Nasty white film on dishes from dishwasher.

[Carl Carlson IV]

I posted this under health because it's nasty if I'm eating this stuff!

I've been troubled with a problem for a couple months now. Whenever I wash dishes in my dishwasher, a white film coats all the pots, pans, and glasses. It's most visible on metal/black pots, as seen in these pictures below:





I can scrub and scrub and scrub but the film won't come off. It actually used to be worse, but we recently started doing all dishes by hand... slowly it is starting to fade. We've tried switching detergents and rinse aide, to no avail.

I've read up on this, I've heard it's caused by hard water. I've read some other causes, but I can't seem to find a solution anywhere. Has anyone else gone through this and got rid of the problem? Could it be my dishwasher? Doing dishes by hand isn't really that big of an inconvenience as it's just me and my girlfriend living here, but I do miss being able to have technology do the work for me.

[funchy]

Looks like mineral deposits from your water. If your dishwasher is leaving it, have you tried a rinse agent (eg Jet Dry)? If you have well water, a softener may help.

On aluminum pans, a white film that doesn't scrub off is oxidation. I can't tell from the pics whether those are stainless or aluminum or what.

[Dreamline]

If it never used to happen but now it's happening, it can be that the heater element in your dishwasher has gone bad.

The detergents are designed to dissolve and work at temperatures higher than the hot water that comes out of your hot water heater so there is a heater element in the bottom of the dishwasher that super heats the water prior to and during the wash cycle.

If it's kaput, your detergent won't clean or rinse properly.

Jennifer

[Michelle]

You either have hard water or a too aggressive detergent.

I would check the following:

Make sure you keep the salt level up.

Use organic non-environmentally agressive products only (do you really want to eat that other stuff or let it flow into the water system?) meaning detergents free of phosphates, chlorine, etc. Most detergents are extremely aggressive and tabs contain much too much for one load.

Use an organic rinse aid. This prevents film from forming or any bits which may be still in the dishwasher from sticking to your dishes. Vinegar works reasonably well, but there are organic products especially for this purpose which work a bit better.

Wash at a higher temperature. For me 10 degrees (65 degrees C) makes the difference between sparkling dishes and dishes that just don't come quite clean (55 degrees C).

Put a couple cups vinegar in (one on the top, one on the bottom in a bowl) an empty machine and run the rinse cycle for descaling. Let it sit overnight and run the rinse again in the morning.