- 11 grains (private well) per a softener salesman several years ago (did not buy a softener).
- Wal-Mart Great Value, non-phosphate version spiked with STPP ... but currently on the 2nd of a stash of four boxes of Cascade Complete powder with phosphates (although only 5.5%) so STPP is not added.
- 1 tsp prewash (dispenser holds 2 tsp max), 3 to 4 tsp main wash (dispenser holds 6 tsp max) ... rarely 2 tsp / 5 tsp for an extreme load.
- Eight-years-old Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer DD603. DishDrawers cannot use liquids/gels and tablets are discouraged, so I always use powder.

One new and one nine-year-old Whirlpool at different locations. Both city water. Softeners at both locations providing zero grains soft (measured). Both little less than tsp pre-wash plus little more than tsp main-wash for full "normally soiled" load. Cascade Complete powder formerly with phosphate, now without. Consistently excellent results with or without. Rinse agent dispenser set on one (lowest setting).

Over the years people have given me their leftover whatever liquid and powder detergents. They've all worked fine, too.

Aliris, don't presume. You might be surprised. :)

7.5/8 grains

Own a Miele La Perla II with built in salt water softener.

I use Miele tabs or Finish Quantum Powerball tabs.

Cascade powder and gels do not work for our water and machine..they leave streaks, smears, murkiness and left on food. Miele and Finish tabs leave dishes and the machine sparkling!!

plllog - don't presume about water hardness? You think LA's is not hard but soft? How does one even know ... darn: was I supposed to *save and/or *read* that 8 page brochure DWP sent me???* Geesh....

OK, who else doesn't really understand the concept of water hardness after all? Try this link

And plllog, I guess I get it: in LA we've no idea where the water we're actually drinking has come from; could be the Colorado, could be Owens' Valley, further north, further east, SE: CAP, etc... And those range from soft to hard. Plus I know some parts of SM take ground water (contaminated by all the oil in the area...). So it's not an easy question at all to answer I guess; not even that brochure woulda done it.

Wow, complicated.

Do check out the pretty picture of calcium carbonate distribution in the US on that site....

If we get a good number of responses, this could be an interesting thread.

My only concern is that most people don't know what their hardness level is and even within regions, the hardness of delivered water can vary dramatically. At both of my locations with city waters hardness of pre-softener water delivered can vary 3-4 grains. (avg. about 8; sometimes spikes to 12; never lower than 7)

aliris19: In Portland (OR), with very soft water, we use only Ecover powder (not tablets) with great success. We fill the cup to about 2/3, not topped up. Previously, we used Procter&Gamble/ReckittBenkheiser/ColgatePalmolive/Unilever/Dial dishwasher detergents and had severe etching of glassware; that problem disappeared when we switched to Ecover.

"We fill the cup to about 2/3...."

Which "cup"? What machine?

Would you mind telling us how much detergent that is, please? Teaspoons? Tablespoons? Something we can relate to?

There wouldn't happen to be any quick and dirty way of telling whether you have hard or soft water or the numbers that define this ... do you need a chemistry set? I dunno, maybe pour a tsp salt in a 1/2 cup water and see how long it takes to dissolve? Something like that???

No, there isn't. Certainly no method that will allow rational discussion among strangers about the topic wishing to make direct comparisons.

"Soft" water is zero grains. Anything above that is some amount of hard. Only question is "how hard"? Information about it from innumerable sites on the web. Test kits are available in any hardware store.

In my experience, maybe one person in a couple hundred knows anything about their water quality. For most folks its "wet" and that's about it.

5-7 grains (depending) in Ft Lauderdale FL on city water.
Have a Miele Diamante Plus with built-in water softener.
I use one-half (or less) of a Miele Tab for each wash.

