Our KA dw takes hours to wash acct heating water

[petek]

As most of you know we just moved into our new house last week and there's a fairly late model KA KUDS01il installed. Well it seems to take hours to complete a normal wash waiting for the internal water heater to boost the temp. Thing is I've measured the water temp coming out the kitchen faucet and it's about 138 degrees. If I run the hot water at the faucet on startup it manages the wash cycle fine (per instrx book it washes at 120 degs. but when it gets to the Final heated Rinse requiring 140 degs that can take upwards of 1 hour to boost the temp to 140. Probably because the water in the pipes has now cooled down some between startup and rinse, but I can't believe it takes that long. It's starting to bug me!!! Any thoughts? My thought is to get some pipe insulation and wrap the hot water line from the water heater over to the kitchen which thankfully can be accessed most of the way. There's about 30 ft of water line from the basement water heater across the ceiling and over to the kitchen. I'm a little disappointed though because our Miele in the oher house could wash a load of dishes and boost the water temp with no problem. I always had the water heater set low enough that you could not scald yourself but it seems with this KA I'm going to be wasting gas if I have to keep the water heater cranked up.,

 

[maytagbear]

Do you know

if it has to rinse at 140, or if that can be shut off, and it could rinse at tank temperature?

Modern appliances can be so very annoying.

Glad you're in, Pete.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[toggleswitch]

..or get a small 2 to 3 gallon electric water heater for under the kitchen sink (110v) , put it on a 1.5 to 2.0 hour timer and crank 'er up when doing dishes!

Yes, agreed modern apliances are a huge PITA and waste precious time to no end!

 

[launderess]

IIRC Miele, like many commercial dish washers runs on 220v/240v service. What that kind of power, heating the small amount of water used by dishwashers from cold to hot quickly shouldn't be a problem. Indeed there are some commercial dishwashers that have cycles at 200F!

With 120V dishwashers, if the wash cycle is long, then the "hot" water has cooled in the pipes going to the machine, an unless there is some sort of purge (manual or by machine), to flush out the coolish water and bring hot water up from the tank, one is going to have less than hot water entering for the rinse. This means the machine is pretty much acting as it does for the heated wash for heated rinses, hold the cycle until the proper temp has been achieved.

Will agree that having to purge your hot water lines twice or more to get "hot" water cycles is a waste of water. Maybe consider finding a Miele at a good price to swap out for the KA?

 

[gansky1]

This KA is circulating the water while it's heating it? Since the wash is only 120F and we can assume the subsequent fills will be cooler than that given that hot water loses it's temp very quickly standing in pipes. Have you measured the temp of the water in the tank immediately after filling for the final rinse? I'll bet it's pretty low and since the heater has to bring up the temp of everything - the water, dishes, tank, pump, etc. from that starting point, you may have a rise of 30-40F needed to get to 140F. I've noticed this with my Maytag WU601 and it does take a while for it to get to sani-temp. Depending on utility rates, it's probably uses less resources to heat the water with the electric element in the machine than run the water until it's hot at the tap, then heat it a few more degrees. Look at it this way, you get to hear that distincitive KitchenAid Hydro-Sweep wash action for longer!

 

[johnb300m]

THERE'S A FIX

if you go to www.fixitnow.com...there's a solution on there somewhere.
it has to do with the heating element. the wattage is not high enough, so Whirlpool/KitchenAid has come out with a new heating element and controller that can be easily installed. It's a much higher wattage with a new controller, and it seems to work great.

 

[mulls]

Long cycle

When my mom moved to her new house,she complained of long cycle times.Top line GE profile.Turns out the unit was fine,but the idiot installer thought modern DWs were to hook up to cold!Can you imagine the munber of people complaining about their machines?
Tom

 

[mulls]

BTW

Me again,I installed a small heater set at 140 deg going only to the DW and laundry-my house is a ranch and is 90 feet long-all bathrooms on one end,kitchen and laundry on other.
Tom

 

[petek]

I went to the little hardware store not far from here,, what a treat to find an authentic hardware store full of everything you never can find in the big box ones, and I bought some foam pipe insulation. Wrapped the hot water line right from the water heater up to and including under the sink. Cost me about 8 bucks and an hours labor mostly fussing with removing those awful basement ceiling tiles and trying to get them back in LOL. Anyways, SUCCESS, I ran a normal load and it only took about 75 minutes start to finish. Granted they weren't dirty dishes which probably would have added some time but it's a remarkable improvement.

 

[wiskybill]

Pete, I was curious about the info that John commented on above from fixitnow.com. I had never explored that site and it seems to be a wealth of information. It took quite a while to find what he was talking about but here it is.

