I don’t know if it needs saying, but getting a good quality one is the key. Cheap ones are noisy, wasteful, not durable, and do a poor job - to the point of having to partly wash your dishes before you wash them in the dishwasher. A good quality dishwasher will last, be quiet, and handle some pretty dirty stuff. That said, even commercial kitchen dishwashers don’t take everything off, so have some realistic expectations.
To come to the defense of noisy dishwashers…the loudest ones are like that because they have food grinders inside. That means you don’t have to pre-wash dishes or do nasty periodic work to clear the inevitable debris from filters and traps and spouts over time. I’m sharing this because I only learned it last year, and after decades of quiet dishwasher marketing, I had assumed they were using some kind of amazing technology to wash better than the old noisy ones. They’re not. They’re all just swishing soapy water around in a box, and it’s way cheaper to manufacture a box without a grinder in it.
I have a silent dishwasher currently, and I feel like we share the work about 50-50, the dishwasher 'n me.
I have yet to have a disposal built in. Also, the noise isn’t supposed to last the entire wash cycle. All dishwashers I’ve had have a screen that requires occasional cleaning to prevent food from getting to the pump because the water is recycled in the machine for efficiency reasons.
Right, disposals have become rare in dishwashers since manufacturers started phasing them out many many years ago (again, they cost more to produce, so the industry switched to the filter system and wisely marketed the machines as “quiet”). They do still put grinders in a few higher end models but you have to look hard and pay more. GE has branded their hard food disposal feature as “Piranha.” Maytag has a couple pricey models that combine grinder AND filter, with the soft promise that the filter will never need cleaning (prompting the question, is the filter actually doing anything?). They’re out there.
But you were talking more about cheapo filter dishwashers that skimp on anti-vibration material, and you’re right, they are the pits.
Eh…no. Grinder !=quality. It’s just a feature, maybe it was more common back in the day, but like I said, I’ve never had one. Sure, there are plenty of cheapo dishwashers, but I can assure you if one were actually to purchase a dishwasher that is actually quiet, they aren’t cheap.
Somehow, I have profoundly failed to convey a very simple point here today, and I apologize for that.
We agree that grinder != quality. Neither of us is saying otherwise.
My assertion is simply that a higher noise level in and of itself does not strictly signal lower quality. Dishwashers with hard food grinders are louder (say 50 decibels vs. 40–45) but require no manual filter cleaning. Despite going out of fashion 10–15 years ago, this feature is appealing to many, but it isn’t commonly known that there are two options or that noise can be a variable between them.
This information was of use to me when I learned it, so I am passing it on for anyone else who may find it helpful. I am not declaring that there is one right type of dishwasher or that your personal dishwasher is bad because it has a filter. There are two kinds; not everyone knows that there are two kinds (it seems like you didn’t); the kind that makes more noise is not automatically inferior, despite the industry’s emphasis on silence.
I don’t know if it needs saying, but getting a good quality one is the key. Cheap ones are noisy, wasteful, not durable, and do a poor job - to the point of having to partly wash your dishes before you wash them in the dishwasher. A good quality dishwasher will last, be quiet, and handle some pretty dirty stuff. That said, even commercial kitchen dishwashers don’t take everything off, so have some realistic expectations.
To come to the defense of noisy dishwashers…the loudest ones are like that because they have food grinders inside. That means you don’t have to pre-wash dishes or do nasty periodic work to clear the inevitable debris from filters and traps and spouts over time. I’m sharing this because I only learned it last year, and after decades of quiet dishwasher marketing, I had assumed they were using some kind of amazing technology to wash better than the old noisy ones. They’re not. They’re all just swishing soapy water around in a box, and it’s way cheaper to manufacture a box without a grinder in it.
I have a silent dishwasher currently, and I feel like we share the work about 50-50, the dishwasher 'n me.
Food grinders?
I have yet to have a disposal built in. Also, the noise isn’t supposed to last the entire wash cycle. All dishwashers I’ve had have a screen that requires occasional cleaning to prevent food from getting to the pump because the water is recycled in the machine for efficiency reasons.
Right, disposals have become rare in dishwashers since manufacturers started phasing them out many many years ago (again, they cost more to produce, so the industry switched to the filter system and wisely marketed the machines as “quiet”). They do still put grinders in a few higher end models but you have to look hard and pay more. GE has branded their hard food disposal feature as “Piranha.” Maytag has a couple pricey models that combine grinder AND filter, with the soft promise that the filter will never need cleaning (prompting the question, is the filter actually doing anything?). They’re out there.
But you were talking more about cheapo filter dishwashers that skimp on anti-vibration material, and you’re right, they are the pits.
Eh…no. Grinder !=quality. It’s just a feature, maybe it was more common back in the day, but like I said, I’ve never had one. Sure, there are plenty of cheapo dishwashers, but I can assure you if one were actually to purchase a dishwasher that is actually quiet, they aren’t cheap.
Somehow, I have profoundly failed to convey a very simple point here today, and I apologize for that.
We agree that grinder != quality. Neither of us is saying otherwise.
My assertion is simply that a higher noise level in and of itself does not strictly signal lower quality. Dishwashers with hard food grinders are louder (say 50 decibels vs. 40–45) but require no manual filter cleaning. Despite going out of fashion 10–15 years ago, this feature is appealing to many, but it isn’t commonly known that there are two options or that noise can be a variable between them.
This information was of use to me when I learned it, so I am passing it on for anyone else who may find it helpful. I am not declaring that there is one right type of dishwasher or that your personal dishwasher is bad because it has a filter. There are two kinds; not everyone knows that there are two kinds (it seems like you didn’t); the kind that makes more noise is not automatically inferior, despite the industry’s emphasis on silence.