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...ishwasher-soap
-1988

Joe Gwinn

"Joseph Gwinn" 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.

I was discussing this here with Dan just a couple of weeks ago. My last box
of TSP, which I bought less than a month ago, is 70% real TSP. It doesn't
say so on the box but you can learn that by searching for the MSDS. The
brand I bought is Savogran, which I bought at Home Despot. I mentioned in
that discussion that I prefer to buy TSP at a real paint store, as you say.

When Oakite was my client, years ago, and we were proposing that they bring
back old Oakite powdered household detergent, my conversations with their
tech staff tended to be about chelates, phosphates, and other exciting
stuff. g By that time, phosphate had been taken out of laundry detergent
and they told me to add about a tablespoon of TSP to each load, which I did,
and still do for tough laundry jobs. It does make a visible difference. I
added two tbsp. for my son's baseball and soccer uniforms.

But I'm also a member of the Delaware Estuary project and I've read the
research on phosphates, and the EPA's reasons for forcing it out. The total
phosphate load on waterways in this area is a combination of commercial
agriculture runoff, residential lawn runoff, and (in the past) phosphate in
residential laundry outflow getting through sewage treatment. Apparently, it
runs right through.

When phosphate was taken out of laundry detergents, there was an almost
immediate improvement in oxygen levels in the Delaware River. Algae levels
declined sharply. By contrast, consumer education about avoiding overuse of
lawn fertilizer seemed to have little effect. Employing methods in
commercial ag. to reduce runoff did seem to help, however.

So it is a real issue, and, although I haven't seen anything about it for a
couple of decades here, taking it out of laundry detergent did seem to help.
I asked the guys at Oakite if the new stuff was as good, and they said that
it was not. But they said it could have been. The reason it wasn't is that
detergent manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity to make cheaper
detergent and they knew their competitors were all doing the same -- and
blaming it on the lack of phosphates. They said there are better ingredients
than phosphates today but they aren't cheap. However, the cost of the
chemicals in detergent really is trivial. It's the advertising and the
packaging that cost real money.

--
Ed Huntress


For some background, see
http://www.appliance.net/2010/states...ishwasher-soap
-1988

Joe Gwinn

"Joseph Gwinn" 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...ishwasher-soap
-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.

Ed Huntress wrote:

I was discussing this here with Dan just a couple of weeks ago. My last box
of TSP, which I bought less than a month ago, is 70% real TSP. It doesn't
say so on the box but you can learn that by searching for the MSDS. The
brand I bought is Savogran, which I bought at Home Despot. I mentioned in
that discussion that I prefer to buy TSP at a real paint store, as you say.

...


So it is a real issue, and, although I haven't seen anything about it for a
couple of decades here, taking it out of laundry detergent did seem to help.
I asked the guys at Oakite if the new stuff was as good, and they said that
it was not. But they said it could have been. The reason it wasn't is that
detergent manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity to make cheaper
detergent and they knew their competitors were all doing the same -- and
blaming it on the lack of phosphates. They said there are better ingredients
than phosphates today but they aren't cheap. However, the cost of the
chemicals in detergent really is trivial. It's the advertising and the
packaging that cost real money.


Ed,
We haven't been using the dishwasher.
Just two people it's hardly necessary.

But for laundry...
What about using borax?
Is there a similar feed-through problem with that?


--

Richard Lamb
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~sv_temptress

"CaveLamb" wrote in message
m...
Ed Huntress wrote:

I was discussing this here with Dan just a couple of weeks ago. My last
box of TSP, which I bought less than a month ago, is 70% real TSP. It
doesn't say so on the box but you can learn that by searching for the
MSDS. The brand I bought is Savogran, which I bought at Home Despot. I
mentioned in that discussion that I prefer to buy TSP at a real paint
store, as you say.

...


So it is a real issue, and, although I haven't seen anything about it for
a couple of decades here, taking it out of laundry detergent did seem to
help. I asked the guys at Oakite if the new stuff was as good, and they
said that it was not. But they said it could have been. The reason it
wasn't is that detergent manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity
to make cheaper detergent and they knew their competitors were all doing
the same -- and blaming it on the lack of phosphates. They said there are
better ingredients than phosphates today but they aren't cheap. However,
the cost of the chemicals in detergent really is trivial. It's the
advertising and the packaging that cost real money.


Ed,
We haven't been using the dishwasher.
Just two people it's hardly necessary.

But for laundry...
What about using borax?
Is there a similar feed-through problem with that?

'Don't know. The issue that concerns the EPA is based on phosphate being a
fertilizer, and it seems to have a strong effect in promoting algae
blooms -- more than the nitrogen in fertilizers, according to one or two
papers I've read.

