Thanks for your site, I enjoy all of it, as does my husband. He is the serious space-nut, I am just space-nut-lite. But still, great fun to read about (except the downfall of our once quite amazing NASA). Being engineers, we are both deeply disturbed by the state of ‘science’ and ‘engineering’ education in our fair nation. Perhaps that will turn around, stranger things have happened.

Anyway, thanks for your comment Robert!

GrumpyCurmudgeonLady: Thank you for your comments.

The number of comments on this particular post here on Behind The Black is hardly unique. Moreover, don’t assume your comments will not be seen. A lot of people will read what you write, as the website’s popularity appears to be growing, with this month likely to be its most visited month ever.

So, since nobody is likely to read this, I’ll put my Bosch Dishwasher review here. It is right in line with what everyone has been saying – I wrote it, Amazon didn’t like that I called ‘Euro-Engineers’ ‘Euro-Trash’. Hmm. They seem to have no problem with the blue-bonnets calling us red-riders racysssts or what-the-heck-ever on reviews all over the place. So here is my review of the bosch-trosh:

——————————————

Well, I am not sure what I would like in a dishwasher these days other
than what it is SUPPOSED to do:

– Give me more time in my day not ‘tending to’ drudge work.

– Thoroughly clean the dishes (this is what it is FOR).

– Dry the dishes, so that I can put them away.

– Do it in a decent amount of time so I can put them away before I go to bed at night.

This machine only does one of these things. It is the minimum. It does
seem to clean the dishes. Oh oh! See update!

cons:

– I have to use ‘Heavy’ with sani and extra dry features in order to get the
dishes to the point that they are clean and somewhat damp.

– The cycle is over 3 hours long.

– You have to clean a filter (what is THAT about? I do not want to be
a slave to my appliances).

– There is an inlet water filter (???) that WILL clog. When it does,
unless you remove and fix it yourself, it is an appliance repair
person who will be called. The part is not hideously expensive, the
repair call will be. I don’t know if you can get away with drilling
out that screen or not. I’m not messing with it until it fails.

– It does not dry the dishes. At all. Extra-dry is a joke. There is no
difference between ‘no dry’ and ‘extra dry’. If you leave it all
night the dishes are slightly dryer than if you attempt to put them
away after the (very long) cycle finishes. If you leave the cabinet
open after completion overnight, the dishs will be dry. Joy. Even
with the factory setting turned off (yes, there is a ‘secret’
setting in the manual, not at all evident. You DID read the entire
manual, right?)

– Unless you sterilize the filter before going away for a few days,
you better leave the cabinet open, or you will return to
swamp-fever. Oh, oh! Even worse. Add to this: Remove all water
from the sump, using a turkey baster. You could pour clorox in, but
I am sure it would void your warranty.

pros:

– It is priddy.

– It is very quiet, frankly, I would rather have it be noisy with a
food grinder and drying fan.

– It was not difficult to install, except you need to buy a power cord
if you are plugging it into a receptacle.

– It is no better or worse than any other dishwasher of its price
point that are available. See updates on cons.

– You will be able to brag about having some German engineering in
your kitchen. You get the Euro-trash smell too. (see the cons.)

UPDATE: 2017-07-03

Well. Guess what? The thing doesn’t pump out all of the water from the
previous wash. Therefore, even if you sterilize the filter, you will
return from your vacation to an active biology
demonstration. Yech. You need to leave the dishwasher open if you
leave it for more than 24 hours.

UPDATE: 2017-07-04:

I used a turkey baster and drew the water out of the washer’s sump.
It was quite cloudy, cloudier than the final backwash on my pool
filter. This is after using ‘heavy soil’, ‘sani’ and ‘extra dry’. (Which you need
to select EVERY TIME YOU USE THIS BOAT ANCHOR.)
THE WATER IS DIRTY in the final rinse. But thank God it doesn’t draw
drying air from under the cabinets! That is horrific!!! (This is the ‘excuse’
that europeans use for not ‘allowing’ American dishwashers to disgrace their
kitchens.)

But that is not surprising given the personal hygiene of the most
Europeans. (They don’t bathe that regularly, they generally have that whiff of BO
about them – not the nice smell of a man that has been working all day, but rather
the smell of a man (or woman) who has been working outside but haven’t
bathed for a week). Been there, smelled that. Although it is hard to
get a snatch of the smell through all the tobacco smoke. So much for
‘healthy’ Euros. But I am sure they are right: Americans are too clean.

Yeah. Right. How ’bout them Japanese all these Libs are always on
about? The ‘Japanese Soaking Tub’. A great idea if you get yourself
sparkly clean (AND I MEAN JAPANESE CLEAN) before ‘soaking’. Else,
guess what you get? Yeah. The inside of a Bosch dishwasher.

