Introducing Dishwasher
Written: Sep 24 '06 (Updated Sep 25 '06)
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Pros: UNBELIEVABLE Cleaning. Quiet sweet hum. REALLY as great as fans say they are.
Cons: The Refill Rinse Aid light appears to be on after every wash--probably illumined from Sanitized.
The Bottom Line: I cannot recommend it highly enough. Seriously, take it for a test drive. I sing and dance around the kitchen when I put away the clean dishes.
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| so_hum's Full Review: Bosch SHU43 24 in. Built-in Dishwasher |
First, a little history.
We live in a rental house and it was my husband's idea, when we moved in, that it didn't matter whether we had a dishwasher or not. I said "oh, really? then that must mean you intend to wash them all." he agreed. I was pregnant at the time and couldn't do anything that stressed my back. Standing at the kitchen sink for longer than the period of time required to get a glass of water or rinse vegetables constitues stress.
So, we moved in on that condition. It was all fine until about the time our baby turned 1. At that point my husband began to get a little lazy on his promise to do the dishes, and since he is working and I'm at home all day (fair enough) he had begun to ask at times why they weren't done.
I never hesitated to remind him of our agreement when we moved in. I would often say "let's get a dishwasher..." and he would say "why do you need a dishwasher, when you have me..." and I would angrily joke back at him that because sometimes he'd forgotten that that was his job.
So I began to look for a dishwasher. I always have bragged about the old clunky dishwasher in a house I lived in in college with 6 other roommates. That dishwasher was amazing. It would take off everything--crammed to the hilt and not turned on for days--it would even take off baked on rice that had been baked, then cooked again, then microwaved...we were in college then, you can imagine the gunk that went in there and always seemed to come out clean. Who knows, maybe we weren't looking all that closely? But it basically did a darn good job.
Unfortunately, I did not read enough reviews prior to buying--I just went straight to craigslist and --believe it or not-- bought and disposed of (returned, resold or otherwise rid myself) of *three* other dishwashers before happily settling down with Bosch. I love this new dishwasher so much that I have named it. I named it Bosch.
It was the first Bosch dishwasher (I had decided to buy used) I could find on Craigslist for *any* price that wasn't sold before I could finish reading the ad. Yes, they are extremely popular, especially when they only cost $300. I paid $320 for ours.
Yet more history...
The first of the old contenders was an old whirlpool with only one wash arm (only $50 though) but I never even hooked it up and gave it back to the guy who sold it to me as soon as my handyman mentioned that the one wash arm might not be the best idea.
The second was a black eurotech that I had the misfortune of buying from a couple who compulsively pre-rinsed their dishes. I don't know why *anyone* would do that. It was also quiet and had a pretty stainless interior like bosch. But I had to rewash half the load every time, no matter what setting it was on.
The third was an old kitchenaid with a pretty stainless interior but which smelled the whole house up with mold from its old insulation on the exterior.
I decided it was either going to have to be one of the new Maytags (I couldn't find an old Maytag on Craigslist--maybe people never sell them--they give thm to their kids like their old Miele vacuum cleaners) or a fairly new Bosch. The Bosch popped up first.
The buying experience...
It was a fun buying experience. It was the personal dishwasher of an appliance salesman with high-end merchandise in his store. So I got it shrink-wrapped and loaded into the back of my subaru as if I'd paid for a brand new one. Bonus! I asked the man and looked him in the eye pretty hard for his response when I said "Does it take off baked on food?" He always said "yes." I said "how about baked on food that's been sitting for a week because you forgot to turn it on before you left town..." I think he had to balk there because he couldn't rememer if that had ever happened. Fair enough. Not everyone abuses their dishwasher that way. I decided to give it a try--for goodness sake I could have resold it for a profit if I didn't like it. Unlike unloading some of the previous contenders. That's actually one of the reasons I decided to try the Bosch first over Maytag--sheerly on resale value!
Now here's the interesting part. I hear that Bosch recommends the use of Electrosol and Jet Dry. Interesting, because the active ingredients (npe's) in Jet Dry are actually *banned* in the EU for environmental reasons. You can look them up on wikipedia if you're interested. Anyway, I will NOT use Cascade (phosphates, chlorine, etc.) and I've never read the ingredients in Electrosol but I'm guessing they're just as bad. and I will NOT use jet dry. One of the bonus things about the "cool buying experience" of the dishwasher was that they have a european brand of rinse aid called Somat, so I bought a bottle. Pricey at 9.95 but at least I won't be killing fish. It's a pretty large bottle as well. So I used my standard Trader Joe's dishwasher soap, loaded the Somat up in the rinse aid dispenser (opening and closing 4 times as one gentleman had suggested here on epinions, which, by the way, worked very well) and fired away.
Cleaning Performance... (the only real test of a dishwasher)
At first, I judged its cleaning performance as so-so. Because I put a baby bottle in the corner, and it has a small opening, and not all the milk came out. It also didn't take off baked on rice or fully clean the pot the lentils had cooked in. I didn't pre-rinse anything, just to see what it would do.