KitchenAid Models KUDx01 where x could be any letter
Serial Code date: FK30 thru FR36

Whirlpool heating element kit part# 8194200

Consists of a new style element with a higher wattage and a new electronic control that pulses the element on and off during its operation and must be replaced with the heating element. The new element has a different shape but uses the same brackets as the original.

This kit may result in:
Shorter wash cycles
Shorter dry cycles
This change may cause the times in the display to be
different

This info was from a "Service Pointer" from March 2005. The site it comes from is www.servicematters.com apparently a info database for service techs.

It was fun to look for and hope it helps.

Bill

 

[DADoES]

ServiceMatters.com has lotsa interesting info, including tech manuals for several models (Calypso, Epic, Cabrio, among others).

 

[tomturbomatic]

Older KA dws had a double wattage heating element in the sump. It ran at 600 or 700 watts to maintain the main wash temperatures, but then ran at 1200 or 1400 watts to heat the one gallon of water for the Sani Rinse. John wired his KA dw in West VA to a 20 amp 110 circuit and put a relay in the heater circuit to have the full wattage of the heater come on during wash when it would normally be on at half wattage while the motor was running. It really raises the temperature of the water, but there is no thermal delay like there is for the Sani Rinse when it fills, stops to heat the water, then recirculates the gallon of water once it has reached the sani temp. He was able to do this fairly easily because the machine does not use the sump heater for drying heat. The problem with the newer machines is that they are heating the final rinse, which uses the standard fill, while the water is being recirculated so they cannot, on a 15 amp 110 volt circuit, run a high wattage heater with the motor running.

 

[petek]

I thought I had the problem licked by insulating the hot water pipe from the heater right up to the dw but no. I had just ran a normal load and when it got to the first rinse the "water heating" light came on with 53 minutes remaining for the cycle, that stayed put for almost 45 minutes so I opened the dw door and found the water temp was about 115 and there was a LOT of suds in the water. So I cancelled the wash totally and restarted it with no detergent and it seems to be working fine.. Then I noticed the Electrasol tabs are the ones with the Jet Dry power ball. I've never had those before and have always used Electrasol tabs without the Power ball in the Miele with no problems.. Could they be creating all the suds and possibly causing not enough water to enter the machine..i.e. water is not getting heated by the heater?
There is already Jet Dry in the machines dispenser so the Power ball tabs are sort of redundant anyways..

 

[petek]

btw there was nothing else in there that would be causing lots of suds.

 

[launderess]

Yes, yes, and YES.

Stopped using Electrasol tablets with "Jet-Dry" or whatever they call that rinse agent ball, because it created mounds of suds. So much so at times you could hear the pump struggling to get at water instead of spewing foam. Heating cycle lasted longer as well, IMHO; and methinks it was the foam preventing the thermostat from getting an accurate reading.

If you wish to continue using the tabs, my solution was to break them apart and use one half of each half tab (1/4 tab) in the pre-wash and wash cycle cups. Since my dw is a small 18" Kenmore, this worked fine, for a full sized unit you may have to use one half tab in each washing cycle. You can either the "powerballs" are easily split, but didn't bother as use liquid rinse agent from the dispenser (Ecover), so ended up with lots of those little balls that I kept on hand in case one ran out of rinse agent. One day in fit of housecleaning, chucked the whole lot out as have since switched to Cascade.

Our dw repair person told me not to follow the instructions on the Electrasol tabs can, and always add detergent to both the pre-wash and wash cycles. A pre-wash with no detergent causes all that much and gunk to fly around the dw coating everything, and possibly etching glassware, so he said.

L.

 

[exploder321]

I use the Jet Ball gizmos... I am unsure if my detergent dispenser works all that well, so i just throw it in and let er rip..Everything comes out so nice... My moms does over suds and i bet this is why... I will tell her... Will check ours as well... CM

 

[DADoES]

At the parents for Thanksgiving, loaded up the GE talltub. (Sorry, didn't get any pics, but there was a baked-on 11x14 Pyrex from dressing that came out with just a couple crusties left, all possible heat and power wash options selected). Grabbed the box of Cascade Complete. Mom says, "Noooo, I use these." (Electrasol tablets with the balls.) Plus there's liquid RA in the dispenser. I kinda roll my eyes, and use the Cascade in the prewash cup with a tab in the main cup. I was gonna break half the ball out, but figure what the hey, let it go all in.

 

[appnut]

Hmm, I would have done the detergent opposite, let teh Complete do the heavy stuff duing the main wash cycle. Wish yo had been able to take pics. I'm still very curious as to how well the GE TTs really do with a BobLoad.

 

[johnb300m]

GE TT owner

my parents' house has a GE tall tub, and i will say that whenever i'm home i load it my way, which here i guess is called a "bobload".
Things always come out totally clean. Anything that's not charred or burned on comes off in the first wash.
It has a CleanSensor too which helps.

GSD 6600 series. FANtastic machine.