It can kill a river or a lake that drains residential groundwater, or a
river that has a lot of treated wastewater dumped into it, like the
Delaware.

I've never heard of any problem with borax, but I just know what I read.
It's a mild alkali but I've never heard of it causing problems.

I don't even worry about adding some TSP, because very few people do it, so
it can't amount to much of a load on the river. Besides, our treated
wastewater dumps into the Raritan, not the Delaware, and we've abandoned all
hope on the Raritan. You probably could mine lead from the river bottom.
Maybe even spent uranium from the local arsenal. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

"Joseph Gwinn" 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...ishwasher-soap
-1988


I just rinse thoroughly and then put in the washer with a couple drops of
palmolive hand dishwashing soap.

YMMV--beware if you have exceptionally soft water it won't wirk, instead
you'll have a tub full of foam and likely quite a bit on the the floor, too.

Ed Huntress wrote:

"CaveLamb" wrote in message
m...
Ed Huntress wrote:

I was discussing this here with Dan just a couple of weeks ago. My last
box of TSP, which I bought less than a month ago, is 70% real TSP. It
doesn't say so on the box but you can learn that by searching for the
MSDS. The brand I bought is Savogran, which I bought at Home Despot. I
mentioned in that discussion that I prefer to buy TSP at a real paint
store, as you say.

...


So it is a real issue, and, although I haven't seen anything about it for
a couple of decades here, taking it out of laundry detergent did seem to
help. I asked the guys at Oakite if the new stuff was as good, and they
said that it was not. But they said it could have been. The reason it
wasn't is that detergent manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity
to make cheaper detergent and they knew their competitors were all doing
the same -- and blaming it on the lack of phosphates. They said there are
better ingredients than phosphates today but they aren't cheap. However,
the cost of the chemicals in detergent really is trivial. It's the
advertising and the packaging that cost real money.


Ed,
We haven't been using the dishwasher.
Just two people it's hardly necessary.

But for laundry...
What about using borax?
Is there a similar feed-through problem with that?

'Don't know. The issue that concerns the EPA is based on phosphate being a
fertilizer, and it seems to have a strong effect in promoting algae
blooms -- more than the nitrogen in fertilizers, according to one or two
papers I've read.

It can kill a river or a lake that drains residential groundwater, or a
river that has a lot of treated wastewater dumped into it, like the
Delaware.

I've never heard of any problem with borax, but I just know what I read.
It's a mild alkali but I've never heard of it causing problems.

I don't even worry about adding some TSP, because very few people do it, so
it can't amount to much of a load on the river. Besides, our treated
wastewater dumps into the Raritan, not the Delaware, and we've abandoned all
hope on the Raritan. You probably could mine lead from the river bottom.
Maybe even spent uranium from the local arsenal. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

Then there are those of us with septic systems that don't get anywhere
near any sort of river, lake or stream.

Pete C. wrote:
Ed Huntress wrote:
"CaveLamb" wrote in message
m...
Ed Huntress wrote:
I was discussing this here with Dan just a couple of weeks ago. My last
box of TSP, which I bought less than a month ago, is 70% real TSP. It
doesn't say so on the box but you can learn that by searching for the
MSDS. The brand I bought is Savogran, which I bought at Home Despot. I
mentioned in that discussion that I prefer to buy TSP at a real paint
store, as you say.
...
So it is a real issue, and, although I haven't seen anything about it for
a couple of decades here, taking it out of laundry detergent did seem to
help. I asked the guys at Oakite if the new stuff was as good, and they
said that it was not. But they said it could have been. The reason it
wasn't is that detergent manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity
to make cheaper detergent and they knew their competitors were all doing
the same -- and blaming it on the lack of phosphates. They said there are
better ingredients than phosphates today but they aren't cheap. However,
the cost of the chemicals in detergent really is trivial. It's the
advertising and the packaging that cost real money.

Ed,
We haven't been using the dishwasher.
Just two people it's hardly necessary.

But for laundry...
What about using borax?
Is there a similar feed-through problem with that?
'Don't know. The issue that concerns the EPA is based on phosphate being a
fertilizer, and it seems to have a strong effect in promoting algae
blooms -- more than the nitrogen in fertilizers, according to one or two
papers I've read.

It can kill a river or a lake that drains residential groundwater, or a
river that has a lot of treated wastewater dumped into it, like the
Delaware.

I've never heard of any problem with borax, but I just know what I read.
It's a mild alkali but I've never heard of it causing problems.

