there seem to be several different solutions to the same types of problems so i'll just add in my 2 cents on what happens here. our well water has a fair amount of iron in it (we test it for several things about once a year and because our water softener pooped out several months ago, we had 3 different companies here this week and they tested the water for us too). everyone is in agreement that in spite of the iron, the water remains relatively soft but warn us we should expect staining in the laundry and inside of the dishwasher. (the iron is not a health problem.) haven't found a problem in the laundry yet and yes, the inside of the dishwasher has always gotten streaky stains in it. a long time ago i bought "glisten" for that and it works great! but someone told me that citric acid works and i bought a jar of tang--much cheaper and also works great! i've never been one to "pre-wash" the dishes--just scrape off food leftovers and that seemed to be fine until we got a new dishwasher about 3 years ago. all of a sudden the dishes didn't look as good. as sheila and all the others said, hot water fixed that problem! we run the water in the sink until it's hot and then turn on the dishwasher. such a simple thing made an immediate difference for us!

I would spend the $300/year, mine is actually less, for water softener service. The hard water totalled our 9 year old KA Dw. It also makes a mess of the faucetts, the tub, You name it. In fact I got a call from one of my rentals saying the DW had "Smoked" it was bout 3 years old. Tenant fixed it himself, scraped the lime deposit off the heating coil. So I added softwater service there too. If I ever get new tenants , I wont spend hours scraping lime from tubs, replacing lime damaged faucetts etc etc. We put on softwater when we redid our kitchen and bought the Miele optima. Soft water is on hot side only due to back yard which is watered via a connection thru the house. But I'm gonna redo that soon too. You can really see the difference, everything on hot side, faucett etc clean as a whistle, cold side--Yuck. Anyway the best $23/month I have spent in a while. Gary

yes, there is a canadian tire here! duh! i was in the states and all i could find was the dishwasher powder, so i got that. i w/stop at canadian tire today--thanks for that! i didn't want my machine to even start to get the buildup, which i'm pretty sure is what reduced the cleaning power of my old machine....i'm using the machine now, and i need to get it more level, so the door won't swing open so much, as it's located in a hallway. vibration isn't too bad. so far am loving it! w/do a real review when i get a few miles on it.

amsunshine, what are your goals exactly? You're looking for something that will rinse more easily and not leave a residue that causes rashes? It must have no enzymes? It seems that the main purpose of water softeners in detergents is to inactivate the mineral ions so that THEY don't inactivate the cleaning agents. It's all about cleaning power. I've done quite a bit of research now, yet I never read a WORD about rinsability of these detergents. I now have 8 or so different detergents I'm testing, and only one mentions rinsing out cleanly: it is a scent-free product for deer hunters to wash their special gear in. It says nothing about ingredients, so I have no idea if it contains anything special. I think sshrivastava already mentioned this, but citric acid does form SOLUBLE complexes with the mineral ions. So it should rinse easily, and maybe adding some to detergent will boost cleaning and rinsing for your hard water conditions. IIRC you recently got an HE machine. Did you have problems with rinsing or rashes with your old machine? My mother has naturally very soft water (not softened). She has a traditional TL that uses tons of water. And she uses a high water level for fairly small loads of clothes. She uses TINY amounts of detergent, because of course in the soft water, they suds like crazy. She will only use certain detergents because she says others cause her skin rashes. I'm thinking that if SHE can't get everything to rinse out of her fabrics so as not to irritate sensitive skin, who can? Not that I want to discourage you...but it seems like a hard problem.