New dishwasher - do I need to use separate dishwasher salt?!

Mr_Meanie

What possible reason or advantage would there be to put extra salt in and or use dishwasher tables that contain salt ?

reeac

Our Bosch dishwasher is pretty old now - about 14 years I think - and is used every day. When it needed a repair a while ago the repairman, who we know fairly well, said that we should be using Fairy Platinum Plus tablets. Apparently dishwasher tablets tread a fine line between being too aggressive and cleaning the plates but eventually attacking plastic components in the dishwasher and insufficiently aggressive and not cleaning the plates. He maintained that FPP tablets had the correct degree of aggression. We don't use DW salt as we have a whole house watersoftener.

littlewren

I found also that my plates, cups etc were coming out looking quite dismal, no shine at all, despite using a 3 in 1 tab which is supposed to obviously have salt and rinse aid in. I filled up the rinse aid dispenser and voila, everything was shiny again!

leviathan

In your dishwasher you have a water softener mechanism. The water passes through this and calcium and other minerals are removed. The salt is used to recharge and flush this resin medium once it's saturated.
The harder the water the more frequent the resin needs to be flushed and thus the more salt is used.


The salt isn't often used directly in the wash cycle.

But the wash tablets cannot do the job it is doing.