I don't even worry about adding some TSP, because very few people do it, so
it can't amount to much of a load on the river. Besides, our treated
wastewater dumps into the Raritan, not the Delaware, and we've abandoned all
hope on the Raritan. You probably could mine lead from the river bottom.
Maybe even spent uranium from the local arsenal. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

Then there are those of us with septic systems that don't get anywhere
near any sort of river, lake or stream.

Sorry Pete,
You'll have to find your own lead and uranium.
EPA won't let you have any of theirs...


--

Richard Lamb
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~cavelamb
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~sv_temptress

On 7/10/2011 10:28 PM, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
....

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.)
....

You gotta be ****ting me.

Next youre gonna tell me that they passed strict emissions laws about
keeping cars properly maintained, and then put more ethanol in the fuel
to ruin car fuel systems.

In article ,
"anorton" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" 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...ishwasher-soap
-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

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"anorton" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" 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...ishwasher-soap
-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.

--
Ed Huntress

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" 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.

I was discussing this here with Dan just a couple of weeks ago. My last box
of TSP, which I bought less than a month ago, is 70% real TSP. It doesn't
say so on the box but you can learn that by searching for the MSDS. The
brand I bought is Savogran, which I bought at Home Despot. I mentioned in
that discussion that I prefer to buy TSP at a real paint store, as you say.

I have the same Savogran stuff. Is the 70% new? Powdered products for
home use often have such things as anti-clumping ingredients in them.
Anyway, it does work.


When Oakite was my client, years ago, and we were proposing that they bring
back old Oakite powdered household detergent, my conversations with their
tech staff tended to be about chelates, phosphates, and other exciting
stuff. g By that time, phosphate had been taken out of laundry detergent
and they told me to add about a tablespoon of TSP to each load, which I did,
and still do for tough laundry jobs. It does make a visible difference. I
added two tbsp. for my son's baseball and soccer uniforms.

So far, the washing machine has not been a problem, although we do seem
to be getting far more tiny lint than before.


But I'm also a member of the Delaware Estuary project and I've read the
research on phosphates, and the EPA's reasons for forcing it out. The total
phosphate load on waterways in this area is a combination of commercial
agriculture runoff, residential lawn runoff, and (in the past) phosphate in
residential laundry outflow getting through sewage treatment. Apparently, it
runs right through.

When phosphate was taken out of laundry detergents, there was an almost
immediate improvement in oxygen levels in the Delaware River. Algae levels
declined sharply. By contrast, consumer education about avoiding overuse of
lawn fertilizer seemed to have little effect. Employing methods in
commercial ag. to reduce runoff did seem to help, however.

There is a big difference here. For the clothes washing machine in the
old days, we used a cup per load, or more. Even then, dishwashers used
far less detergent, because they use a puddle at the bottom of the tank,
versus filling the tank to the top. Now days, the detergent volume is
far less.

On the Bosch, one uses something like 20 milliliters of detergent for
ordinary loads, this being the volume of the well at the lowest marker
line. The pinch of TSP has to be less than a gram.


So it is a real issue, and, although I haven't seen anything about it for a
couple of decades here, taking it out of laundry detergent did seem to help.
I asked the guys at Oakite if the new stuff was as good, and they said that
it was not. But they said it could have been. The reason it wasn't is that
detergent manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity to make cheaper
detergent and they knew their competitors were all doing the same -- and
blaming it on the lack of phosphates. They said there are better ingredients
than phosphates today but they aren't cheap. However, the cost of the
chemicals in detergent really is trivial. It's the advertising and the
packaging that cost real money.

If this is true, and it certainly could be, I sense a market opportunity
here.

Joe Gwinn

On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:17:43 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:

In article ,
"anorton" wrote:


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.

A friend of mine works in appliance repair and he sees this all the
time. People are taught by the advertisements that they don't need to
rinse their plates. This is false advertisement and he's surprised
that the FCC hasn't gone after them for it. He also stated that the
Bosch is one of the few he would never consider owning. He repairs far
too many of them and hears far too many complaints. It surprised me.

I use my dishwasher as a dish dryer. It's unplugged and the plumbing
is plugged. Hand washing takes a total of 40 minutes a week, so I'm
not losing anything.

--
Progress is the product of human agency. Things get better because we
make them better. Things go wrong when we get too comfortable, when we
fail to take risks or seize opportunities.
-- Susan Rice

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" 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.

I was discussing this here with Dan just a couple of weeks ago. My last
box
of TSP, which I bought less than a month ago, is 70% real TSP. It doesn't
say so on the box but you can learn that by searching for the MSDS. The
brand I bought is Savogran, which I bought at Home Despot. I mentioned in
that discussion that I prefer to buy TSP at a real paint store, as you
say.

