Dishwasher Mistake: Hands Off This Popular Program!
How do you start your dishwasher? Many of us prefer to choose a program that seems super practical at first sight – but has many disadvantages!
Oh, dishwashers are great: Just put the dirty plates and cups in, put a tab in the compartment, press two or three buttons and you can get back on the sofa while the machine does the dirty work.
Too bad the machine takes so long: Sometimes it takes up to three hours for the dishwasher to turn dirty plates into shiny dishes. But there is also the practical short program …
Attention: Especially this very popular program we should not use all the time. Because it is expensive, harmful to the environment and can damage your machine!
Why is the short program of the dishwasher harmful?
One after the other – let’s first clarify why the dishes in the short programme are cleaned so quickly. It’s impressive: What the machine normally takes two to three hours to do, can suddenly be done in just under three quarters of an hour …
Yes, the machine washes the dishes faster in the short program, but it also uses much more energy. This means: more water, more heat, more short rinse cycles. Even drying after cleaning should work faster – and of course that only works with more heat.
This means that while in the normal or even the eco programme the dishes are washed in longer sections with a lot of water and little heat, in the short programme the machine fires at full power, pumping hotter water into the washroom more frequently and heating the washed dishes even more at the end so that they dry faster.
What could be the consequences of the short program?
Because the dishwasher uses full power in the short program and whistles about all the thriftiness, it consumes much more energy – which is not good for the environment on the one hand, but not good for our wallet on the other. Anyone who uses the short programme frequently can pay up to 30 euros more for electricity and water at the end of the year, Stiftung Warentest has calculated.
And the constant strain is not good for the machine itself either: frequent use of the short programme can cause the dishwasher to break down earlier. This is also because the appliance simply uses more energy – and ultimately the machines are not designed to constantly heat up to the highest level. This constant load can cause heating elements to break down earlier than when we use the more economical programs.
So let’s remember: if we don’t want to go really fast, we’d rather run the machine in the normal program – or even better in eco mode. This is not only good for the environment, but also saves our wallet …