So, I learned that I could put anything in (as long as an un-rinsed baby bottle was right over a jet), bits of food and all, as long as it wasn't cooked on. For that I would have rated its cleaning performance at about a 3.5 or a 4, which I think is the average here on epinions. I think Trader Joe's soap doesn't work at high temperatures because the Power Scrub Plus setting (the one that heats the whole wash temp up to 162 degrees) showed no advantages over regular wash. It just caked things on a little more heavily if I didn't pre-scrub the cooked on stuff.
Then we ran out of dishwasher soap just at the same time as laundry soap and lo and behold, our friend who sells amway stopped by to replenish it at just the right moment. He swore the amway (quixtar these days I think) dishwasher soap didn't have chlorine or phosphates and was biodegradable. Since there aren't any ingredients listed I was skeptical but tried it anyway. I looked it up online and, unless their formulas are different in europe, did find and ingredients list with lots of scary-looking enzymes and possibly some things similar to petro-chemicals but, as promised, no chlorine, no phosphates, and nothing I could quickly pinpoint as "bad." NOW Bosch's results are unbelievable. Since we'd tried the new soap, I decided to give it a rough test-run again and put in baked on stuff.
Tonight we had a dinner party with rice (of course it was cooked on) soup (with a buttery, starchy, protein-filled rue cooked onto the bottom) cheese toast (baked cheese on the baking pan) and since I was tired after cooking, just stuffed everything in to the hilt and put all the pots in, pots on top of pots (all except the teflon pan which gets a weird residue and strange smell from being washed in the dishwasher) and BANG! EVERYTHING came out PERFECTLY CLEAN -- *except* for one edge of one pot that had lentils cooked in it that was completely sideways, piled completely on top of a bunch of other things and probably missed the water jets.
Now, I'm going to take a gander that it was really the power of the Bosch, the temperature of the water and the length of the cycle (I used Power Scrub Plus to good effect this time) and not the soap that did the trick. I'm sure it helped--since that soap obviously works at higher temperatures unlike the Trader Joe's soap, and promises "enzymes that attack proteins and starches..." but I'll tell you, the combination *really* worked. It even took off partially-scorched, cooked on rice!!!
Just like my old college dishwasher!! Wahooooo!!! And it's pretty too. I'm a sucker for pretty. All I can say is, if you want spotless dishes and you don't want to do the work and defintely, absolutely don't want to pre-rinse, find your local friend who sells amway (I think we all know one or two) and get yourself a BOSCH.
I love it so much I'm going to take it with me when we move. We looked at a house today with a brand-new kitchen with stainless appliances. Everything was perfect *except* the dishwasher was a GE Profile and I inwardly had the thought "Oh, we'd have to change the appliances out for white to match the Bosch..."
9/25/06 update.
Yet more history...
I should have mentioned yesterday that it would have been a no-brainer for most anyone to put in a dishwasher much earlier than we did. However, there were a few obstacles to that--not the least of which is our landlord--who is another funny story that probably isn't all that pertinent here. Basically he is an inept handyman and doesn't want to deal with any extra "fixtures" that he can't fix himself. (I literally saw him singe his own eyebrows trying to fix our thermostat one day--hilarous!--just like in the movies when fire comes out of the wall and the victim stands there stunned, face covered with soot) But suffice it to say that it took sufficient frustration with handwashing and surrounding issues that I had to come to terms with and get creative with the "wiring" so to speak. The situation required some interesting "jerry rigging" to make both us and the landlord happy. While there is plenty of room in the kitchen to hard-wire a dishwasher, the landlord wanted no part of it. My husband and I were unwilling to fiddle around with a portable and make the kitchen sink inoperable during the dishwasher's cycle. So...I invested in about $90 worth of compression hoses, strung end to end (they don't come any longer than 6 ft that I could find) because the laundry room is where I could easily attach a Y valve to the washing machine water source without making any "unauthorized improvements" to the place. The drain hose runs across the kitchen floor, then goes under the undersink cabinet and around back, then up to the garbage disposal (which our landlord reluctantly let us install if we promised to take it away when we left) where it totally avoids anything at all that would be considered an "improvement." After reading so many comments on epinions about the difficulty of installing it, I printed the manual and called my handyman to do it, figuring I wouldn't be able to do it myself, and interestingly, found that it was quite simple. I guess forewarned is fore-armed. :) Anyway, installation wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. And, the dishwasher doesn't have to be hard-wired. My handyman installed a nice ordinary 3-prong plug on the end. Which I also could have done myself, had I known there wasn't any additional trick to it. Voila! Instant portable hard-wired dishwasher. I can "uninstall" it myself in 2 minutes.
MUCH MORE RIGOROUS TESTING...
After last night's dinner party, I turned on the dishwasher early and waited to go to bed until the cycle had finished so I could see for myself what it could do, and as previously mentioned, was totally amazed.
