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'.
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!