Reviews In For Whirlpool Powerwave Series

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You have to admit so far: There are only 2 reviews, and both complained about typical user caused issues.
The drying problem is usual on todays machines if no rinse agent is used.
The cleanig problem is often caused by wrong cycle selection, a bad detergent choice and/or pre-rinsing it self (the whole soil sensor thing).
And something blocking the detergent compartment is a problem that can happen to any DW. And it's nothing new that a cuttlery basket takes up space. And if the handles cause the blockage, I guess somebody is loading the DW wrong. From day one, forks and spoons were loaded handle down. Only knifes were handle up for safety reason. And if these block the door, just load them on the outsides and forks/spoons in the middle.
 
"Top controls are awkward to use and you cannot see control lights under counter top" 

 lip

 

That's exactly why I won't have concealed controls on dishwashers.  It's stupid, particularly if you are curious about status and function of your dishwasher.  If you are so clueless and don't give a you know what once it's on, then have at it.  No thanks!!!

 

And TOL features are only relegated to the concealed control panel models at the top end.

 

And what I think is really stupid is, why put a countdown display on a concealed control dishwasher--you cannot see the digits once the door is closed. 

[this post was last edited: 9/28/2014-16:51]
 
I have clearly visible indicator lights on my DW and can't say I ever bother to look at them.  The machine does what I want every time so I turn it on and walk away.  Everyone has their likes and dislikes so it may not be for some but odds are 99% of the populations turn the DW on and walks away - many of us here are in the 1%.
 
My experience with Whirlpool dishwashers is good . I now have two convertibles under the Kenmore label they made for Sears. Both work great and are pre 2000 models. No pre rinsing. Excellent results. I use nothing but the Finish gel tabs and high temp wash and rinse with cool dry.
 
Yes, but we are talking about the new models...

I have looked at the WP line over and over... They all have the same cycles, the same options... The only difference is the outer panel and whether it is plastic or stainless steel tank... And a very wide price range...

And a filter... So if you use the dishwasher as a dishwasher (and not a rinser), your rinse water is filtered through the food washed off during the wash... Nice... Clean and sanitary, right?

Funny the Maytags have the disposal still and no filter...
 
My mother-in-law's fiancee just had one of these installed in the house he just had built. It's identical to this minus the "Silverware shower". So far, he's ready to trash it.

Funny thing is, he and Angie (mother-in-law) asked me what I would recommend as far as appliances. I told him at a fair price, Whirlpool or Maytag would be his best bet. When I specified what dishwasher to look for, I told them an older Whirlpool, or a new Maytag, and specifically told them that if there is a removable filter at the bottom, AVOID AT ALL COSTS. What is sitting in that brand new kitchen when we come over? All stainless steel Whirlpools, and that terrible dishwasher right in the middle.

As flighty as they are, I'm sure they just said they wanted Whirlpools in stainless, so the contractors did just that and brought in the lowest-end you can get that came in SS. I've been over twice at their request to make sure everything is in order with the machine, and it runs exactly as "intended", and yet the poor mouse-sized pump can't blast grit off the plates and silverware. The sad thing is that this machine is by no means BOL, and actually is near the top end without having a SS interior.

I will say, however, the thing is silent. Granted, when you quickly open the door, there is water dripping from everything, and the wash arm is coasting down to a stop, but nothing so much as bounces out the door like it would if I opened my Maytag or the Whirlpool PC. So far the only method to use to get anything clean is to rinse everything off, leave an empty space between plates and bowls - a total waste of real estate - and make sure no piece of silverware is directly next to another despite having the slots in the basket. This method is paired with using Heavy Wash with Hi Temp, and Cascade Platinum. If so much as a piece of oatmeal or a stray noodle is on a plate when loaded, that whole order of operations falls through the roof.
 
But where do you think all the food waste goes in a DW without filter? I mean, it can't magicly disapear...

If your dishwasher doesn't have a filter, it probably will have a food disposer in it which will chop up any food debris and send it down the drain with the water. That's what we have in our Maytag machine and never have any food kibbles and yibbles left, ever. And we don't prerinse either. A few months ago when I took our Maytag apart to remove some toothpicks and bread wire wraps from that area I looked at the disposer. It's a very sharp blade that spins around at high speed while the wash water passes over it.
I would call this a soft food disposer as I don't think it'll grind bones or anything like that but it is effective on soft foods. Last year sometime Karen put in a pasta pot with all the spaghetti left over in it too! When the load was done there was not one bit of the spaghetti left anywhere. Also the drain hole in the bottom of the dishwasher is quite large too. So a lot would fit down there.
 
