Did you know you can just put detergent in the main compartiment? Why do you need such cassettes? Normally diswashers have something that dispenses it at a particular point in the cycle though. It's a simple mechanism, no complex electronics involved in that either.
You don't really want that though, because the water from the first cycle is washed away relatively quickly.
For good results, there's two releases of detergent, one for the pre wash and one for the main cycle. Detergent pods have kind of ruined the general dual compartment dishwashing ecosystem, though.
Pretty much lost me on the presentation; finally lost me on 'these things completely fly in the face of the way most dishwashers are designed to work'.
Uh, what? Must be a US thing, whatever the alternative is, because that's (those detergent, salt, perfume, whatever else tablets in a water-soluble wrapper are) all I've ever known. (UK.)
Yeah I'm in the UK and the tablets are all I've seen too. But it seems that e.g. a tablet plus a small amount of pre-wash power or similar may perform much better.
I suspect we're just much further along in this cycle compared to the US - where manufacturers have accepted that people like the tablets and that's that. There's still the opportunity to get better cleaning with this knowledge though.
It's worth noting there's no need for a pre-wash compartment. They do the exact same thing as if you just put the detergent into the "tub"
Worth checking your dishwasher though. Ditto, that's all I knew in UK (although I mostly hand-washed).
But even here in Aus now, there's a little compartment for pre-wash/rinse detergent... but nobody is aware of it that I've come across. That youtube video was revelationary!
I don't think UK dishwashers typically have such a compartment, but no need for it anyway - same result achieved by putting the equivalent detergent directly in the tub, though you lose the convenient dosing
Rinse aid? Yeah that goes next to the tablet under a little flap. Supermarkets sell it, usually blue.
Is that what the video was about? That tablets 'fly in the face of how dishwashers are supposed to work' because you also need rinse aid?
That's nonsense, how every dishwasher I've used has been supposed to work is you keep the salt topped up, the rinse aid topped up, and (supposedly optionally) use a tablet with each wash.
No, not rinse aid. The video discusses the way dishwashers work; most of them have two distinct cycles, one spraying off most of the loose food, draining the tub, and then another, which has its water recycled.
Most dishwashers are designed to have a little detergent in the first cycle and then most in the second cycle. The detergent from the first cycle becomes available to the water immediately, the detergent for the second cycle is the part that you put in the compartment.
If you want to know the details, watch the rest of the video. Or, if you don't want to do that, read your dish washer's manual. Maybe yours was designed without to forego detergent in the first cycle, because people have switched to pods anyway. Maybe it wasn't, and you can get a hygiene boost by using powder instead of pods.
If you use detergent pods, one of your cycles won't run with anything but water. If you put the detergent in the tub, the longer, second cycle runs without detergent. If you put the pod in the little compartment, the first cycle is much less effective than it can be.
Many machines are still designed for powder or gel detergents that you put into both compartments. You can get the same dishwasher performance by using two dishwasher tablets per run (one in the tub and one in the compartment) but that'll use up way more detergent than you actually need.
Rinse aid is for maintaining your dishwasher, that's something different entirely.
> Most dishwashers are designed to have a little detergent in the first cycle and then most in the second cycle. The detergent from the first cycle becomes available to the water immediately, the detergent for the second cycle is the part that you put in the compartment.
None that I've ever seen here.
> If you want to know the details, watch the rest of the video. Or, if you don't want to do that, read your dish washer's manual.
The video is.. I'm not its target audience. But I do actually have the manual: its 'programme phases' are 'pre-wash', 'wash' (different temperatures depending on setting), rinse, and dry. The detergent tablet is dispensed in the 'wash' phase. There's nowhere to put any to be dispensed in the 'pre-wash' phase. So, instead of 'some then most', it's 'none then all'. I've never known one work differently.
> Many machines are still designed for powder or gel detergents that you put into both compartments.
Right, again, not here: I don't have and have never seen one with two detergent compartments.
I still don't think tablets 'fly in the face of how the machine's supposed to work', there should just be big & little detergent tablets for markets with big & little detergent compartments.
Everywhere else with single compartments, a single tablet works fine, is exactly how the machine's designed to work, and they often even have a 'recommended brand' (for whatever commission).
> There's nowhere to put any to be dispensed in the 'pre-wash' phase.
Some comments here have mentioned that one can put it into the main compartment of the machine. Just squirt it in on the floor, if I understood correctly.
I mean.. sure. But it's definitely not 'designed to work' that way, and to be clear what I was objecting to was the tablets being described as 'flying in the face of the way [the dishwashers are] designed to work'.
Yeah I thought that was probably the case (just predates at least my memory) - but surely putting powder/liquid directly in vs contained in a water-soluble capsule is.. the same, not 'flying in the face' of how it works?
(For what it's worth, I still put liquid in the top of my washing machine! Tablets only seemed to appear for washing machines ~10y ago, at least that I was aware of, and still seem way more expensive /wash.)
> putting powder/liquid directly in vs contained in a water-soluble capsule is.. the same
Assuming you mean putting it directly in the "tub" versus in the compartment, no that's not true.
The initial fill - which will dissolve anything put directly into the tub - drains fairly quickly. The detergent in the compartment is only released after this point.
If there's nothing in the compartment, there won't be any detergent being used for the bulk of the washing - so regardless of form factor, it's important to use that.
But in addition - rather than instead, putting a small amount of powder in the tub will make the initial rinsing much more effective.
That was the aside about Clothes Washing Machines.
I believe US (clothes) washing machines are usually top-loaders? And stored somewhere else, like a basement or garage?
In the UK most washing machines are front loaders, usually in the kitchen (large houses have a separate utility). There's a draw on the top to put various powders, but I don't remember ever using it and I've been washing clothes since the 90s.
I think you're talking about washing machines (as in clothes)? The part of my comment you quoted (all except the parenthetical, matching the one I replied to) was about dishwashers.
Good point though. A lot of people who use liquid (as opposed to a pod thing) put it in the drum anyway, in a reusable container that comes with some brands. I used to, until I bought a brand that didn't come with one of those on the lid; put it in 'that old-fashioned drawer', and wondered why I hadn't always.
I started seeing them in supermarkets (in the UK) ~5 years ago; actually I think I only noticed them after a colleague mentioned using them, so maybe that's not accurate at all.
I've never used them though, they seem to solve a problem that barely exists, and at quite a premium.
I don't even have a pre-wash compartment on my (not cheap) EU dishwasher. There is just a place for the tablet and then rinse aid (which I never used). And always get good results with quality tablets.
I started using rinse aid this past year and I was pleasantly surprised how it removed nearly all streaks from my glassware. Thankfully the wash cycle only uses a minuscule amount of rinse aid, so a large container lasts me almost a year.