So, an additional cons is this:

cons: IT DOESN’T EVEN GET YOUR DISHES CLEAN. This is the minimum
requirement of a dishwasher – FAIL. Not drying, not being quiet, not
even getting HOT are not ‘requirements’ of a dishwasher, but getting
dishes CLEAN is.

So, my recommendation is: Don’t buy it

Get something that may be noisier, but gets rid of the sump water and
grinds up the stuff left on the dishes when you load.

cons: While I have had people tell me that they only have to clean the
filter every month or so, I wonder if their ability to think is
impaired. The ‘filter’ is filled with slimy crud after every wash, at
least in my house. But I suppose if you carefully clean and sterilize
your dishes before you put them in, all will be well. Perhaps I could convert it
to a dish cabinet. But no, the thing STINKS even immediately after running
a cycle with no dishes and a sparky clean filter. IT STINKS!!

“How to determine who actually manufactured your Sears Kenmore appliance”
http://www.appliance411.com/purchase/sears.shtml

–You need the 3 digit model number off the ID tag and compare it to the chart.

I have been calling my dishwasher a “sterilizer” for years. The word comes from the time in college when I worked in the kitchen — our “dishwasher” didn’t wash at all, only sterilized.

My Democrat mother once complained to me that her dishwasher stopped cleaning her dishes. I informed her that the government required changes to the detergents that make them practically worthless, but she refused to believe me. She thought her dishwasher was broken and has been buying new ones ever since. I will tell her about the TSP/Borax/sodium tripolyphosphate solutions.

As I like to say, when we let the government run things (such as what is in our washing machines, dishwashers, detergents, or air conditioners) we only get what government wants, not what we want (such as clean clothes, clean dishes, or comfortable homes).

Andi asked: “Whatever happened to ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’?”

The government has a “not invented here” philosophy, and because that phrase wasn’t invented there, they won’t follow it.

Only liberals can take something that works and make it twice as expensive and it can’t do the job. You have to wear dirty clothes to save the ‘environment’. NOT AT OUR HOUSE!!

The lion’s share of our water bill is used on our lawn. Who buys it when they say “you’ll save money on your water bill”? Bull excrement. I’m proud of our clean clothes and soft and lush, gorgeous dark green, healthy, OVER fertilized and regularly watered grass.

I PAID FOR THAT water.

How soon before IoT is everywhere and our toasters, etc. are all reporting back to the NSA through the backdoor?

How soon before “they” turn off our appliances during heavy load periods? Oh wait, the local electric company is already doing that with the A/C. Fortunately it’s still voluntary, but for how long?

Trust me, if there were enough truly ‘dumb’ machines sold, the gov’t would force them to do the same thing, but in ways much harder to defeat (because you couldn’t cut out the computer sensors or bypass them). The ‘smart’ bit just makes it easier to control you.

(Oh, and add cars to the list of “Way too damn smart for anyone’s good.”)

And yes, there was the “Where the f* did the agitator go?!”

I almost got a front-load machine, since an agitator really isn’t needed. But tricking them into giving you enough water seemed more difficult.

I eventually found a GE with an agitator and the ability to manually set the water level. (It will also do auto-level, with a “deep fill” button that adds more water to the auto-level fill-up.)

Our dishwasher is less trickable. Seems we almost always use the “Heavy Wash” option. I finally ran out of the commercial dishwashing soap I was using (because it still had the phosphates necessary to actually clean the dishes). I will need to order more.

As others mentioned, one of the fundamental principles of cleaning just about everything is “More water, the better!” The second fundamental is “Elbow grease works!” – which means give me back my agitator!

Gov’t is crawling into every nook and cranny to force us to do things “for our own good” and it’s enough to make me want to stuff them in a ‘smart’ refrigerator and screw the door shut.

1917 Maytag Model 43 Washing Machine
(>gas powered)
https://youtu.be/Aq_nD87riLY
3:35

——

“Mother Takes a Holiday”
Whirlpool 1952 (A Jam Handy Production)
https://youtu.be/nMss3ZR7ijg
28:40
“a drama of how the women in the family manipulate their men to upgrade the laundry facilities.”

My workaround for “low flow” shower heads is to have a diverter valve between the shower head and the wall. Attached to the diverter is an old style kitchen sprayer (with an extension). The regular shower head is fine for soaping up, and then I switch over to the sprayer for rinsing off. Works great if you just want to lean over the tub to wash your hair, too. The arrangement also worked well when I lived in an apartment that had water temperature balance issues – where the temp would vary 20 degrees quickly depending on other users.

Can’t take credit for the idea – saw the arrangement at a friend’s house where they had it set up to give their pets baths in the tub.

wayne: For microwave ovens, look in pawn shops and thrift stores and used appliance places. I am betting you can find a unit that works fine for pennies on the dollar, with the options you want.

Pivoting—I have a question about microwave ovens— my Amana Radar-Range is straight from 1993 and it’s 1500 watts. Been contemplating a replacement but most of what I see are 900 watts (or less).
Do they still make 1500 watt microwaves, or what?