My F&P Dish Drawers can run on Fast for 56 minutes and the dishes look great. Usually use this cycle. They also have a "normal" cycle (115 mins, I think) and a Heavy Duty (can't remember, don't use it too much).

If I'm in a hurry I rinse the dishes (gasp) beforehand and run my Miele on Express wash mode. They sure look clean when they come out.

You can thank the government for this - all the "energy star" and other green regulations make the DWs use less water so they take a lot longer - I have to wonder about how much more electricity they use though.

i wouldn't be so paranoid. I would use an electricity meter to find out. Or, I would trust the manufacturers to tell us the energy consumption.

Using less water is fine by me. I wouldn't think it's due to anything other than people wanting to have powerful reliable cleaning without waste.

The time it takes is the time it takes. That tradeoff was deemed to be OK by the last million buyers, and by me too.

How long does the Miele express mode take?

**You can thank the government for this - all the "energy star" and other green regulations make the DWs use less water so they take a lot longer - I have to wonder about how much more electricity they use though.**

They don't use more electricity. Hence the Energy Star ratings. The Energy Star Mieles use between 281 and 298 kWh of electricity a year (you can look that up at the link below). That's well below the 324 kWh/yr cutoff for getting an Energy Star rating, and the ones that are NOT Energy Star rated use 30-50% more energy--here's a link; go to the last page of the PDF document for that data:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/eande/appliances/data/2005/dwasher/energy.pdf

I would rather thank the government (i.e., the folks we elected) for keeping my water and air clean than thank them for making my dishes dry. I can dry my dishes myself if my dishwasher isn't up to my standards. I can't clean the air and the waterways myself, and I'd rather have wet dishes than live in a polluted world and leave my children a wreck of a planet to live on.

Here is a link that might be useful: Search Energy Star DW by brand etc

I still think that for 1800 bucks the dw should save water, electricity, dry my dishes and put them away for me in less than an hour:)

But maybe I'm just cheap and simply unrealistic...

Was that time with Hot water or Cold? (since the Miele heats its own water)

You could get the Miele "professional" G7856. It can do an express wash in 10 minutes flat, and an intensive load in about 1/2 hour. Of course, it costs $5000 and can't be fully integrated...

Hobart's commercial undercounter LX30 heats rinse water to 180 and uses the heat generated from the rinse to allow the dishes to dry. The cycle of wash and rinse is about 120 SECONDS. This unit takes restaurant racks or you could use residential racks from another brand with some design effort. This unit is $5000 new or under $1000 on craigs.

My Miele is quiet and the time just hasn't turned into an issue.

I have a Miele Optima with an Express cycle that does the dishes in 40 minutes. I didn't need all the extra gee-gaws or a door that opens on its own.

We use Express usually during the day or for light loads. Otherwise, I put the dw on before I go to bed and I don't care if it takes 6 hours since I'm asleep and it's very, very quiet.

No one can tell you what's "worth it" IYKWIM and everyone has different ways of operating timewise.

However, most agree it's a great dishwasher.

ideagirl2 - I'd rather have my dishes done clean, fast and dry and leave the planet a mess for your children :-)

I have the Miele Diamante unit.
It has an Express Mode that washes in 15 minutes, while all the other modes (China, Normal, Pots & Pans, and Sani) take 2 hours. There is a Turbo button that I can use with any of those wash modes that help to reduce the time. It will lower the Express Wash from 15 minutes to 12 minutes (but I noticed that some things may not come out clean when doing this) and Turbo will lower the other hour 2 hr washes down to between 1hr 15min and 1hr 30 min.
The Turbo can lower the time since it washes a bit hotter and with more water pressure, also will skip the pre-wash cycle in some modes.

If you have to top of the line La Perla, look for a Turbo turbo mode, as well as the Express and Sensor Wash modes.

Weissman - Different strokes for different folks, but if you go down to the kitchen one morning and find that vandals have broken in, removed your dishwasher and replaced it with an Energy Star one, you can blame that on me. :-)

Actually I have an Energy Star DW that usually takes about 2 hours to run. I've gotten used to that - what I'm dreading is the phosphate-free detergent that I'm going to have to start using very soon. If you want to break in and provide me with a big supply of detergent with phosphates that you no longer want to use, I'll be very grateful :-)

Just a thought about those short cycles......

