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.

I am not an expert, but it sounds like your parents are using too much detergent. Is the Finish in a powder form or the "Powerball"? If it is the powder, tell your parents to use half what they were using. If it is the Powerball, tell them to switch to a powder so they can control the amount better. You mentioned 8 years of use. Detergent manufacturers have been tinkering with their detergent formulas for the last several years, ever since phosphates were prohibited. So the amounts that used to work 8 years ago won't work today. The phosphate-free formulas work better with some water than other water (depending on pH of your local water), or some water needs more or less detergent than others. Also, are they using Rinse-Aid? If not, it might help if they add that. One more tip - sometimes detergent doesn't dissolve because the water is not hot enough. Check your parent's water heater to see if it is bringing the water to a hot enough temperature. Also, have your parents run the hot water in the sink before turning on the DW. Sometimes when the first water coming into the DW is cold, and it takes a while for the DW water to heat up, the detergent won't dissolve. Get a headstart on this by running the hot water in the kitchen sink until it runs hot.

I found a recipe using the same ingredients as the Kleenite...easy and cheap. 1&1/2 cups Washing Soda 1&1/2 cups Citric Acid 1/2 Cup Baking Soda 1 Tablespoon Sodium percarbonate Mix all together and store in airtight container. This will be extremely cheap to make and is the exact ingredients as the Kleenite. For those of you that are having good luck with the Kleenite I'd recommend you take 5 minutes and mix your own. There are a lot of people online having good luck with this. I just think Kleenite should be ashamed of themselves for the price they are charging for this.

My thoughts ... 1) A couple/three more gallons of water can be added to insure the fill level is above the scum-level so the cleaning solution reaches it. 2) His comment about older machines having faster cycles ... the timer was set a 6 mins wash time when he starts the machine (at 6:06 in the video) ... which is less than half the maximum available time of 14 mins. 3) It's highly unlikely that degree of residue (including what's on the exterior/bottom of the spin basket) will fully remove, even on multiple treatments, without disassembly for direct scrubbing ... as he did at the end. Do that immediately and be done with the job, then enact preventative measures to avoid recurrence. 4) Regards to "soap scum," modern laundry detergents are a very different substance than soaps of yore. Soaps react with hard water to create scum, thus the need for water softener products (Calgon, anyone?) in the past. Use of soap is rare nowadays vs. synthetic detergent. Detergents (when dosed properly) have ingredients to handle the mineral content of hard water without creating "scum." The residue is an accumulation of laundry soils that didn't sequester into the wash water for flushing away.