Our Whirlpool dishwasher (professionally installed) is hooked up to only the hot water....Yes, our DW has a heating element for the drying cycle but it is not meant for heating completely cold water. Maybe a Miele is different.

This post was edited by grandmaof3 on Sat, Sep 14, 13 at 14:59

Miele's are different. As your manual says, they can be hooked up to either cold or hot. By hooking it up to the cold water you guarantee that the water will be heated by the machine to the correct temperature for a given cycle, particularly the china cycle. Their warning is that it is probably more expensive and less efficient to have the machine heat the water instead of your water heater. I don't believe anything has changed except that maybe people have complained about their electric bills when they hook up the machine to the cold water :-)

We hooked our Miele to our hot water to save time of the washing cycle

I agree time is key. I would rather save time and handwash very delicate items. LOL Weissman! :)

I was all set to have a cold water hook up (just purchased a Futura Crystal, to be delivered next week) and now I'm not sure!

So, I'm curious about what more experienced Miele dishwasher owners think. I'd also like to know just how much hot water hookup changes the wash times.

FWIW, I don't really have a lot of fancy china and crystal (busy family, 3 kids, ages 8, 11 and 13) so that is not our lifestyle right now. But if the dishwasher is supposed to heat the water, maybe I ought to let it do that?

BTW, I have been lurking on GW for a couple of weeks, and I want to thank the Miele users here for posting such helpful and thorough comments. Reading through these has really assisted me in making my decision, and I am very grateful for all your thoughtful words.

I felt quite a lot of pressure to choose well - DH and family were just desperate for me to get a dishwasher (and did not want to enter in the choice-making at all) but I took my time. On the plus side, the kids are all quite proficient at hand dishwashing now :D

best regards,
Wiggs

We've had our Miele Optima hooked up to hot water for 7 years now. We just use the short cycle, (takes 45 minutes), and everything come out clean.The hot water is also hooked up to a whole house water softener as in Southern Calif, we get our water "Chunk Style", (IE very hard water)!!!

Just got our electric bill for August, it was $52.

Gary

Thanks Rococo and Gary,

I really wanted that express cycle :) it made it very easy to choose the Crystal over the dimension plus. Though that 3D rack did seem nice, with tax and install and all, it was a $500.00 difference between the two models.

I wonder if the express cycle length has changed though? Miele's description on website states that it will get your (lightly soiled) dishes "back on the table in 30 minutes" which seems short, given cold water hookup... My old Kenmore (whirlpool made, died at 11years, may it RIP ;) had a 26 minute quick wash, but I'm guessing it was a hot water hookup.

I like the idea of a gentler wash, and my water heater is set high as well (certainly not 115 deg) so I will likely go with cold.... But I'll ask the tech and report back.

Any further comments on this would be much appreciated :)

Wiggs

My dishwasher is essentially on a cold connection, although it's a Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer, not a Miele. F&P also has assured water heating to specific temperatures per the selected cycle. Works quite well. When I say "essentially" ... it is connected to the hot water line but each fill is 0.8 gals so the first three-ish fills are tap-cold due to the plumbing distance between the water heater and dishwasher. Rest of the fills are warm at best.

It's actually bottom-line more efficient to have the dishwasher do the heating of the small volume of water it takes into the tub compared to heating a larger (40+ gallons) quantity of water in an external container.

There is a way to have one's cake and eat it too, water temperature-wise.

Feed the hot and cold water lines to an adjustable tempering valve, and remember to turn the valve down (colder) when doing cooler water tasks. Or just set it for the china/crystal temperature (this will take some experimenting into a bucket) and allow the Miele to heat the water the extra bit needed for normal or pots & pans.

kas

wiggs -- i had Express in my Optima and it was my favorite. I used it all the time. That was 2 years ago and the machine was 2 when we moved. What they've done to speed it up in the newest models I couldn't say. But it was about 45 to 50 minutes wash time -- plenty fast for me. If it's faster now all the better. It's not meant for heavy loads. But we don't seem to have much difficulty filling up the dw every day.