Dishwashers with soft food disposals still have filters, but they automatically clean themselves out. After passing through the grinder, the pulverized soil is slung to the outside of the impeller chamber and up through a channel into an accumulator filter. The water can escape and be recirculated again, but the soil stays trapped, while the spray holes on the underside of the arm sweep over the screen to keep the soil from sticking. When the drain portion begins, the pressure pulls the check ball/valve open so that the soil can be sucked straight out the drain, while the wash arm sprays down on the screen to further flush everything away. So, in response to your comment, yes, it DOES magically disappear.

I don't believe for one second that a manual-filter style machine can outperform one with a disposal. For one thing, self-cleaning machines stay incredibly clean, compared to the gunk I've seen caked in and around a manual filter. I suspect this is because the soil is pulverized to such a size that it takes no effort at all to be flushed out by the drain pump, as well as having a rushing volume of water passing through the parts so that nothing has a chance to settle and stick. On manual machines, only the debris that was lucky to not become lodged in the mesh screening can be pulled out, and if its a noodle or a pea, it's still too big to go through the small gap under the filter assembly for the soil to be "flushed away".
 
henene4, And by conclusion that means they pass their water through the food soil as well.  Yes you are right but not for the entire cycle. The ground up  particulates are drained away with each water change.  So, hopefully  by the last rinse there is nothing left.  As opposed to the final rinse water being strained though the food scraps that washed off in the  First wash or prewash. Hope this makes sense.

 

As Nate says:  "Serial Dilution".
 
Guess the WP "PowerWave" isn't so Powerwave after all.Stick to buying VINTAGE dishwashers that people take out and replace with that junky Powerwave and then wonder why their dishes aren't clean-they would have been better off keeping their old washer or having it fixed.And the vitage machines don't take Forever to clean-The new ones just "Power Sprinkle" Your dishes!
 
Funny, my Maytag never needs any special filter removal or cleaning & very rarely-to-never spews any food particles back on anything; my tall milkshake glass is usualy a "victim" of such...

And in the instance that it does, I just buy a bottle of DISHWASHER CLEANER (just set in the bottom rack of the empty cavern, poke a hole, run some hot water from the nearby sink tap, turn the dishwasher on, running on the recommended cycle, and you're DONE!) but I need to wipe along the door area...!

-- Dave
 
So DWs with filter do not drain at all through out the cycle? Did you ever use a DW with filter? I mean, I did not use one with a disposal, but I don't say they perform bad. I am just puzzeld why a disposal should be the only way to get clean dishes.
A somewhat well designed filter cleans it self just as well during a drain period. The dirty side of the filter is on the same sie as the drain pump port. So counter flow is used to flush away dirt. Just as it is on a DW with disposal.
A DW cleaner is part of good machine keeping, just like with a washer. It should keep it self clean as well, right? But still, every once in a while, you run a hot empty wash, maybe with citric acid or something, just to keep it clean. And you should do just as well with a DW.
Oh, and BTW: If your DW had a filter, you would not have to take it apart to get that foreign object out.
Our, am I wrong.
 
"A somewhat well designed filter cleans it self just as well during a drain period."
 
Unfortunately they don't. European dishwashers with filters leave the dishes dirty and unsanitary. I always eat off dirty plates and drink out of dirty glasses. My clothes are dirty as well because I have a front load washer that does not fill up halfway with water. And my clothes are also always damp because my European condenser dryer does not dry.

 

smiley-undecided.gif

 
 
 
 
 
Thinking further: If you heat the water in a DW up to 150° or something and keep it there for 4+ minutes, you're dishes are sanitary. So, if you heat any food residue up to that temperature, it does get sanitized as well. So you food residue is always as clean as your dishes.
For the mathematics out there: The word soil, dirt or waste dose not equal its grade of sanitaryness. It is not a = in between those 2 facts.
 
Oh, for Pete's sake :-)

Whether a machine has a filter or not, the idea is that food soils are expelled down the drain as much as possible. With a filter, you're hoping to catch the lion's share of the lot and dump it earlier in the cycle. With designs like the non-passive-filter GEs and D&Ms, they used a lot of water to try and improve the chances that food soils would get sent down the drain with the water prior to the final rinse.

Filter machines usually circulate through one filter, then drain through a different one, to allow the food soils to be carried down the drain whenever possible. This is why many never need any attention when you run the normal cycles, but may if you use faster cycles that don't offer that mechanism the time and number of water changes it needs to operate reliably.

