Another update: Finally ordered a dishwasher!
4 years ago
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Don't know jack about dishwashers and have to finalize list
Comments (16)"ANY machine you purchase WILL clean your dishes just fine if it's installed correctly, working as it should, and proper cleaning product and dosage used. Even cheap ones. Put it in the bank. If it doesn't, you're missing something." I am going to mildly disagree with asolo on one point, and that is the "ANY machine" part. My wife and I travel around to different parts of the state routinely. Our last stint was up in Fresno and we rented an apartment there equipped with a GE Hotpoint dishwasher. The performance of the machine was pretty sketchy. While it did okay on plates and glasses and so forth, it could not remove baked-on encrustations from our ovenware anything like our Bosch at home. I chalked it up to its being a loud, el-cheapo POS and thought no more of it. So now we are lodging at my sister's palatial digs on a contract near her home. Well, she has a 2006 or so vintage GE Profile and I am seeing the same lousy performance. The machine is very quiet, unlike the box we left behind in Fresno, but when it comes to cleaning performance it is the Hotpoint's twin. it will not remove any sort of baked-on deposits. French Onion Soup leaves the bottoms and sides of her Le Crueset festooned with a latticework of carbonized onion evocative of a Jackson Pollock print: after washing it in my sister's dog dishwasher. I have examined the spray arms and all inspect-able piping and galleries inside the machine looking for obstructions. It is not a temperature problem, the thing gets plenty hot. But I have a theory about it which I will illustrate for you by way of pictures. Take a look at the bottom spray arm of this machine. It looks nice and big, right? It's plastic, but so is the spray arm in our Bosch. No big deal, it seems pretty heavy duty. But now look at the underside of that same spray arm I have removed from the machine: Notice the water channel? It is simply a molded plastic gallery and it is incredibly small. Here is a closer look: The gallery is maybe an inch wide, at best, and it has two ports exhausting water out the BOTTOM of the arm! This is the highest pressure available in a tiny "pipe" and it is being used to bounce off the bottom of the machine. The metal shields you see are not forming part of the channel, they are simply heat shields designed to protect the undersides of the wash arm from the heating element. Dishwashers work because they pump lots of hot water onto your dishes at high pressure. I simply do not think that the volume of water this arm can deliver is adequate. The underside of the middle rack arm is the same story. It looks big from the top, but underneath it's just a tiny molded gallery, too. I did not remove it from the machine because it is a pain to get out, but here is a picture of the underside of that: It looks big from the top and dinky underneath. Just to get an idea how much water that lower spray arm can hold at one time, I taped up all the spray ports, tipped it over and filled it with water. I then dumped it into a measuring cup and got less than 3/4 of one cup. If GE got rid of that fake flange affair that makes the spray arm look big from the top, and actually installed the tiny little wash arm that lower spray gallery really equals, nobody would buy the machine. In my opinion, GE is trying to engineer their water-savings claims by using lower capacity pumps and cheesy, deceptively-molded spray arms to sneak inferior machines past consumers while making them pay high prices for supposedly upmarket gear. Yes, the stainless tub is nice on the thing, but I just don't think it's got it where it counts. In any case, my small-water-volume observations are still theory at this point. There could be something wrong inside the pump, which I haven't disassembled yet. But I look at the hot water flow inside the dishwasher sort of the same way I would view it from a circuit analysis standpoint: You need current to do the work. You combine high pressure with lots of flow in order to have lots and lots of hot water molecules striking the remnants of last night's tub of lasagna. If there is a design feature that restricts a robust flow then I cannot see how it will not impair performance. So personally, unless someone can point out something I am missing here, I am thinking don't buy a GE dishwasher....See MoreSome final questions before ordering new PC
Comments (13)thanks for responding- i am talking about a desktop- i do not want a laptop at this time. I guess i thought a router was only for wireless computers- so if i get the wireless card does that mean i then have to get a wireless internet plan or will the wireless card and router work with the regular dsl? For about a year the computers will be by each other and after that they will be on different levels of the house.. So is there a preferable way of how i should go meaning hard wire or wireless? And does whichever way i chose determine what kind of router i need to get or are they all the same? So this also leads me to a question and that is how will i know if my current printer will be compatible with the new computer? i only ask because i heard people had that issue with Vista. I also want to ask about the antivirus programs you are referring too. I have always used AVG..can i still use this on windows 7 or do i need to stick with the ones you are referring to. Thanks again...See MoreA long, sad tale about ordering a dishwasher
Comments (17)I'm not sure about that silverware tray either; it's removable, and I've considered removing it which would allow for even more height on the top rack. That's why I put that little cutlery basket on the lower rack, which isn't original to the machine (since taking this pic I've replaced it with a larger one made to fit this machine). Kitchenaid BTW is owned by Whirlpool and their appliances are thinly-disguised Whirlpool designs. Kitchenaid is still living off the reputation of their old dishwashers and stand mixers from decades ago back when they were made by commercial appliance maker Hobart. If you bought a Kitchenaid mixer or dishwasher in the 1960s or '70s, it's probably still working. I know, I see them in houses for sale frequently, still chugging away....See MoreFinally getting to update my 1942 kitchen - WWYD?
Comments (32)Thank you, desertsteph, greenhaven and smalloldhouse for commenting! I will work on adding measurements this evening. I know those will be really helpful to understand size/scale. After reading through everyone's excellent advice and comparing Lavender's layout to our existing space and the current floorplan, we immediately decided to nix the pull-out pantry. Given the flow of our house we much prefer to keep the peninsula at the end of the current cabinet run (I know the plan I posted doesn't show the rest of the first floor for context, so that's my fault). I think in the end we are going to end up with a combination of the two. I totally get the recommendation to move range to the same side as sink and rounding edges of peninsula, that's something to consider for sure, with little ones and puppy underfoot. (Although now I'm thinking about the sharp edges of my Room & Board farmhouse table...). Here's the deal with the stairs. The basement and upstairs flights are stacked. So, you come in the side kitchen door and you either go down a flight of stairs to the basement, or up two stairs into the kitchen. You go up the stairs to the second level from the dining room. We have four doorways in the dining room (kitchen, porch, stairwell, and hall). Since our basement is not finished and we will be entering the house from the back porch/sunroom, traffic through the kitchen is going to decrease significantly...at least until kids are older and basement is finished. I'll be back later with measurements!...See More- 4 years ago
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