I have the same Savogran stuff. Is the 70% new? Powdered products for
home use often have such things as anti-clumping ingredients in them.
Anyway, it does work.

Look at the product number on the box, and then go he

http://www.savogran.com/Information/msds_index.htm

Mine is 10621. The MSDS says 75 - 80% TSP.



When Oakite was my client, years ago, and we were proposing that they
bring
back old Oakite powdered household detergent, my conversations with their
tech staff tended to be about chelates, phosphates, and other exciting
stuff. g By that time, phosphate had been taken out of laundry
detergent
and they told me to add about a tablespoon of TSP to each load, which I
did,
and still do for tough laundry jobs. It does make a visible difference. I
added two tbsp. for my son's baseball and soccer uniforms.

So far, the washing machine has not been a problem, although we do seem
to be getting far more tiny lint than before.


But I'm also a member of the Delaware Estuary project and I've read the
research on phosphates, and the EPA's reasons for forcing it out. The
total
phosphate load on waterways in this area is a combination of commercial
agriculture runoff, residential lawn runoff, and (in the past) phosphate
in
residential laundry outflow getting through sewage treatment. Apparently,
it
runs right through.

When phosphate was taken out of laundry detergents, there was an almost
immediate improvement in oxygen levels in the Delaware River. Algae
levels
declined sharply. By contrast, consumer education about avoiding overuse
of
lawn fertilizer seemed to have little effect. Employing methods in
commercial ag. to reduce runoff did seem to help, however.

There is a big difference here. For the clothes washing machine in the
old days, we used a cup per load, or more. Even then, dishwashers used
far less detergent, because they use a puddle at the bottom of the tank,
versus filling the tank to the top. Now days, the detergent volume is
far less.

On the Bosch, one uses something like 20 milliliters of detergent for
ordinary loads, this being the volume of the well at the lowest marker
line. The pinch of TSP has to be less than a gram.


So it is a real issue, and, although I haven't seen anything about it for
a
couple of decades here, taking it out of laundry detergent did seem to
help.
I asked the guys at Oakite if the new stuff was as good, and they said
that
it was not. But they said it could have been. The reason it wasn't is
that
detergent manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity to make cheaper
detergent and they knew their competitors were all doing the same -- and
blaming it on the lack of phosphates. They said there are better
ingredients
than phosphates today but they aren't cheap. However, the cost of the
chemicals in detergent really is trivial. It's the advertising and the
packaging that cost real money.

If this is true, and it certainly could be, I sense a market opportunity
here.

You'd think so, but having written ad copy and having done the account work
for a couple of supermarket products, all I can tell you is that the
business costs of those things is very strange. You pay for shelf exposure,
so you need to pass a volume threshhold before you can afford to market it.
That's what held up Oakite on bringing back their powdered household
detergent, which started out around a century ago as nearly pure TSP and
then was dropped when liquid detergents took over. It would have cost at
least $10 million to get it off the ground, and the projected volumes were
not high enough to justify it.

It did have a market as a niche product and I was working on selling it
through hardware stores, which is a much cheaper marketing proposition. But
they had other products in the pipeline and they decided to go with those,
which promised higher volumes.

--
Ed Huntress


Joe Gwinn

On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:35:11 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:

So far, the washing machine has not been a problem, although we do seem
to be getting far more tiny lint than before.

I heard that TSP was hard on clothing. I use Simple Green and/or
borax and bleach for my whites with good effect.


versus filling the tank to the top. Now days, the detergent volume is
far less.

Nowadays, it is far more concentrated.

--
Progress is the product of human agency. Things get better because we
make them better. Things go wrong when we get too comfortable, when we
fail to take risks or seize opportunities.
-- Susan Rice

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"anorton" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" 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...ishwasher-soap
-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 cleaned off with
Bon-Ami and a rag.

Also, I came upon the following article:

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

Joe Gwinn

Jon Anderson wrote:

On 7/10/2011 10:38 PM, Pete C. wrote:

Then there are those of us with septic systems that don't get anywhere
near any sort of river, lake or stream.

I was just going to ask about the effect of TSP on a septic system.
My landlord had to redo the leach field last summer, don't think he'd
appreciate me mucking things up...
Would a small amount now and then on a tough load laundry mess things up?

Jon

Well, you certainly aren't going to get any algae blooms in a septic
system since it is not exposed to any light.

On 7/10/2011 10:38 PM, Pete C. wrote:

Then there are those of us with septic systems that don't get anywhere
near any sort of river, lake or stream.

