For years, questions have been raised as to whether dishwashers are an environmentally friendly alternative to washing up. According to research homes with a dishwasher use 50% less water and 28% less energy than those homes without one.

In the penultimate post of our three part series, we look at how regular maintenance of your dishwasher can help prolong its life, and reduce the risk of faults occurring. And such maintenance includes checking the following components for signs of damage:

Door Seal:

The door seal on your dishwasher acts as a splash guard and prevents water from leaking out. Along with general wear and tear causing damage to the seal, its effectiveness can be hindered, if it is not regularly cleaned.

Bacteria and dirt can hide in the crevices of your dishwasher door seal, which results in unpleasant odours building up. To clean the seal of your dishwasher, we recommend spraying an anti-bacterial cleaner across the seal, before rubbing it down with a damp cloth and a solution made up of water and the BuySpares Limescale and Detergent Remover.

Filters:

Dishwasher filters can often become clogged with food debris. Thankfully, cleaning the filters isn’t difficult – and the best ways to carry out such a job can be found in our posts “4 Steps to Remove and Clean Your Dishwasher Filters” and “How to Clean & Unblock a Dishwasher” – both of which highlight a number of ways to clean your dishwasher filters, with ease, to keep your appliance working effectively.

Spray Arms:

If the spray arms aren’t spinning, water will not be distributed around the appliance, which in turn prevents the dishes from coming clean and increase the likelihood of you having to hand wash the pots.

There are various reasons why your spray arms may not be spinning, with one such reason being food debris blocking the arms, preventing the release of water. Rectifying the fault is relatively straightforward, as outlined in the article “How to Remove the Spray System from a Dishwasher”.

Maintenance Wash:

A final step to keeping your dishwasher running for longer is to perform a maintenance wash on the appliance. For the average family, the dishwasher should be placed on a maintenance wash once a month.

Running a maintenance wash is as simple as putting your dishwasher on a normal wash. The only difference being that when running a maintenance wash the appliance should be empty. You should also include the BuySpares Limescale and Detergent Remover into the wash, which will help to clean the internal parts.

By carrying out a maintenance wash, not only will you clean and sanitise parts of your appliance which are visible to the naked eye, but you’ll also clean internal parts which cannot be seen – removing limescale, bacteria and other dirt which if left can result in unpleasant odours.

Carrying out a maintenance wash, along with checking and cleaning the parts mentioned above, will help prolong the life of your dishwasher whilst ensuring it works effectively and efficiently – saving you money and also time.

Tags: dishwasher, Dishwasher Repairs, Limescale and Detergent Remover