OK, so 4 people know their water hardness measure precisely. Suggesting, asolo, 800 silent lurkers ... you think? Alternatively we're atypically aware of our water hardness here. Which is likely. And no jokes please.... ;)

Sudsiness and ease-of-cleaning have been suggested as relative assessment of soft v hard water. Ours may perhaps be soft. I really don't know but I'm way too cheap to go out and buy a test kit. I'll report back once I've figured out what chemicals to pilfer for a test.

There wouldn't happen to be any quick and dirty way of telling whether you have hard or soft water or the numbers that define this ... do you need a chemistry set?aliris19, kits can be purchased for DIY home testing. Check the details of the kits in which you're interested. Some report on range that is only roughly accurate, such as 0, 50, 120, 250, 425 ppm. Others are more accurate within a lower range then less so as the numbers get higher, such as 0, 2, 5, 7, 11, 15, 25, 58 gpg.

Google Search - Water Hardness Test Kit

I live in LA

Just got my water quality survey.

You don't need to read the whole thing.

Just go to the back and look for "hardness" row on the data sheet. Mine says range of 84-300. Divide PPM by 17.1 to grains per gallon. So about 11. Very hard.

I have turned my circle of friends onto Cascade pacs. Most of us wait till full load and use the entire pac. Seems to work well enough.

I guess I will try half a Miele/Somat tab once I get the Miele installed.

I live in scottsdale and have very hard water (20 grains). I have a Bosch DW which I can't stand because it doesn't get the dishes clean (although with lemony shine they are barely acceptable). I used mostly cascade(because it was supposed to be the best). But recently found finish power-balls- low and behold the dishwasher does work.

I currently have ~179 ppm but it varies. (You should be able to get a decent KH test at a pet store or pool store.) My water supply varies a bit as it comes from multiple sources (Alameda County Water District).

Most people who keep fish (not people who buy and flush them regularly) and pools test their KH because it's a pH buffer--you won't get the crazy pH swings that kill your fishies and etch your pool plaster.

I use Electrosol/Finish (?), Cascade, Trader Joe's stuff, whatever is on sale pretty much and it all works. I have a Fisher & Paykel drawer so don't consider using the tablets (too big). Don't measure either end probably use too much because I lost the mustard dispenser I once used and tend to have spills. Pretty sure we're phosphate free and have been for a long time.

Once I had a nasty problem with white film and on the advice of folks here, mixed LemiShine in with my detergent. Worked great and after about 2 bottles of LemiShine I ran out and apparently my water had changed back to normal. Haven't needed it since.

So uh summary...

Alameda Co.
about 10 grains calcium hardness
about half full or more or less plus whatever spills
F&P

Live in the mountains in VT. Pretty sure the water is hard and contains lots of iron. Use standard Cascade powder in Bosch dishwasher. Had problems even with fancy rinse agents until my father-in-law (who has the same dishwasher) suggested keeping white vinegar in the rinse agent reservoir. WOW! What a difference. Dishes and glassware sparkle!

We live on a farm, with well water and use Cascade tablets (orange). Hope that helps :)

Here is a homemade water hardness test from ehow.
ehow.com/how_4843662_test-water-hardness.html

Take two separate glasses and fill one with distilled bottled water, the other with water from your tap. Fill them only halfway, and label them appropriately.
Add 10 drops of liquid dishwashing detergent to each glass. The brand of the detergent is irrelevant, although it must be liquid and not powder.

Cover the top of the glasses with your hand, and shake each glass until an adequate amount of soap suds have been created.

Compare the suds level in each glass. If your tap water is hard, it will make less suds than the distilled water.
Add 10 more drops of detergent to the glass filled with tap water and shake again. If the suds level is now the same in both glasses, your tap water is twice as hard as pure water.

Repeat the steps until you can determine how hard your tap water may be. For instance, if you add 40 drops of detergent to the tap water, and the suds level is still the same, your tap water is four times as hard as pure water.
-----------------------------------------
We use Cascade powder filling the cups or the cascade complete.
My water from central north carolina is soft by this test, although it certainly isn't real low because I had a water test done by a salesman and we found significent precipitation. I already know it was reasonably ok because I have experienced hard water in my travels. When you take a shower and the soap doesn't lather you up, you have hard water!

