Arranging Vessels in a Dish Washer

Arranging vessels is not a rocket science however would need some bit of understanding.

• The vessels are getting cleaned by the force of water along with heat and detergent, that would mean you should arrange vessels in such a way that water from the spray falls on all the vessels. 
• Some simple DOs would be, place your vessels bottom up always.
• Big vessels on Bottom Tray with vessels evenly spread out
• Smaller vessels on Top Tray with Glass in appropriate compartment
• I personally feel that the cutlery basket is not needed as we can find about 20-25 small places (in the Top Tray) where we can place the spoons and forks

A typical placement of vessels would be

Top Tray

Bottom Tray

• Most important thing - After arranging the vessels and before you start the machine, try to rotate (both) the spray arms to ensure that they are rotating freely without any obstruction otherwise you may end up with uncleaned vessels.

Maintaining Dishwasher

Following are the things you may want to keep in mind.

1) Once in a week or every fortnight you could do some preventive maintenance run that would include, removing the sprayer arms and filters and inspect for any blockages caused by food particles. You clean them by using a old tooth brush. Fix the sprayer arms and filter back.

2)  After completing Step 1 above, set the program to minimum level and try run the dishwasher empty without any vessels loaded. When you start hearing the sound of sprayer arm moving, switch of the power, open the door and add two small cups of Vinegar - This would help in cleaning the interiors and switch on the power and allow it to complete.

4) Inspect the outlet hose to see if they are properly aligned, sometimes the outlet hose might have come out of the pit hole on the floor and water might be spreading all over the floor before it eventually drys. Look for any blockages.

5) Check the inlet hose, you might see a small filter that is used for filtering any sand or rust particles that come from the over head tank -- this happens typically when your overhead tank is cleaned. Remove them by keeping the filter under tap water and put them back.

6) If you are in a Flat, then keep an eye on what kind of water is being supplied to you. It might vary from Bore water (hard water) to Govt/Municipality supplied water (generally soft water) to the one supplied by Private Water Tankers (these are generally very hard (water), depending on the source). You may want to adjust the water softener level accordingly for getting good result.

7) Whenever your Salt indicator is Red, try to refill the Salt at the earliest, while you could still run with out the salt, this might result in poor cleaning (depending on the water you use, if you are using soft water you may not see any difference) however the softening system helps in preventing scale formation on heating filament and other internal parts that are invisible. (Don't add salt that contains Iodine, go for Non-Iodized salt or the one that vendor supplies, see my earlier post)

8) Inspect the rubber beading around the door for hardness and dirt, you may want to replace or clean them accordingly.

9) Keep an eye on the Warranty and renew or take necessary steps, the machine has to run at least for about 6-8 years (depending on Maid rates in your area) to get back the money you have invested.


See Post: Pre-Installation Work