My current dw is going on 10. No Express or dynamic (or whatever it's called) cutlery tray and the dishes dry without the door opening. It does a perfect job on everything including pasta pots, colanders and you name it. I'm not too swift on the scraping either. Couldn't do without it easily. Not at all. Too spoiled by what one of my recent guest who helped out with the loading called my "modern appliance."

Hi Rococo,

Thank you for letting me know that the air-dry is not a must have! It is good to know that your DW dries the dishes quite sufficiently. I will certainly follow-up once the install is complete and let you know how well the (new?) express cycle works.

I think if the one with the fancy tray (Dimension) also had express, it would have been a little harder for me to decide - but they did away with the express cycle, replacing it with an "Extra Quiet" cycle instead. That and the extra $500.00 was deterrent enough. Also, with the Crystal and Classic, there was a special offer: free 10% off and free 5 year warranty - no such incentive for the upper-end machines, I don't know why.

I'm pretty sure it will be plenty quiet for me, after the rocket launcher we've had in our kitchen ;)

Thank you for posting, I think this one will do everything I need it to and more.

I've even bought some Method Smarty Wash tabs in anticipation! That's what most of you seem to have tried and liked, right?

Warmly,
Wiggs

I have a Dimension hooked up to the hot water line. My hot water heater is set to 140, however it is a long pipe run, so between that and the cool interior temperature of the dishwasher, the actual temperature at the start of the cycle is much lower. I primarily use the normal cycle. While I don't have Riedel crystal, I do wash Lennox gold rimmed dishes and Waterford crystal using the normal cycle with excellent results. The express cycle is really only for very lightly soiled loads. Water is not sufficiently heated to clean dirty dishes. I should add that I don't rinse ANYTHING. Just scrape,off the big stuff. The normal cycle, with hot water hookup takes about two and a half hours...with a col water hook up, it suspect at lease, 3 and a half hours...LOVE MIELE!

ottlane, OP here - good to know! I will have a tankless hot water heater, so I won't have it set very high. I think I will be fine running cycles with a hot hook up. Thanks again for answering my question!

Dodge - I think we have all the same appliances. Thanks! :)

Rococo - You have amazing dishes. I think with a tankless, I will be fine running my china, which is not nearly as nice as yours, with a hot hookup. I will put almost everything in there, unless it is a rare piece that is very fragile.

This post was edited by sreedesq on Mon, Sep 16, 13 at 8:12

No idea about tankless and what that entails. We have a monster tank.

Everyone needs to arrange what works best for their home. Like dishware, it can be so different. No one solution.

Thanks for the kind words about my china. I took a whole creamware service for 12 to DD + DSIL recently (I'm currently in boomer de-accessioning mode) and he didn't like them at all. He only likes plain white I was informed with a sample waved at me as it came out of the dw LOL. So you made me feel better.

I've had my Bosch hooked up to 140F water but went back to cold. First, unless I would only load the dishwasher with one plate, the mass of room temp dishes and the cold tub cooled the hot fill down immediately. Even after the second fill (for the wash) the water ended up no more than lukewarm. Besides, the water in the pipes became cold during the long main wash. Unless I would have purged the line before the first rinse, that fill would have been cold. So for max time saving, I would have had to catch the drain cycle and purge the line right before the rinse fill.

Long story short: I'm back to cold water. Yes, the dishwasher itself used less energy with hot water going in but the amount of water I had to waste purging negated the saving.

Rococo, your dear SIL doesn't know what he is missing out on :) I am going to post a topic on the Home Decorating Forum about registering for china and I would love if you would go over and give your two smarty tabs on it!

I considered feeding my Miele DW with cold water to preserve a scant hot water supply in a smallish tank, but since the water heater was malfunctioning and recently replaced with a larger and faster-recovery tank, I decided to attach it to hot water. Distance to the water heater and the ever-smaller water fills in today's water-efficient dishwashers mean it's lukewarm by the time it reaches the machine (unless your water heater (either tank or tankless) is close to your dishwasher), and even the cold water in wintertime has been sitting in room-temperature pipes warming up, as the hot water cools down for the same reason. I can ensure the first fill is hot by running the hot water at the sink until the water from the faucet is hot before starting the dishwasher.