I live in the Boston Area. We have "naturally soft" water as they say. The truth is that the water hardness varies depending on where they source the water from, usually things change during late summer and winter and come back to "normal" for spring and summer.
In any case, the vast majority of the time my dishwasher reports water hardness between 4-6 grains/gallon, with the majority of the cases being 4. Sometimes it reports 1,2 or 3, rarely above 6.
I also know that the fuzzy logic in the computer blends softened water with line water to protect the dishes, like said above. And I don't much pay attention to when regeneration happens, but most of the time I noticed it it happened before the cycle begins, there's a series of fill/drain. Then again, my detergent is set to "powder", maybe it will regenerate at the end if it's set to liquid/gel. In any case, in the last 8 years or so we've had the machine, we've added about 1 kg of salt per year or so.
Like I said in another thread, the most I noticed was that the machine took a bit longer and ran the pressure a little higher than usual when the detergents "switched" from phosphates to crap to make the citizens complain.
As soon as Finish decided "what the hell, let's make it work" and got first place and P&G did not like being in second place in Consumers Reports, Cascade improved too and the machine came back to behaving as usual.
I have not yet tried the other brands that refused to improve in the first year or two because I figure if they insisted in cheating the customers, they don't deserve my attention/money. It was relatively hard for a person like me who loves to try the different brands etc, but my feeling is that this industry *knew* this was coming, they had at least 20-30 years notice and they still refused to research&develop and being ready for the change.
For the people who think only phosphates are the solution. Please wake up. Phosphates are the *cheapest* solution, but not necessarily the best. Anyone who's worked in a chemistry lab and had to clean the glasswork will offer you at least a handful of solutions. If you think phosphates "clean", you ought to try EDTA sometimes. Be ready to pay top price too.
Also, please enlighten me, given that I've lived in areas with "soft" to "moderate" hard water my entire life.
Any of you when you wash something by hand, what are the results you are getting?
Because when I wash stuff by hand I get clean dishes. Detergents for hand washing have not had phosphates in at the very least 25 years that I know of.
What you are really seeing is that dishwashing machines *do* need specialized detergents because of the potential for suds/foam generation.
Dishwasher detergents manufacturers *knew* that they needed to add lots of enzymes and good detergents (which should generate no or very little suds and even then they need suds suppression agents), but instead they spent the last 50 years or so selling us a blend of (phosphates, chlorine bleach, metasilicates) and many did not have *any* soap or detergent in them. Translation: each box/bottle of "detergent" cost a few cents to put on the shelves and we paid several dollars for them.
No wonder they were resistant to making something that actually *costs* a dollar or two, but this time has actual cleaning ingredients.
I dunno about you, but what I noticed about the phosphate ban is that now my dishwasher cleans *way* better when it comes to lasagna pans and starches (rice pot, that used to always have some residue on it is now always clean, for example).
Please stop falling for the propaganda from mega corporations that don't care at all about anything but their profit. They certainly don't care about you and have been overcharging you for decades, when at the very least for the past 25 years they knew or should have known how to fix the problem properly.
Cheers,
-- Paulo.