I had a hard time finding a dropper so I had to go from the Dawn bottle itself. It would be more accurate to dilute some detergent with a couple of volumes of distilled water into a small container and use a dropper. In my case a couple of drops was plenty.

Chas045......

Obviously the folks at ehow have never actually done this. Interesting idea, except....

Viscosities and characteristics of various soaps make obtaining "drops" very troublesome. Viscous fluids like soap tend to string out making accuracy and repeatability nearly impossible.

If you've never actually done this, you will be surprised by how much suds will come up using only a single drop of detergent in distilled water. If you really want to do it, I would suggest starting with one drop in the distilled water and add drops as needed so the suds level comes up to the top and use that for your base-line. I would be surprised if it's more than 2 or 3. Starting with ten drops, such as the site suggests, is nuts.

I would use a container with a seal, like a mason jar, instead of trying to cover the thing with your hand. But even then, how much agitation? How long? How vigorous?

But here's the nut: No matter what you do you will NOT be able to determine your actual hardness by this method. Distilled water is dead-soft which is zero grains. Guess what happens when you try to multiply or divide by zero. What would "twice as hard" as zero be?

I suggest that such an attempt at approximation is essentially worthless for purposes of discussion. No actual comparison among remote cyber-participants would be possible and the question of "how hard" will remain unanswered and unavailable for discussion.

Water hardness kits available at any hardware store for a few bucks. IMHO household water supply is pretty basic. Every homeowner should know what they've got.....but that's just silly me.

Well asolo, you certainly won't get absolute values but the comparisons could be reasonably valid. Sure we could use pipettes etc, but hay, I couldn't even find a dropper.

I gather you chose to ignore my part of the post. I specifically suggested diluting the detergent. That specifically takes care of the first part of your complaint. And I mentioned using a couple of drops, second part!
and on to the main and I agree critical part, the issue is do I need extra detergent in my dishwasher. This is essentially that test. Now I admit, I haven't seriously analyzed this method, it is obviously an estimate and a comparison. Perhaps if a few people who think they have hard water performed it, we would get a better idea of its value. I just assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that whoever originally worked this out, found that seriously hard water took at least 20 or 30 drops of a mid range detergent to get sudsing. If they didn't do that, then I would agree that the method should be recalibrated. The divide by zero is not a problem. Distilled water is just the baseline. If we were recalibrating this method we would mix a hardwater concentration of Calcium Carbonate or whatever, and see how many drops it took of a particular brand of detergent (diluted to aid accuracy).

As an aside: my wife's first chemistry job (long before Dawn was made) was at a detergent manufacturer, comparing detergent concentration of their various products. Their baseline detergent for comparison was Palmolive and they mixed up ever greater amounts of their detergents in water until it sudsed like palmolive.

Okay, here's another method to use while you're out buying distilled water:

Take a jar of tap water to your local pool store OR to a larger aquarium store OR most ACE hardware stores that sell pool supplies and get a FREE water test.

The fish place will be most precise, but any will do.

1. Cascade Complete All-in-1 Action Pacs

2. 0-3 grains/gallon (or, ~10 PPM); very soft

3. Action Pacs

4. One Action Pac thingy, per load

5. KA

6. Works good; very pleased.

Chas045....

Yeah, you got me. I overstated. Man, I need to get a life.

Fori....

Best suggestion of any so far. Good on ya.

I just called the local water company and asked them what the water hardness number was...

I assume, then, that you also asked what the range of variation was?

Yeah. Seems to depend on who you ask here. People at the office in town gave a range of 0-3, in grains/gallon. This answer probably satisfies most callers with fish tanks and super-automatic coffee machines...

Since I asked too many questions, I got transferred to the water filtration plant; they gave more precise figures, in mg/liter (which I discovered is the same as PPM).

