Dishwasher Salt - Blocks or Granules?

martindow

I have a water softener for the house although the plumbing is such that the dishwasher uses hard water straight from the mains.


Can I occasionally drop a block of the salt that I use for the water softener into the dishwasher?



Packets of dishwasher salt always seem to be fine granules but I assume that blocks of salt would dissolve and would work as well. This would be cheaper and more convenient if there are no downsides.

getmore4less

can you get a big bag of granular from your block supplier.

depending on the size of the blocks and the aperture in the dishwasher your blocks may need breaking up.

jk0

I'd re-plumb the dishwasher so that it is fed with soft water. Then you can forget about adding salt altogether.

dj1471

I'd suggest probably not, simply because you won't know how concentrated the salt is or how quickly it will dissolve. A dishwasher will dispense an appropriate dose of salt into each wash. If you just put a block of salt in there you could end up with too much (salt deposits on your dishes) or too little (won't do it's job).

Section106

martindow wrote: »

Packets of dishwasher salt always seem to be fine granules but I assume that blocks of salt would dissolve and would work as well. This would be cheaper and more convenient if there are no downsides.

It depends how your dishwasher softener regeneration cycle works. If it just uses the water which has being sitting around in the salt compartment for hours then you might be ok, but if it regenerates by flushing water through the salt and straight into the softener system then you may not get the required level of salinity to achieve full regeneration.

The rate at which the salt dissolves will depend on the surface area of all the pieces of salt within the salt compartment. One large piece of salt will have a smaller total surface area than small granules of an equivalent weight. Therefore it would take longer for the larger piece to dissolve, and water flowing through the compartment is going to come out less saline.

If the dishwasher needs the salt to dissolve quickly during the regeneration cycle then the blocks may not work properly.

Supermarket own brand dishwasher salt granules are cheap.

But jk0's suggestion of re-plumbing (if possible) is the one I would go for. And if so, you should then disable the dishwasher's own softener function to save water and energy.

martindow

Thanks everyone. It looks as if the long-term answer is to get the water connection to come from the softened water supply.


In the meantime I'll buy the DW salt and stop trying to be over-zealously money saving!