It takes time to heat water using 110v. Even if you run hot (120f) water at the tap first, the mass of dishes will bleed so much out of it you'll be lucky if you're left with 95f after the first drain. The second fill will be be hotter....but you won't have stayed around at the tap waiting to run it hot again for that second fill so it likely won't be much hotter. The heater in the machine will have to do the rest and will take some time to do it. The machine's heater will have to raise the water temp -- and the mass of the dishes in there -- up to 120f minimum for good expected results. For that reason, IMHO those 15-minute "express" cycles are a joke.

The new machines don't use as much water as the older ones so the heating will take less time than before but it will still take some time to give you 120f inside the machine. Keep in mind, the mass of dishes you want cleaned hasn't changed and they will bleed heat out of the water until they, too, have their temperature raised to the target level. And without that heat and at least minimum dwell-time, the detergent won't be able to do what it's supposed to.

FWIW, I have new Whirlpool machine. Except for rinse/drain cycle, the shortest cycle possible is 58 minutes. Longest is 3:30. My "normal" cycle (120f boost and heated dry) with full load takes about 2 hours.

My Optima, fed tempered hot water (haven't measured the valve outlet temperature yet but aiming for a range of 110F-120F), takes 1:44 on Normal/Turbo.

kas

weissman writes: "... what I'm dreading is the phosphate-free detergent that I'm going to have to start using very soon."

To achieve clean dishes, dishwashers need phosphates in the detergent as much as fish need handlebars on their bicycles.

FWIW....new machine (whirlpool) about the same time period when phosphates disappeared from my favorite Cascade Complete powder. I've seen no difference.

I have soft water. Use (and used) approx. 1tsp pre-wash and 2 tsp main wash for full load of dirty dishes on "normal" cycle. The end result used to be perfect with phosphates. Remains perfect without phosphates.

Remain interested in reading about purported catastrophies.....but based on personal experience, mostly don't get it.

Supposedly it's people with hard water that have problems without phosphates. If phosphates don't help then why are so many people ending up without clean dishes with many of the newly formulated detergents and why do some people find the need to add STPP into their DWs? I certainly hope I won't have a problem but that remains to be seen.

I think the new Energy Star dishwashers are making a tradeoff to earn that rating. Like car mileage ratings, the manufacturer is free to use whatever "gentle" approach they need to get the rating. For dishwashers it seems the consensus that those cycles might be too gentle. That's how they show such little energy and water used.

Here are a few observations with my own top-of-the-line GE PDWT580RSS.

-Energy star rated

-If I want clean dishes I have to choose the non-energy star cycles. If I do the "normal" wash (60 minutes) there is always at least one or two items that didn't get clean.

-If I add the "steam" option (110 minutes) everything comes out SPOTLESS. Like new.

-The detergent that works best for us is the enzyme based Cascade Complete Gel (phosphate free, too!), not the bleach based stuff.

-The automatic dispenser kicks butt. Fill it up and get almost a month's worth of washes out of it. Love it.

-The thing is crazy quiet. Not silent, but very, very quiet.

We are very happy with it but it does need the longer cycles to get everything 100% clean.

-Stooxie

About phosphates....
Last summer when I got the Miele Diamante, I also purchased the Miele Tabs, rinse aid, and water softener salt. At that time, the Miele tabs did contain phosphates, and I would only have to use half a tab at a time to get clean results. The I learned a few months later that Miele replaced those with phosphate-free tabs. When I ran out of what I was using, I went and bought a box of the new phosphate-free ones, and still only used half a tab. To me, dishes, pots/pans, glasses and silverware come out just as clean, but now everything sparkles like it is brand new (including SS pans). I did a test in my sink with the new and older Miele tabs with running the water hot (140F) and the newer phosphate-free tabs dissolved much faster than the older type. So based on this, and the results I get using the dishwasher, I have no issues at all using the newer Miele phosphate-free tabs. I can't speak for other phosphate-free products, but have heard horror stories about them.

We have a GE Profile DW - the shortest cycle is 48 minutes including an 8 minuted heated dry.

For $1800 I think your DW should at least give you that kind of option. If we need extra dishes I often take them out of the DW after the rinse cycle - the hot water alone nearly dries them.

I've been using phosphate-free detergents for about, oh, 30 years now since they were banned around here (Chesapeake Bay watershed). Not a big deal.

**To achieve clean dishes, dishwashers need phosphates in the detergent as much as fish need handlebars on their bicycles.**

And Herring Maven would know, given her (his?) name!

Weissman, I must admit that I am more likely to send ninjas in to replace your phosphatous (is that a word?) detergent with phosphate-free hippie detergent than the reverse.