I was just going to ask about the effect of TSP on a septic system.
My landlord had to redo the leach field last summer, don't think he'd
appreciate me mucking things up...
Would a small amount now and then on a tough load laundry mess things up?


Jon

"Jon Anderson" wrote in message
...
On 7/11/2011 7:34 AM, Pete C. wrote:

Well, you certainly aren't going to get any algae blooms in a septic
system since it is not exposed to any light.

True, but would it be harmful to the bacteria that keeps the septic
working?

I ask, as my ex used bleach a fair bit, and I learned sometime after our
divorce, that bleach is not good for septic systems. I never said anything
to the landlord about it. I don't use bleach myself, but don't want to be
flushing anything else into the tank that might cause problems again.


Jon

Google "phosphate in septic systems" without quotes, and you'll find a
wealth of info. The bottom line is, no problem, except when it's a problem.
d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" fired this volley in
:

Google "phosphate in septic systems" without quotes, and you'll find a
wealth of info. The bottom line is, no problem, except when it's a
problem. d8-)

It's funny, too, because for decades, we used phosphate-based dishwashing
powders with no particular effect on our septic systems.

It wasn't until they banned them that all the adverse literature about them
vs. septic systems came out.

LLoyd

On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 09:13:04 -0800, Jon Anderson
wrote:

On 7/11/2011 7:34 AM, Pete C. wrote:

Well, you certainly aren't going to get any algae blooms in a septic
system since it is not exposed to any light.

True, but would it be harmful to the bacteria that keeps the septic working?

I ask, as my ex used bleach a fair bit, and I learned sometime after our
divorce, that bleach is not good for septic systems. I never said
anything to the landlord about it. I don't use bleach myself, but don't
want to be flushing anything else into the tank that might cause
problems again.

I've been on septic systems since I moved out of my parents' house.
Soap, paper, and bleach are bad for the system, so I go minimal when
possible. But my backside puts out enough healthy bacteria for the
septic system to continue doing its thing despite my laundry days, so
don't worry too much about it.

--
Win first, Fight later.

--martial principle of the Samurai

On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 01:38:35 -0500, "Pete C."
wrote:


Ed Huntress wrote:

"CaveLamb" wrote in message
m...
Ed Huntress wrote:

I was discussing this here with Dan just a couple of weeks ago. My last
box of TSP, which I bought less than a month ago, is 70% real TSP. It
doesn't say so on the box but you can learn that by searching for the
MSDS. The brand I bought is Savogran, which I bought at Home Despot. I
mentioned in that discussion that I prefer to buy TSP at a real paint
store, as you say.

...


So it is a real issue, and, although I haven't seen anything about it for
a couple of decades here, taking it out of laundry detergent did seem to
help. I asked the guys at Oakite if the new stuff was as good, and they
said that it was not. But they said it could have been. The reason it
wasn't is that detergent manufacturers took advantage of the opportunity
to make cheaper detergent and they knew their competitors were all doing
the same -- and blaming it on the lack of phosphates. They said there are
better ingredients than phosphates today but they aren't cheap. However,
the cost of the chemicals in detergent really is trivial. It's the
advertising and the packaging that cost real money.


Ed,
We haven't been using the dishwasher.
Just two people it's hardly necessary.

But for laundry...
What about using borax?
Is there a similar feed-through problem with that?

'Don't know. The issue that concerns the EPA is based on phosphate being a
fertilizer, and it seems to have a strong effect in promoting algae
blooms -- more than the nitrogen in fertilizers, according to one or two
papers I've read.

It can kill a river or a lake that drains residential groundwater, or a
river that has a lot of treated wastewater dumped into it, like the
Delaware.

I've never heard of any problem with borax, but I just know what I read.
It's a mild alkali but I've never heard of it causing problems.

I don't even worry about adding some TSP, because very few people do it, so
it can't amount to much of a load on the river. Besides, our treated
wastewater dumps into the Raritan, not the Delaware, and we've abandoned all
hope on the Raritan. You probably could mine lead from the river bottom.
Maybe even spent uranium from the local arsenal. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

Then there are those of us with septic systems that don't get anywhere
near any sort of river, lake or stream.


Chuckle..the closest water to my septic tank, is 1200 feet down


--
Maxim 12: A soft answer turneth away wrath.
Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.

Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote:
"Ed fired this volley in
:

Google "phosphate in septic systems" without quotes, and you'll find a
wealth of info. The bottom line is, no problem, except when it's a
problem. d8-)

It's funny, too, because for decades, we used phosphate-based dishwashing
powders with no particular effect on our septic systems.

