Cleans the machine that cleans! (Tesco Dishwasher Cleaner)

Member Name: HonestBob

Product:	Tesco Dishwasher Cleaner
Date:	18/10/08 (233 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gets rid of residue smells and greasiness

Disadvantages: You still need to clean the filter and hose heads manually to remove stuck food particles

This product is sold in a twin pack of 250ml bottles for £1.98 by Tesco and is designed to clean your dishwasher.

Until I had a dishwasher of my own I did not realise that they need regular cleaning. It still seems strange to me that a machine with the sole function of cleaning dishes, does not end up clean at the end of the cycle. However, now that I have a dishwasher of my own I have discovered that residue food gets left in the machine (no matter how often I tell the kids to scrape their plates completely, one of them always leaves something behind) and this tends to smell if not cleared away shortly after the cycle ends. Similarly, the filter of the machine gets clogged, the sprinkler hose heads store rice grains and the walls of the machine quickly collect a greasy residue. Hence, the requirement that the machine is cleaned with a proper dishwasher cleaning fluid on a regular basis.

The dishwasher must be emptied prior to using the cleaner and using it is extremely simple. All you have to do is peel away the label from the cap, remove the cap (throw both peeled off label and cap away) and place the bottle upside down in the cutlery basket or other secure position. Once the bottle is in location you run a normal wash programme at 60 degrees C or higher (only the prerinse is lower than 60 degrees on my machine, I'm not sure about other machines though). During the wash programme the cleaner is released when the dishwasher reaches wash temperatures.

Once the wash cycle is completed (and your machine is cool enough to handle the contents) take out the 'empty' bottle and recycle it (or throw in in the household waste if you aren't environmentally conscious). Now, you'll note I've put 'empty', that is because the last bottle I used did not disperse its entire contents into the dishwasher during the cycle. once the machine had finished there was still about a third of the contents left in the bottle. The machine, however, was sparklingly clean as per usual.

I generally run a cleaner wash every couple of weeks but decided to reuse the bottle within a week to get the final third out. Sure enough the dishwasher came up lovely and clean again. Maybe Tesco put too much cleaning fluid in the bottle and a smaller dose would surfice, maybe I keep the machine clean enough not to require a 250ml dose. I'm not sure, either way I recommend this dishwasher cleaner because it gets rid of nasty odours and slime that can remain in a dishwasher after regular use. Don;t forget you will need to clean your filter manually too (this should be cleaned after every cycle, but I often forget), and the water hose heads will also require manual cleaning to extract any residue food particles.

Summary: A great little cleaner for a hardworking dishwasher