Tabletop Dishwashers

Radiantsoul

Does anyone have a tabletop dishwasher?

Are they any good? Our kitchen is probably too small to house a slimline dishwasher without ripping out some of the units or ditching the freezer. I wonder if a tabletop dishwasher is a good idea? There is me, the wife and our baby and so I assume we would need to run it every day...

ic

With two adults at home we run a slimline dishwasher most days. I could see with a table top we'd wind up either running it twice daily, or washing up. All it would serve to do is get in the way and generate piles of dishes waiting to be washed.

Radiantsoul

You might be right. We seem to generate a lot of washing up and have quite a lot of stuff piled up as well.

babyshoes

We used to have one, and ran it most days for 2 of us. It isn't so good for big, greasy pots and pans, but fine for normal crockery and cutlery. It died so we got a normal sized one which is better!

Handy to have if you have the space, but you will end up washing most pots and pans by hand.

Radiantsoul

babyshoes wrote: »

We used to have one, and ran it most days for 2 of us. It isn't so good for big, greasy pots and pans, but fine for normal crockery and cutlery. It died so we got a normal sized one which is better!

Handy to have if you have the space, but you will end up washing most pots and pans by hand.

Thanks, I suppose if it just does plates and stuff it is not a massive advantage.

davehills

Used to have one when I had a small flat and it was fab! My Mum now has one and she thinks they are fab too!

However, you'll probably end up running the thing twice a day, unless there's only one of you and you spend some of the day working.

Still worthwhile though, IMHO.

toasterman

Girlfriend and I bought one a few months back, and it is helpful. Some are better designed than others though. We looked at a Kenwood one that had much better rack design than the one we bought (the Kenwood was £70 more).


Problems we have with the current one include:
- The rack layout. There's too many spikes in some places, and not enough in others. There are gaps so large across the bottom that cups risk falling out and into the path of the spinning mechanism at the bottom, which restricts where you can put them.
There is a silly side rack at the top left, which in the manual shows cups sitting in it. It's absolutely tiny. In reality, the cups in that picture must be espresso mugs at biggest.

- The height. When you put a big plate in the bottom of a full-size dishwasher, you can pull the bottom draw out, and you've got the gap where the top drawer would be (but it's pushed in) for angles. On a tabletop, because the door isn't as high, and only comes out about 4/5ths of the way, there's no top drawer gap, AND the large plates must go at the back due to rack design, I regularly knock them against the top of the machine.

- The knife/fork compartment doesn't seem to have enough spacers. Consequently, things end up touching and don't come out clean.

Also, they don't really use much less water than a full size one. Ours uses around 10litres per wash.
Dishwasher tablets are all an agreed size, so you don't save there either really.
There is a short wash that takes around 13 minutes, but doesn't really get most things clean. The next shortest wash is around 70 minutes, so it's not any quicker than a full size dishwasher.

I would only buy one if you absolutely cannot find space for a slimline model.
And if you do, I'd recommend something my girlfriend's mum has done in the past - take a couple of plates and cups with you to the shop, and see if they fit.
It doesn't really matter if you end up buying it from that shop, as a result. Technically ours a Bush, a brand only on sale in Homebase and Argos. There is a near-identical one being sold under different names in Comet and Currys (same size, rack, buttons, options, LCD screen). I had a look at one in Comet (didn't take any plates to test, because I'm silly), then ordered the almost-identical unbranded/cheap-and-cheerful one from Homebase online, because they had 10% off all their products in a kind of January sale.