It wasn't until they banned them that all the adverse literature about them
vs. septic systems came out.

Don't Panic!!!

I've discovered on a different newsgroup that
physics can change on a moment's notice depending
on what is in fashion and who is talking.

Chemistry is probably just the same.



--Winston

On 7/11/2011 7:34 AM, Pete C. wrote:

Well, you certainly aren't going to get any algae blooms in a septic
system since it is not exposed to any light.

True, but would it be harmful to the bacteria that keeps the septic working?

I ask, as my ex used bleach a fair bit, and I learned sometime after our
divorce, that bleach is not good for septic systems. I never said
anything to the landlord about it. I don't use bleach myself, but don't
want to be flushing anything else into the tank that might cause
problems again.


Jon

"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" wrote:

"Ed Huntress" fired this volley in
:

Google "phosphate in septic systems" without quotes, and you'll find a
wealth of info. The bottom line is, no problem, except when it's a
problem. d8-)

It's funny, too, because for decades, we used phosphate-based dishwashing
powders with no particular effect on our septic systems.

It wasn't until they banned them that all the adverse literature about them
vs. septic systems came out.

Is there any adverse affect to the septic tank? I thought phosphates
from septic systems had adverse effects on clean groundwater.

-jim




LLoyd

Jon Anderson wrote:

On 7/11/2011 7:34 AM, Pete C. wrote:

Well, you certainly aren't going to get any algae blooms in a septic
system since it is not exposed to any light.

True, but would it be harmful to the bacteria that keeps the septic working?

I ask, as my ex used bleach a fair bit, and I learned sometime after our
divorce, that bleach is not good for septic systems. I never said
anything to the landlord about it. I don't use bleach myself, but don't
want to be flushing anything else into the tank that might cause
problems again.

Jon

The quarter cup of bleach you use in a load of laundry that gets flushed
into the 1,000 gal septic system tank along with another 30-40 gal of
water will have little effect on the overall bacteria level. Pour a full
gallon of bleach down the drain and you might have a problem.

The liquids and dissolved chemicals float right through a septic system,
over the two sediment tanks and through the leaching bed.

The chemicals have to go somewhere. They don't just disappear into thin air.

---------

"jim" wrote in message .. .
Is there any adverse affect to the septic tank? I thought phosphates
from septic systems had adverse effects on clean groundwater.

-jim

Joseph Gwinn wrote:


There is a big difference here. For the clothes washing machine in the
old days, we used a cup per load, or more. Even then, dishwashers used
far less detergent, because they use a puddle at the bottom of the tank,
versus filling the tank to the top. Now days, the detergent volume is
far less.

The horizontal or tilt drum washers use vastly less detergent and water,
than the top load units.

"Josepi" fired this volley in
:

The chemicals have to go somewhere. They don't just disappear into
thin air.

Actually, you're fairly close, Josepi. They just disappear into 'thin'
earth -- a layer only a foot or so deep.

And they do; Bleach breaks down rapidly into chlorine, oxygen, and
calcium oxide, which further combines into calcium hydroxide, then
combines with organics to form harmless soaps.

TSP breaks down into sodium salts and phosphoric acid, which combines
with calcium carbonate in the soil.

TSP's only heavy-hitting harm to the environment is as an algal nutrient,
where it causes fish-choking blooms in static or heavily-contaminated
bodies of water.

LLoyd

Larry Jaques writes:


I've been on septic systems since I moved out of my parents' house.
Soap, paper, and bleach are bad for the system, so I go minimal when
possible. But my backside puts out enough healthy bacteria for the
septic system to continue doing its thing despite my laundry days, so
don't worry too much about it.

You forgot the real enemy, grease. If it gets into the leach
field....

I would imagine phosphates would encourage more plant growth
in the leach field, eventually clogging it. I know some areas
require 2 fields and a valve so you can alternate; presumably
the one lying fallow uses up enough nitrogen to solve the issue.

Year+ agd, befire the crash, WashPost had an article on
developer-built housing out past Dulles. They could not pass
perc testing so they built sand mound septic systems instead.

New homeowners soon found out they were VERY limited
detergents, bleach, etc that the mounds could handle. They were
going into town to use a laundromat, etc.


--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

Yaeh, and water would combine with your lungs and make you completely
harmless when you aspire. Geeezzz... I never thought chemicals would combine
with anything before....duh. I guess mercury is OK in our food too. It
mixes with it.

--------------

"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" wrote in message
. 3.70...

"Actually, you're fairly close, Josepi. They just disappear into 'thin'
earth -- a layer only a foot or so deep.