Specifically, 10 PPM so far for the current year; last year's hardness ranged from 12-16 mg/liters, by quarter. Not clear what accounts for this variability, which they said wasn't significant -- all these estimates, when divided by 17.1, are under 1 grain/gallon. As far as I can gather, our variation isn't seasonal (meaning, rainfall).

All water here in Eugene OR comes from the river. I imagine variability is larger and lots more unpredictable in places getting their water from other locations, as its available.

From what I've read and been told, residents of the NW are "golden" hardness-wise.

Actually anyone with a fish tank who knows enough to care is going to be testing their own water, regularly, and the stuff in the tank, not the tap.

But coffee machines? In Eugene? I'm sure you're not all severe coffeeaholics like the PNW stereotype, but I bet some of y'all test your water before making coffee every morning! Just kidding, but it really is true that it's easier to find a decent cup of coffee in the NW than anywhere else I've ever been. Praise, not sarcasm!

prefer detergent (Best to worst):

1. Somat (or Italian branded Pril) tab 2. Miele tab 3. Ecover tab 4. seven generation tab 5. old Cascade powder 6. old finish tab.

will try new finish tab w red power ball soon.

they all work, some just work better than the other. :=p

water's hardness:

two grains, city of Vancouver Canada water supply.

format:

half tab always, full tab will etch my glassware.

machine:

Miele G2630 Excella.

ps: picked up some Italian branded Somat while we visited Italy this Spring... they cost less than half there...

{{gwi:1441320}}

{{gwi:1441321}}

Private well, dead soft (softened & tested) F&P deep dual wash drawer with built in softener (didn't need it, don't use it got a great deal) 1 tsp. Finish powder in main compartment no pre wash (wife does that before she puts the dishes in could probably get by with no detergent). Whatever rinse aid that was in the dispenser when we got it, don't even know what level the rinse aid is set at. Dishes come out dry and spotless. Don't really use much plastic, so usually hand wash that.

I bought 10 hardness test strips on eBay for $6 delivered. 0, 3, 7, 11, 15, 25, 59 grains per gallon. It would be nice to have better resolution at the bottom/middle scale, but I guess close enough for setting my combi oven.

Called the water company. Central Texas rural, supplies 6,000 customers. They had to call me back after consulting with the engineers. LOL. (I lost my most recent report.) Upshot was that 90% of the time the water to my house comes from a source that is .223 grains, but 10% of the time the water comes from a source that usually runs around 7.1 something, but has been known to range as high as 16. So, on any given day, who knows? However, we have a whole house softener and filter, so the water inside, tested by the Kinectco guy, is 0, supposedly. I used about a teaspoon of the old powdered Cascade formula and any old rinse-aid available (usually Jet Dry or that clear one--cannot recall name) in my high-end Bosches for years sans problem. Switched to new formula and got two clouded Biot glasses, permanent damage. Dug out my emergency supply of old Cascade and have been using that. No more problem. However, that will run out soon, and I guess I'll have to start trying various formulas again. Soooooooooooooo, was that a totally useless response?

Hey attofarad, you didn't say what kind of detergent you use in your combi oven, but I bet the dishes come out really dry.

Caddidaddy55 said: Whatever rinse aid that was in the dispenser when we got it, don't even know what level the rinse aid is set at. The rinse aid dispenser on a new unit is empty, the user must fill it. Assuming that was done, perhaps by way of the included sample, it's empty again if you've had the unit more than a couple months. An empty dispenser is signaled by a red light that illuminates in the cap when the drawer's power is on.

We live in the burbs of Denver and get our water from Denver Water. Hardness varies from 80 to 110 mg/L depending on the reservoir it comes from and time of year (water is harder in the winter, softer in spring due to mountain runoff).

