New Dishwasher

[appnut]

Well I am going to correct your description due to real experience. There is a purge between main wash & final rinse on my New Kenmo Elite. A regular fill is 1:40. The purge fill is 50 seconds. The pump circulation is 15 to 20 seconds. Leslie has told me frankly, contrary to all of y'all popular belief, the dish load is being sprayed and rinsed during those 20 seconds. And that is enough time for spray arms to revolve 3 or 4 times.

 

[appnut]

And, to be quite frank,... I have had no complaints at all about rinsing performance. And I have a very sensitive nose to deterrgent smells.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Yeah,like about a quart of water. I used to stand in front of those machines with 3 quarts of very hot water and added that as soon as the Purge fill stopped. It gave enough circulation to at least wash some of the detergent off the load before the only rinse. Fortunately, the pump out was long enough to handle it. It is no wonder that those machines had the vinyl degrade on the side bars at the top of the upper rack so that the steel underneath started rusting in a few years, less than 5 in some cases. I saw a lot of them tossed out at that age and the only thing obviously wrong was the rust and the price of a replacement rack. Maybe the customer was also fed up with the poor performance of what, at one time, had been one of the best made dishwashers on the market. The 21 also had a board that cost almost as much as a new dishwasher and there was no warrenty coverage unless lighting had caused damage that insurance would cover. Friends in Florida bought a new TOL WP with just a little more than it would cost to replace the board after lightning struck a tree in their yard.

 

[DADoES]

My KUDS22 (which has now gone to live with my sister) does a 15 second (I think) fill, circulates for remainder of the 1.5 min increment. That's enough water to dribble from the wash arm, but it does not spray on the dishes nor does the arm rotate. It fills a little more (5 to 7 seconds) when the timer increments to drain. I never found performance objectionable, but then I never tried running an extra rinse for comparison. The upper rack does suffer vinyl separation/rusting as Tom describes, but it did go more than 5 years before that started. Or maybe I didn't notice it until later.

 

[alr2903]

Hey Bob, our kuds23080 works just as Glenn described, i honestly do not think there is enough water to spray, in fact this purge process makes more racket, a rumbling sound than, any other part of the cycle.

 

[appnut]

Tom, I've always remembered you doing that with my dishwasher's cousin. Well heck fire, since my sensor loads always trigger 140 degree wash temp because they're so much dirt, I might as well try Pots'n'Pans cycle because that does have 2 post-wash rinses assured.

 

[stevet]

TO PURGE OR NOT TO PURGE!

I am amzazed at the interest so many of you have with the purges.. Yes I do admit to the same interest but here is how I got around the problem:

I have had a few KitchenAids which had the purge during the cycles and during the rinses. I thought it was stupid to barely fill the machine and had often watched it fill with the door open and it would barely spit water at me, but it did seem to do a good job of washing out the fine mesh screen in the washarm support on my 21 series and 22 series machines.
I come from a history of a KDS15 as our first dishwasher and have always wanted a machine with 3 after rinses like that one.
For that reason, I still use a KDS18 machine to this day and even took it down to Florida with us when we moved to replace the GE Profile unit in the new house which I did immediately after the machine arrived on the moving van. Just for the record, I did leave the people who bought our house a fully rebuilt KDS22 series machine so they still got a good machine.

You may use more water, but you may not have to wash the dishes twice on some of these really water miserly units! But here is what I did to get rid of the purge and make it an effective washing tool:

What I did was I removed the flow restrictor in the fill valve and that made sure the tank filled up completely whenever it called for water. The float switch would stop the valve from overfilling and you got alot more washing action between the wash segments as well as the rinse segments and with that much water and even a minute or less of pump circulation, you removed that much more detergent and food waste.

As an added bonus, this extra amount of fill also made sure that there would be hot water available for the next segment. For those of you who's machines are far from the hot water tank or plumbing runs under your slab, you know how quickly the hot water can cool off between cycle segments.

I would suggest you throttle down the supply valve to the machine if you can just to err on the side of caution for those people who have very high water pressure.

I have a WP DU950 in my garage as my overflow machine at this time and am somewhat inpressed by it for washing and sensing the soil in the water. But the purge on that one is ridiculous. I am going to do the job on the valve in a few minutes just to see the difference. I will report back on the results.

 

[gadgetgary]

Tom........

-It gave enough circulation to at least wash some of the detergent off the load before the only rinse. Fortunately, the pump out was long enough to handle it. It is no wonder that those machines had the vinyl degrade on the side bars at the top of the upper rack so that the steel underneath started rusting in a few years, less than 5 in some cases.

So are you saying that the detergent ate away the plastic on the rack? This is the problem that I am having with my KUDS22 upper rack.

 

[brinomarc]

I have a Kitchen Aid Superba which I bought 3 years ago. I purchased it because it looked well built, and I thought the performance would be superior to others, especially due to the high price I had to pay for it/ No matter how the machine is loaded, no matter what 'special' directions I follow, the dishes do NOT come clean. I have soft water, high temperature on my water, have had service twice, they couldn't find anything wrong. I have been told that because it is a newer mode that uses less water, it's cleaning power has been compromised. It also has very LONG wash cycles. It is by far the worst dishwasher I have ever owned. I would not recommend Kitchen Aid to anyone after my experience with it.

 

[tlee618]

Hi Marc, I have about the same story as you with my GE Profile, model 8280. I was told the same thing about the water usuage and tend to believe it. Sometimes no matter what the brand there are "lemons" out there and I think we just happened to get them.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Gary, the alkalinity of the never completely rinsed away detergent pulled oils out of the vinyl leading to its degradation which allowed water to get through to the steel underneath.

Steve, I have and still use the KDS58 I bought when they were introduced in 1977 and I have a builtin KDS18 also. I modified both of them to have the larger upper wash arm introduced with the 19 series. The lower rack of the 18s holds a lot more plates, saucers, etc because the space between the pins is not as large as in the newer models. I think it is two extra rows on the right side of the rack.

I recently acquired a 1989, used 3 times, Kenmore Ultra Wash convertible portable, a WP machine. It is like Jason once said, a hurricane in a box. It washes well in both racks no matter how much the items in the bottom rack block water from the lower wash arm from reaching the top rack because of the wash arm under the top rack. I like the water miser cycle with two washes and two rinses using 2.2 gallons of water for each fill and the cycle is relatively fast.

Marc, does your KA do the pulsing of the motor during the cycle? To get the full force of the water, the pump stops and then starts up several times with a full head of pressure. It cannot maintain this level of pressure with the pump running constantly because the sump does not hold enough water to supply the maximum amount of water to the pump unless circulation is stopped and then restarted. This pulsing modification was made sometime after the tall tubs were introduced so I don't know if your machine has it. Isn't it something to hear about cleaning problems with a KitchenAid when for so many years they washed and rinsed so well? Insanity took over after the 18 series.

 

[gadgetgary]

Thanks

-Gary, the alkalinity of the never completely rinsed away detergent pulled oils out of the vinyl leading to its degradation which allowed water to get through to the steel underneath.

That is exactly what is happening to the rails on the upper rack of my KUDS22.

Thanks for the information Tom.

 

[rolls_rapide]

Rinse Aid, being acidic...

...helps to neutralise the alkaline solution.