Did you know that your German dishwasher needs salt?! I had NO clue! Seriously we have lived in our house for 7 months and I just realized this! Sure I’ve heard others talk about putting salt in their dishwasher, but I guess I just thought it didn’t apply to mine!
Your first clue that you may need to add salt is that your dishes may not be drying well. I just chalked it up to living in Germany and their appliances not working as well. So we’d wash a load and then prop the door open to help them dry after the cycle was over. I figured that was one of the ‘quirks’ of living here, you know like the no garbage disposals. Sure we got tired of having to dry the dishes before putting them away but we dealt with it, and unnecessarily as I have found out!
Then I came across a video done by a spouse on one of the Facebook pages, I ‘almost’ didn’t watch the video because I didn’t think it applied to me but I’m so glad I did! If you have a german dishwasher and your not putting salt in it you need to watch it too! You can find the video HERE
I immediately went to check my dishwasher and guess what, there was a spot for salt! Thanks to this video I realized that our dishwasher DOES need salt and it was probably going to need a lot.
Luckily I knew the commissary had salt, because again I knew of people using it, just didn’t realize I needed to as well. So I ran to the commissary and bought 2 boxes, they were $1 each. Now don’t go filling up your dishwasher with table salt…you need dishwasher salt. On base it’s on the bottom shelf by the dishwashing detergent, you can also find it off base as well. Use the picture above if you need to know what to look for. I use the Somat special salt from the commissary.
I came home and got to work filling it up, it took 1 and a half boxes! It was also a messy process with me spilling it all over the bottom but I got it done.
Then I ran our first load of dishes because I wanted to see if they dried any better, sure enough they did! We now no longer have to dry our dishes before putting them away from the dishwasher! Oh the little things that make me happy 😉
Hopefully unlike me you’ve figured this out already or are are just moving in and realizing it so you don’t have to deal with wet dishes for months on end!
Any other tips for using German dishwashers?
Ahh, thank you for this, I was doing/thinking the same thing you were! Sooo happy there is a solution!!
First I’m so glad I’m not alone, LOL! 😉 Second I’m excited that this post is proving helpful to others!
Very interesting! I don’t think our dishwasher in Okinawa requires anything special. Hmmm…but it does make me wonder about everything. There was a guy from base housing that came after we moved in and told us all the special stuff we needed to know to maintain our home. We are expecting a typhoon this weekend, so just got my typhoon kit ready today. It shouldn’t be a direct hit, but may lose power for a while. Wish me luck. Cool that you fixed your dishwasher 🙂
Lauren
We lived on base in both Iceland & Japan so we never needed to add anything ‘extra’ to the dishwasher, so it’s been a learning experience for me! Hope y’all stay safe, I’ve been following the story of the Airmen swept out to sea, so sad 🙁
Good idea to share this info! I’m surprised your landlord didn’t tell you about the salt, because not using it can clog the machine with limescale and shorten its life. The video hinted at the main reason machines in Germany and the UK (other places as well, I’m sure) need the salt–because of how hard the water is. The special salt acts as a water softener. Not using it can leave dishes wet but also can end up streaking them with limescale (“kalk”). Oh, my dishwasher’s manual says to add salt only right before you run the dishwasher, in case you spill some in the bottom of the unit–apparently the salt can damage the bottom if left to sit for hours. It’s much easier to pour the salt in with a large-mouth funnel–they come with all new dishwashers. Something else I recently learned is that the 3-in-one tablets that some people use, thinking that they contain enough salt, really aren’t enough–the machine’s reservoir should still be filled with the granular salt. As long as we use a decent detergent, the special salt, and some rinse aid, our Bosch dishwasher works beautifully.
haha love all the pictures! We also didn’t realise at first that our dishwasher needed salt and then when we did, we bought some and poured way too much and it made a total mess, haha.
Oh, European appliances!!! I’m totally jealous you have a dishwasher out there. Our house didn’t have one and we only had one sink (not two basins, just one) to wash everything in. Needless to say, but that was the beginnings of many fights with my husband. I HATED doing the dishes.
A dishwasher was a deal breaker for us, if no dishwasher we passed on the house, LOL! We only seen 1 without a dishwasher though and that’s pretty good considering we seen 22 houses!
A friend of mine just moved to german and can’t figure out the dials on her dishwasher. HELP!
The knobs vary on the dishwashers, I’d have her ask her landlord or do we what we did and had a german neighbor next door come over and show us which setting to use.