And they do; Bleach breaks down rapidly into chlorine, oxygen, and
calcium oxide, which further combines into calcium hydroxide, then
combines with organics to form harmless soaps.

TSP breaks down into sodium salts and phosphoric acid, which combines
with calcium carbonate in the soil.

TSP's only heavy-hitting harm to the environment is as an algal nutrient,
where it causes fish-choking blooms in static or heavily-contaminated
bodies of water.

LLoyd

I have a newer septic and it has a filter installed that is supposed to
eliminate most of the problems, when it isn't plugged or displaced...LOL

----

"David Lesher" wrote in message ...
You forgot the real enemy, grease. If it gets into the leach
field....

I would imagine phosphates would encourage more plant growth
in the leach field, eventually clogging it. I know some areas
require 2 fields and a valve so you can alternate; presumably
the one lying fallow uses up enough nitrogen to solve the issue.

Year+ agd, befire the crash, WashPost had an article on
developer-built housing out past Dulles. They could not pass
perc testing so they built sand mound septic systems instead.

New homeowners soon found out they were VERY limited
detergents, bleach, etc that the mounds could handle. They were
going into town to use a laundromat, etc.


--
Linux advert deleted

Bull****!

They use less, if you like dirty clothes. Too many people have experienced
them and the trend is to go back to normalcy. Haven't you noticed how the
three and four times the price front loads are down to the same prices now?
The same thing happened in the 50-60s with front loads. This isn't the first
time the public has been conned by slick sales people, only to return to the
old way they came from with thinner wallets.

-----------------

"Pete C." wrote in message
.com...
The horizontal or tilt drum washers use vastly less detergent and water,
than the top load units.

In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"anorton" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" 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?

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

Joe Gwinn

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"anorton" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" 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

--
Ed Huntress

On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:04:17 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"anorton" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" 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...ishwasher-soap
-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 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.
A little bit of "lime away" Phosphoric Acid should have the same
effect (and helps remove rust stains). Again, there's LOTS of
so-called "lime away" that does not contain phosphoric acid any more
too.
For the dairy farmers - milk stone remover is the same stuff.

For restaurant workers - it's the stuff you clean the steam cabinets
(buffet trays) with, as well as cofee-makers and - - - dish washers.

Auto body mechanics will know it as "metal prep" and plumbers as "res
kleen" for cleaning the resin beds in water softeners (as well as
descaling boilers)

Metal Prep and Res Kleen have a small amount of surfactant added that
won't hurt the dishes or the diswasher. About a teaspoon or so per
load.

wrote in message
...
On Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:04:17 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"anorton" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" 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...ishwasher-soap
-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 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.
A little bit of "lime away" Phosphoric Acid should have the same
effect (and helps remove rust stains). Again, there's LOTS of
so-called "lime away" that does not contain phosphoric acid any more
too.
For the dairy farmers - milk stone remover is the same stuff.

For restaurant workers - it's the stuff you clean the steam cabinets
(buffet trays) with, as well as cofee-makers and - - - dish washers.

Auto body mechanics will know it as "metal prep" and plumbers as "res
kleen" for cleaning the resin beds in water softeners (as well as
descaling boilers)

Metal Prep and Res Kleen have a small amount of surfactant added that
won't hurt the dishes or the diswasher. About a teaspoon or so per
load.

Doggone. Before this is over, I'll be brewing my own dishwasher detergent.
d8-)

Thanks for the tip, Clare.

--
Ed Huntress

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.

"." wrote in message ...
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.

I agree, which is why I put up with it. But in this hyper-individualistic
society, the kind of broad rulemaking that EPA has to engage in, just to do
its job, is going to grate a lot of people the wrong way. Sometimes it
grates all of us the wrong way.

For example, let me describe how I made dry-fly dope in 1959. Dry-fly dope
is the stuff you put on a floating trout fly to keep it floating.

First, take a quart of carbon tetrachloride and pour it into a mayonnaise
jar. You should do this is good light, like on your kitchen table. Then get
out your box of Gulf Wax (paraffin wax) and your pocket knife and start
shaving the wax into the jar of carbon tet. Keep doing this until the carbon
tet won't dissolve any more wax. Take a good half-hour doing this so most of
it has a chance to dissolve. Then shave in some more wax, until there's wax
in there that won't dissolve.

Put the lid on the mayonnaise jar and put it on the kitchen counter for a
day or two. If the rest of the wax dissolved, you're done. If you're fishing
in cold weather, put the jar in your refrigerator and let some wax
precipitate out, as it will. Then decant the jar into another jar, which
will be your cold-weather fly dope.

