My Dishes Taste Like Soap

“My dishes taste like soap” my client told me as I looked at her dishwasher.

I can immediately tell why because I’ve seen quite a bit of this sort of issue over the past year. All of it has been with Cascade pods or dish washing detergent.

What happens is that the soap doesn’t fully dissolve, it creates this rubbery plastic substrate that sticks to everything and looks like plastic goo.

You’ll notice especially how bad it cakes up down in the filter area, this dishwasher happens to be a Bosch dishwasher which is a pretty good brand. But it just could not handle that much buildup and residue in the system.

In fact one of her complaints was that the soap dish dispenser would not routinely open but would just do it sometimes. To me, that sounds exactly like soap residue buildup causing too much pressure on the springs because you’re having to force the soap dispenser door closed over all that residue.

Another issue on these Bosch dishwashers is that you have to make sure that the waterline coming into your dishwasher is hooked up to your hot water side under your sink.

Dishwashers used to contain hot water heating systems for the water, but now the trend is to just tap them into the hot water side on the sink.

However, as in this clients case, sometimes the hot water heater is a long way away and the dishwasher doesn’t really fill up enough to ever get the hot water.

The manufacturers solution is to run the water at your sink until it is nice and hot before you turn on your dishwasher. That way you were assured of getting the hottest water available which is of great help and both dissolving soap and rinsing your dishes.

Article by Brett Singleton – Brett Singleton is the Founder of Appliance Repair Charleston. He also runs a appliance repair marketing company.