On 7/11/2011 7:49 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
"Joseph wrote in message
...
In ,
"Ed wrote:

"Joseph wrote in message
...
In ,
"Ed wrote:

"Joseph wrote in message
...
In article3_adnZIC3Jot5YfTnZ2dnUVZ_gGdnZ2d@earthlink .com,
wrote:

"Joseph wrote in message
...
Over the last year or so, my Bosch dishwasher (installed in 1999
or
so)
started to smell skunky, although it still seemed to clean OK if
not
as
well as when new. This slowly worsened, and I started haunting
the
appliance repair sites.

The main suggestions were to not use so much soap (helped
slightly),
run
a cycle with a cup of vinegar in the water (worked for two days),
and
(quite oddly) don't rinse the plates off before putting them in
the
dishwasher. All in all, the washer had worked just fine for
years,
and
none of these are a solution, so kept looking.

Then I happened on an article in an electronics trade rag (Bob
Pease's
column in "Electronic Design" magazine, 5 May 2011, page 104)
pointing
out that all the phosphate had just been removed from dishwasher
detergents, and this was causing problems. Hmm. Phosphates were
always
considered essential when I was growing up. What changed?

Using phosphate and dishwasher together as a google search term
soon
led
to the answer, with tale after tale of dishwashers that no longer
work,
of people buying new dishwashers to no avail ... could this be
the
reason?

What changed is that the EPA forced the makers of household
dishwasher
detergents to eliminate all phosphates, despite the fact the
phosphate
fertilizer is still used by the ton. (Restaurants can still get
the
phosphate stuff.)

Anyway, the suggested standard solution is to add your own
phosphate,
and it takes very little to solve the problem - phosphate was
about
5%
of the mix in the pre-EPA days. In my Bosch, the usual soap load
is
maybe a tablespoon or a bit more of Cascade, to which I add
literally
one pinch of Trisodium Phosphate. Swampy smells are gone.

There is however one thing to be careful of: Not everything sold
as
"TSP" is in fact Trisodium Phosphate these days. I have some
"TSP"
that
was sold to me as Trisodium Phosphate but in fact is Sodium
Silicate,
which will not work, and may cause damage (the package warns
about
etching glass). So, read the box carefully. If it does not come
out
and clearly say that it is Trisodium Phosphate, it probably
isn't.
It's
best to buy Trisodium Phosphate in a real paint store.

For some background, see
http://www.appliance.net/2010/states...n-dishwasher-s
oap
-1988

Joe Gwinn

If you have a swampy smell, there is some sort of decaying matter
causing
it. I do not know about Bosch, but in my Kenmore there is a coarse
grate
above the macerator, a slight finer grate next to the macerator
blade
,
and
a fine screen to filter recirculated water. All of these can trap
chunks
of
food, especially fibrous stuff. I have to take it apart and clean
them
now
and then.

I did look - they were all clean, mostly because I pre-rinse the
heavy
stuff right into the disposal.

Joe Gwinn

FWIW, we're having exactly the same smell problem with our dishwasher,
and I
haven't be able to figure it out for months. Now that you've filled us
in,
I'm going to try some TSP in that machine, as well as in my clothes
washer.

Bingo! It takes two maybe three washes to achieve full effect. I
assume that this is to clean out the hoses et al. I started with a far
heavier dose, but had some lime deposits that were later cleaned off
with
Bon-Ami and a rag.

Also, I came upon the following article:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/89/8904cover.html

Well, that's darned interesting. Reading about the complications of
finding
substitutes reminds me of the things those Oakite engineers were talking
about.

So, I have a load in the dishwasher, and my box of TSP is handy. I'll
give
it a try. Thanks for all the info, Joe.

Welcome.

Do you think it's time to storm the EPA?

g I have mixed feelings about it. I appreciate their problem. They're
charged with reducing pollutants of many kinds. As a long-time fisherman and
outdoorsman, I remember what it was like before we had the EPA. The Delaware
River was a uniform gray on the bottom and the carp, which were almost the
only fish living in it, were gasping.

Now we have shad again, and blueback herring, and even trout as far south as
Lambertville, NJ. Atlantic Salmon have been netted in the Delaware Bay --
not quite ready to brave the river, but hanging around and hoping it will
keep improving. They left nearly two centuries ago.

We lost one of the most beautiful and unique trout waters in the world when
the acid rain killed most of the trout in the Adirondacks. That reached
crisis levels when I was in my early teens. It broke my heart. I haven't
been back for decades, although I hear it's somewhat better since stack
scrubbers were applied to coal-fired plants in the Midwest, which is where
the acid rain came from.

So I try to look at it case-by-case. It's not easy.


The basic problem is that they don't know when to just stop, declare
victory, and move on.

There's truth in that. Sometimes they have to keep at it or it's bound to
regress. Sometimes they paint with too broad a brush. The job they've been
charged with seems almost impossible, but they've had big successes.


Joe Gwinn


look at it this way - would you rather have healthy rivers and cloudy
drinking glasses or nice clean drinking glasses and dead rivers? I
choose the former. And, I wash by hand so there has never been an issue
anyway.