Still others use soil separators and accumulators with varying degrees of success or what have you, but the point is still that the name of the game is to get the particulates down the drain as soon as possible. No machine strives to circulate water through food, and even those that do (and let's be real, it happens in all machines to some degree with occasional stray foodstuffs), it's likely some seriously clean food after spending the whole cycle in hot water and detergent.

I've used all three primary designs, and found performance to be satisfactory with all, if operated with an eye toward their limitations and predilections...and very little in the way of food left at the end, in any of them.
 
I'll Weight In...

I have found with the DishDrawer (as has another member), that using the correct cycle, or frequently using the longer and much hotter cycles will keep the filters on our machine exceptionally clean.

So clean, in fact, they become "self-cleaning."

The DishDrawer may not have a disposer, but I know for a fact that thing has ground up rice before. You can hear it crunching away during the drainage cycle!

Using a shorter, cooler cycle means the food particles aren't "dissolved" as much - so you end up having to clean the filters of the snot-like sludge that builds up in there.
This difference is why my machine on 'Normal' would require more than the American equivalent: Less water changes, and lower temperature mean less of that soil is flushed away.
 
The question about what is a sufficent amount of water

Its true one needs enough water to clean dishes and laundry.
Yet, some DW run as low as 2 gal, others need 10. Both use their own "sufficent" amount of water.
In the end, you want results. If they are efficently reached as well, it only makes them better.
 
'If they are efficently reached as well, it only makes them better.'

Are outcomes achieved 'efficiently'? If you have to buy specialty products to put into that machine and run special cycles to keep it sanitary and it takes three or more hours to wash a load of dishes, that is not effective. In all honesty you are better off doing dishes by hand again - it's quicker and more efficient.
 
I'm very confused at the mindset behind these "water-efficient" machines. From the specs of these new Whirlpools, the dishwasher will use about 3-4 gallons of water on a Normal cycle. However, if you read the fine print, that only happens with lightly soiled, basically prewashed, dishes. With a load of dishes much like I would load, covered in dried on sauces, oatmeal, and the stray pea or noodle and crumb of meat and the like, these machines can easily use 5-7 gallons, or sometimes more, making water changes 6+ times throughout the cycle.

Now, take the PowerClean design. The earlier models from '98 to around '02 would run a Prewash-Main Wash-Purge-Final Heated Rinse on the Normal cycle. At around 2.2 gallons per fill, that's about 6.8-7 gallons of water. Normal wash on these machines can easily wipe out what a new machine has to use Heavy or Pots & Pans for, which equates to the same amount of water. The later update to the PowerClean removed the prewash from the Normal cycle, as well as implementing a purge instead of a full prerinse on the Heavy cycle. At this point, Normal used about 4.5 gallons for a full cycle, and could still handle heavily soiled dishes.

It would seem to me that if Whirlpool would revisit the strengths of the PC design, and update the motor and electronics to be more efficient and be smarter with water and time management, they would once again have a dishwasher that trumps the competition. One of its strong points, much like the Hobart KitchenAids, is that the water usage per fill is higher, but it does fewer water changes. If this dishwasher can run one wash and one rinse, with a purge in between, and get perfect results every time, why did we ever switch to using a thimbleful of water per charge, with water changes every five seconds?

To me the logic behind more water per fill is that the soil coming off the dishes is much more diluted, and there is enough water to create a hurricane inside that flushes every surface clean. Once the wash is done and drained, and the small amount of water used in the purge clears the filter module, the same amount of water used for the wash is now used for the rinse, again, diluting any remaining detergent and soil to the point that it's nearly nonexistant, and the dishes get flushed squeaky clean. No kibble left in annoying places, no pesky film or residue left behind from the chemicals needed to compensate for the tiny amount of water in new machines, and a dishwasher that also keeps itself spotless even in the behind-the-scenes areas.

Whirlpool had a good thing going at that time, and it seems that they were in that mindset with the Point Voyager design; it wasn't as solid and powerful as the PC, but it was still a great dishwasher. Then these "eco" designs came along and it's like they threw everything they had been improving upon for the last 30+ years straight out the window.
 
And one other thing murando531, is the fact on my eco-approved GE, I have to clean the filter every other load. If I don't, the pump sounds like it is moving air and one can barely hear the already weak water splashing. The result: awful cleaning.

And the 3 hour cycle is a great use of time of course............:(
 
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