arm design?
Do you know what the new design is? The x-arms are still all over their website.

As for this morning's results?
Everything looks clean!
It got rid of the starch/salt lines on my pasta pot.
The nested plates looked great. No gook where they touched.
The glasses were spot and grit free. Even the tall one I put in the corner!
If anyone remembers, the corners were a serious Achilles heel in the PDT720.
Only one of the wooden spoons in the 3rd rack had a tiny fleck of red sauce on it that was easily flicked away.

One of the selling features to me on the GE was the fan assisted dry.
KA has that but higher up in the models.
This one has the standard dry system, ventless but with the heater coil.
The tub was covered in moisture but interestingly, everything else was bone dry.
Even the plastics and woods!
It wasn't a very dirty load but I was impressed.
All the filters are spotless as well.

 

[mattl]

Can't say I"ve ever used the heated dry option on my KA KDTE254ESS, I do use the sani rinse and it flash dries. Funny thing, I rarely run the unit when I go to bed, usually put it on after dinner, but once or twice I ran it last, and when I got up in the morning the dishes were still warm - that was a surprise.

 

Got to agree these are quite machines, the most I hear is the water draining, at 39 dB I'd say mine is close to silent.  Much different than my old GE...

 

[johnb300m]

Last night was a good representative load since I did some cooking.
A good mixed load from plates to cookware to wine glasses.

What I was especially impressed with was that my ceramic skillet came clean. Something the GE would never do 100%. There was always some kind of film left in it.
Not in the KA!
Even the spatula I had with seared fish crust on it, came clean in the 3rd rack.

It was set on ProWash, air dry, with the sample of Cascade Platinum they provided.
Even on air dry, everything but wood spoons and a few plastic lids was perfectly dry the next morning.

Interesting note, this wash sensor system seems very tolerant of soils. It did one brief prerinse and went right to the main wash.
The GE would add prerinse after prerinse.

 

[johnb300m]

Queued up - Peanut butter glass test!

Haha!
I’ve queued up a peanut butter shmeared glass in the KitchenAid.
I have more favorable expectations in this machine than the other GE that had weak corner performance.

 

[johnb300m]

The results are in!

A few surprises.
The first one was how short the dry cycle actually was.
It was no more than 15 minutes; I was surprised when the machine beeped.
I opened it up and everything was surprisingly dry.

The setup.
I decided to use the ProWash (sensing) cycle, with Hi Temp Wash, and Bottle Wash (for my kettle).
Detergent was a Cascade Platinum pac.
I added a bonus (depicted below) very dirty frying pan to the mix. Just to make it challenging. Haha.

Aaaaaaaand, there was some peanut butter left behind, but it wasn't all that much.
It seems like the inner-most wall of the glass, how it was placed in the rack, just didn't get strong enough water velocity to push that pb out, but a vast majority of the glass came completely clean.

More importantly, EVERYTHING else was spotless.
Including that stainless pan! Honestly, my stainless cookware has never looked better, than coming out of this machine.
No redeposit anywhere. And NO peanut butter smell anywhere either.

The cycle sequence ended up being:
Brief PreRinse, Purge, PreRinse, Purge, Long Main Wash, Purge, Purge/Rinse Combo, Long Final Rinse, Short Heat Dry.

The filter cup was practically spotless, save for a tiny yibble of broccoli.

This is quickly turning into my favorite dishwasher of all time.

 

[appnut]

John, I'm so thrilled you are so pleased with this dishwasher.  the numerous purges is a significant difference between the filtered and Clean Water Wash system design.  Mine only does a purge between main wash and final rinse on extremely lite soiled loads as well as China Gentle.  All other cycles yield me two and sometimes three post-wash rinses.  What is a purge/rinse combo?  I wonder if bottle jet would completely clean a pb glass.  Never known mine to have a 15 minute dry either. 

 

[johnb300m]

Thanks Bob!
It's really been an impressive few weeks with it.
I mean, the GE was "pretty good" and even surprised me a few times.
But this KitchenAid is just a tick ahead of everything.
Every load thus far seems to be an extra level of clean.
And the KA does a marvelous job keeping itself clean too.

The purge/rinse combo was interesting.
It did a partial fill. But more than a regular purge. And less than a full fill.
Enough to wash the lower level at full pressure for about 30 seconds.
Then it washed the upper level, with some cavitation, but in several "bursts" and pauses. Then it drained.
The whole thing lasted about 1min.
Then it filled for a final heated rinse that was almost as long as the main wash.

The behavior of your CleanWater system, Bob, makes sense to me.
That spinning filter never gets caked with crud, so it can probably get away with not bothering with cleansing purges.
Whatever WP has figured out, their soil management is impressive.
I've yet to find any grit, anywhere in the machine.

Judging by how little pb was left in the far corner, I'm fully confident that glass would've been fully clean somewhere else. Bottle jets or not.
That pan still blows my mind.

 

[gelaundry4ever]

spray arms

When the spray arms alternate, do they speed up and slow down? My dad's new Kenmore does.

 

[lakewebsterkid]

Impressive

John, I am glad this machine is treating you well. The PB test in the far corner is going to be hard regardless but the KA did great. The fine filter looks good! The metal filter in the Bosch seems to hold little bits. I wonder if the plastic-esque filter you have is better at having them flush out when it is drained? I am kind of shocked with the number of purges. I just don't understand why you wouldn't rather have another full pre-rinse? The ones before the wash make sense, but after is a bit odd.