DW is a Maytag about 12 years old. We use 1 packet of Cascade Action Pacs with Dawn (phosphate free) and Jet Dry rinse agent (no way to control how much rinse agent is dispensed). Use potscrubber cycle when we have spaghetti or BBQ sauce or a creamy rice dish (DW doesn't deal well with rice). Otherwise, I run it on the regular cycle and dishes come out clean and sparkling. I always wash pans by hand.

In San Francisco.
Hardness 3 (used the flyer dived by 58/17.1)
Miele Diamante
Trader Joes - 1.5T

Only use Normal Cylce - everything is always clean unless something slips down and blocks the arms.

asolo (on July 10) upbraids herring_maven's response (of July 10): "'We fill the cup to about 2/3....' Which 'cup'? What machine? Would you mind telling us how much detergent that is, please? Teaspoons? Tablespoons? Something we can relate to?"

The detergent fill cups on every dishwasher, independent of brand, that I have ever seen are all (within +/- ten percent or so) the same size. Are you aware of any outliers?

We have never used a teaspoon to dispense dishwasher powder into the dishwasher cup of our Miele G848, We have never used a Tablespoon to dispense dishwasher powder into the dishwasher cup of our Miele G848, We therefore do not relate to teaspoons or to Tablespoons in relation to dishwasher powder quantity. We gauge the adequacy of fill in relationship to how much of the dishwasher's cup is filled; that is our measure of how much we use.

Sometimes (but rarely) we pour Ecover powder directly from the box into the cup of our Miele G848. More commonly, we use a long-handled standard coffee scoop to transport the powder from the box to the dishwasher. A standard coffee scoop is 1/8 cup; a full (level) coffeescoopful will not quite fill the detergent cup on our dishwasher. A slightly less-than-full coffeescoopful will fill the dishwasher's cup to about 3/4 capacity, and we use a bit less than that, to fill the dishwasher's cup to about 2/3 capacity.

Hey dadoes, bought the DD from Sears outlet for $550 because there was a dent in the top drawer skin. Only $88 for a new skin from Sears parts direct. None of the installation hardware packets had been opened, but the rinse aid dispensers were already filled. I discovered that when I went to fill them. Haven't read the instructions to see how to set the rinse aid level yet, maybe someday.

San Jose, CA - our water is over 20 grains hardness (varies from 20-24) so it is *incredibly* hard. In previous homes I'd used Ecover or similar detergents with good results but with this water it didn't work at all. The only thing that worked in our Whirlpool was the Cascade complete packets with lemishine powder and Lemishine rinse aid and even then the cleaning was not great (but Lemishine helped at least prevent limescale).

The Whirlpool died a few days ago (18 months old - motherboard failed) and new Bosch installed today, I plan to run it with the recommended Finish Quantum tabs first and see how that goes, then try Lemishine if necessary.

Our HOA is looking into installing a water softener but many meetings and committees are involved... so I didn't get an expensive softener-included DW because I hope by next year we will have building-wide soft water.

In my area the average water hardness measures around 13 GPG. Definitely hard. I have a year old Asko dishwasher, and I use Cascade Complete packs and add an healthy dose of white vinegar (about 3/4 Cup--maybe even a full cup). Needless to say, I keep a large container of vinegar under the sink. I really should invest in a water softener!

Water tested at 20+ grains. City says average is 13 year round.

I have used Miele tabs, Cascade tabs, Finish Quantum tabs, Finish Powerball tabs, Cascade Complete powder, and Palmolive ECO+ gel

My favorite so far is the Cascade Complete powder. The tabs do not seem to clean as well, often leaving a residue at the bottom of wine glasses. The gel doesn't leave a residue, but it doesn't clean as well. My LEAST FAVORITE is the Finish with bleach: smelly and doesn't clean well.

East Bay, Northern CA, San Francisco Bay Area - water is medium - medium soft, depending on source.

KA DW, 2009 KUD model

Finish Quantum. Used to use Cascade gel before they took the phosphates out, didn't work afterwards. Love the FQ stuff, works great.