Usually when I get a dishwasher I throw my hardest curve ball at it right away and see how it handles it. Since it hit a home run on the first go-round, I thought I'd see if I could make it harder.
Today's lunch presented itself with perfect opportunities for further testing.
1. A burned pot of lentils and rice cooked together. I left the pot on low, meaning to take it off the heat after 20 minutes, and accidentally left it for an hour. It wasn't completely burned, but it was thoroughly scorched and brown at the bottom. We ate the edible part and I scraped out the rest into the disposer. What I could not scrape out was a solid 1/2 inch of hardened protein and starch mass at the bottom of the pot. I didn't soak it at all--I just put it in the dishwasher--the hardest curve ball I have abused a dishwasher with yet. Dishwashers are known for dealing generally pretty well with greasy foods. It occured to me that yesterday's scummy leftover soup residue may have been an easy task for Bosch because it was infused in butter. Today's was pure protein and starch. No advantage of being immersed in any kind of oil, butter or anything greasy whatsoever that would easily lift off with soap and hot water.
2. A scorched chai pot (chai is tea, sugar, spices and milk all boiled together) and I always get that browned ring at the bottom of the pot (thanks to our lovely standard electric stove that the landlord won't let me replace with gas). I just rinsed the tea leaves out of the pot and stuffed it in the dishwasher.
I gave both pots the advantage of being right over the jets on the top rack where the baby bottle always seems to get very clean. I put it on Power Scrub Plus and wandered around waiting with baited breath for the 2 hours it took to complete the cycle--being too impatient to wait until after dinner. I could have waited though--to see if any sitting and hardening could make it any more difficult. I was really quite sure that I hadn't been very kind to Bosch and I was sure this would be the limit.
After 2 hours I quickly opened the dishwasher (dishes still burning hot to the touch) and almost fried my hand while I impatiently put them away and -- to my UTTER AND COMPLETE ASTONISHMENT -- the chai pot came out --TOTALLY AND *COMPLETELY CLEAN*.-- UTTERLY Clean. This is the first time I have seen any dishwasher even come close to dealing with scorched milk. I have to say though, the soap must have played a large part here--I have tried a scorched hot chocolate pot previously with the Trader Joes' soap (on quick wash though) and it basically just rinsed it--and I had to scrub it out. Next experiment would be to see if it also had an advantage by being on the top rack. The hot chocolate pot had been placed on the bottom.
The lentil/rice pot was NEARLY clean, save for two 3/4 inch square globs of soft, gooey lentils and rice that came out easily with a quick swipe with a bottle brush. I just can hardly *believe* that the whole bottom of the pot was SPOTLESS save for those two little globs. I bow down to dishwasher. I am in utter astonishment.
I have only heard of people's "old maytag" that dealt with scorched pots better than they could scrub them by hand. Not even our old college dishwasher could have handled that.
Oh, a quick note on the filter. I did find several little bits of lentils and rice in the silverware basket (the pot was right over it--it had to fall somewhere) and it was a good thing I checked the filter because it was FULL of the stuff. Unfortunately when I took out the filter to clean it, I grabbed it wrong and flicked the smaller part out--and some of the goo went right into the water at the bottom. I cleaned out the filter and ran a couple of rinse cycles so the wash arms didn't get gummed up with the same stuff. So I guess the frequency with which you need to change the filter is really based on what you throw at it.
I suppose this would have been one advantage of an "old maytag" (or a new one for that matter)--it would have a hard food disposer. But the word is, they're not very quiet. They have to run during the whole wash cycle. Quiet is good for us--I think the sweet hum of the dishwasher feels cozy at night after dinner. A loud one tends to spoil the mood of the evening. We have an "open floorplan" so I'll gladly make the tradeoff of cleaning the filter occasionally (I usually do it about once a week and save for today I've never found anything but what looked like a few black pepper granules in it) if it means not having the extra noise. Besides, I'm in love with our Bosch.
A couple more fiddly things--
1. the rinse aid dispenser seems to come open every so often--like every couple of weeks. (We've had it about a month.) Is there something wrong with it? I've been tempted to let it run out of rinse aid since I'm not that finicky about the dishes needing to be dry.
2. A "nice to have" would be the option to add an extra rinse cycle to the wash. Do you ever notice when you get a glass of water, it seems to have the teeniest bit of detergent left in it? I always end up double-rinsing my glass with filtered water before I drink out of it. If I'm feeling especially picky I run an extra "rinse and hold" cycle after the wash.
3. To clarify the "con" below, the way the lights are on the unit, it makes it look like the "refill rinse aid" light is on after every wash because the "sanitized" light comes on and it's right next to it. At first I thought there was something wrong with it but then saw it in the dark and realized *all* the lights were illumined slightly, but less so based on how close they were to the one that was actually supposed to be lit. Not a big deal. The pros are far too powerful to worry about this little stuff. :)
Happy Washing!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 320
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Epinions.com ID:
so_hum
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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