The Dishwasher, Clean with a Chance of Cloudy

I think we’ve all used Facebook to connect and reconnect with people we know. Such was the case with a very good friend I have in Jersey. We’ll just call her MJ to preserve he anonymity. I’m sure you can’t crack that code. Just in case she’s reading today I’ll send her a big hello. She and I started emailing each other at the beginning of last year. Surprisingly, the topic of dishwashers never came up. Unlike most Facebook friends we actually exchanged emails and still write to each other every couple of weeks.  The month of May came around and I wrote I had to figure out what happened to my dishwasher this weekend, they glasses were coming out cloudy. She told me to tell her what I found because her dishwasher was doing the same thing. It’s important that I remind my audience I am not one of life’s great thinkers. It didn’t occur to me that a dishwasher in Jersey could be related to a dishwasher in Vegas.

Anyway, into the fray. I took a few simple tools and started dismantling my dishwasher.  At first the only thing I noticed was there was a salty coat on all the components and some hard water residue build here and there. It didn’t really occur to me that this was a problem because I knew New Jersey didn’t have particularly hard water and I knew Las Vegas did. Those two things didn’t change so it couldn’t be the culprit. Or could it?

I’ve been told that in Olden Golden Times and Days of Yor, people would trek many miles and traverse great expanses to find the wise man. Lucky for me, I have a computer that apparently knows everything.

In July of 2010; Indiana, along with about a dozen other states passed a law that said dishwasher detergent must be phosphate free. Try saying that 10 times fast. This probably would have gone unnoticed except The Green Monster, oops, can’t use that. The Green Giant, can’t use that either. Forget it, California was one of the states with Indiana.

For those of us who work in Las Vegas air conditioning repair service, we know what California decides, happens. They were the state that declared R-22 refrigerant was bad and they would ban it. They decided minimum efficiency for an air conditioner would be 13 SEER, the rest of the country followed. So now they say phosphate free Cascade and that’s what happened.

Phosphates break down hard water. Without them, the drain and complete path of dirty water of a dishwasher gets choked and much of the residue will be left behind. Now, if we were all blind, there wouldn’t be a problem, the cloudy residue has no flavor or texture. Fortunately, we’re not all blind. But what if I’m hosting a fabulous dinner extravaganza and I have cloudy glasses. How embarrassing!

So you have probably figured out that Cascade and all the others knew this was coming and changed their formulas in advance. The hard water build up takes time it didn’t happen immediately.

But why did Cascade do it? Because California has a huge economy and the decision was made that the company wanted to make money.Can you believe a company would put money above performance? Shocking I tell you!

So are there different formulas for different parts of the country and world? No, wouldn’t be cost effective.

So now that they saw the results are they going to change it back? Nope, we’re all stuck with it.

So they must have a different chemical or something that does the same thing a phosphate does? Again, No.

So what do we do?

Tune in tomorrow, same HVAC time, same HVAC channel. (Insert dramatic music here)