So you now have a ten-year supply of the most effective fly dope anyone has
seen before or since. No problem. Hell, you breathed more carbon tet just
stopping into the dry cleaner to pick up a suit. Who knew?

Some of the antagonism to bureaucratic rules is that kind of thing. It's
just an unwillingness to accept that the old ways of doing things are
harmful, even if you never saw any evidence of it yourself. How many people
are alive who breathed carbon tet? Most of us. People in the Midwest didn't
see no steenking acid rain coming from their power plants. That all fell in
the Northeast. Hrumph.

But the EPA's wetlands rules, while well-intended and basically a good
thing, have led to some laughable cases that cost people a lot of money for
nothing. Woe be unto you if your drainage ditch is considered to be the
branch of a named creek and it backs up onto your property in the
springtime. You've got a wetland, and you can neither build on it nor drain
it. g

That's the cost of living in an ever-more-complex society, one in which we
ignored pollution for so long that we had to mitigate it just to get the
environment back to some semblance of health, and in which the prevailing
attitude is extreme individualism and property rights. We may like the fact
that the law is blind and applies to everyone equally, but an EPA regulation
that does that is tyranny. Hrumph.

I'll take the EPA, in the balance, but not without some frustration. I was
born with hyper-individualism, too. And I really *like* carbon
tetrachloride. My precious, dwindling supply, which I keep next to my
four-pound bottle of mercury, has saved my bacon on some really tough
tapping jobs in hard steel....but maybe we shouldn't go there....

--
Ed Huntress

gigantic snip

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.

I agree, which is why I put up with it. But in this hyper-individualistic
society, the kind of broad rulemaking that EPA has to engage in, just to do
its job, is going to grate a lot of people the wrong way. Sometimes it
grates all of us the wrong way.

For example, let me describe how I made dry-fly dope in 1959. Dry-fly dope
is the stuff you put on a floating trout fly to keep it floating.

First, take a quart of carbon tetrachloride and pour it into a mayonnaise
jar. You should do this is good light, like on your kitchen table. Then get
out your box of Gulf Wax (paraffin wax) and your pocket knife and start
shaving the wax into the jar of carbon tet. Keep doing this until the carbon
tet won't dissolve any more wax. Take a good half-hour doing this so most of
it has a chance to dissolve. Then shave in some more wax, until there's wax
in there that won't dissolve.

Put the lid on the mayonnaise jar and put it on the kitchen counter for a
day or two. If the rest of the wax dissolved, you're done. If you're fishing
in cold weather, put the jar in your refrigerator and let some wax
precipitate out, as it will. Then decant the jar into another jar, which
will be your cold-weather fly dope.

So you now have a ten-year supply of the most effective fly dope anyone has
seen before or since. No problem. Hell, you breathed more carbon tet just
stopping into the dry cleaner to pick up a suit. Who knew?

Some of the antagonism to bureaucratic rules is that kind of thing. It's
just an unwillingness to accept that the old ways of doing things are
harmful, even if you never saw any evidence of it yourself. How many people
are alive who breathed carbon tet? Most of us. People in the Midwest didn't
see no steenking acid rain coming from their power plants. That all fell in
the Northeast. Hrumph.

But the EPA's wetlands rules, while well-intended and basically a good
thing, have led to some laughable cases that cost people a lot of money for
nothing. Woe be unto you if your drainage ditch is considered to be the
branch of a named creek and it backs up onto your property in the
springtime. You've got a wetland, and you can neither build on it nor drain
it.g

That's the cost of living in an ever-more-complex society, one in which we
ignored pollution for so long that we had to mitigate it just to get the
environment back to some semblance of health, and in which the prevailing
attitude is extreme individualism and property rights. We may like the fact
that the law is blind and applies to everyone equally, but an EPA regulation
that does that is tyranny. Hrumph.

I'll take the EPA, in the balance, but not without some frustration. I was
born with hyper-individualism, too. And I really *like* carbon
tetrachloride. My precious, dwindling supply, which I keep next to my
four-pound bottle of mercury, has saved my bacon on some really tough
tapping jobs in hard steel....but maybe we shouldn't go there....


there are certainly some ridiculous outcomes, the panic over bottles or
spills of metallic mercury being one, however on the balance I cannot
imagine any other mechanism for dealing with the "tragedy of the
commons". We need to ensure that the full costs of something, and that
includes costs that accrue elsewhere - the example of acid rain, or
rivers poisoned by phosphates are both good examples - as are the
earthquakes in Arkansas from fracking, and of course photochemical smog.
If we could price these things so the creator pays then the "free
market" might work, but there is no practical mechanism to include these
effects in pricing.