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The level of hardness of water for a dishwasher is of great importance. The service life of the equipment, the quality of dishwashing, the amount of detergent depend on this indicator. But how to determine this indicator yourself? We found out several ways to measure the amount of impurities at home.
What kind of water does a dishwasher need
Soft or hard water in your water supply depends on the region where you live and the composition of the soil. This is affected by the amount of heavy impurities: calcium and magnesium cations. Getting into the dishwasher, washing machine or other household appliances along with water, impurities precipitate in the form of limescale.
The more limescale deposits on the details of technology, the faster it hardens, turning into scale.
Probably, you have noticed scale on the bottom of the kettle or its heating element more than once. For PMM elements, this is also dangerous. The layer covering the heater does not allow the heating element to give off heat normally. The element overheats and burns out.
Thus, scale enters the body, where it accumulates and causes various diseases, such as kidney stones.
What to do to soften water? Manufacturers of dishwashers have already taken care of this by installing ion exchangers. These tanks are located in the lower part of the case, under the pallet. They are filled with a special resin. Before entering the machine chamber, water passes through an ion exchanger, where the resin takes away heavy impurities, contributing to softening.
Over time, the ion exchanger is depleted, the resin is washed out. Then for mitigation is used special salt.
How to find out the hardness of water
You can check the amount of impurities with the help of tools or use everyday experience.
Approximate Methods
- pay attention to plaque spawn rate on pipes, taps, mixers. Recently cleaned the faucet from scale, how did it become gray again? This means that calcium and magnesium salts exceed the norm.
- Soapiness. Try washing your hands under the faucet with laundry soap. If it foams well, the composition of the water is normal.
- Turbidity. Fill the bottle from the tap, put in a dark place for a day. If a precipitate has formed below, and a film is on the walls, the salt level exceeds the norm.
- Taste. Some people can tell the difference by taste. It is believed that soft water is much tastier.
- Difference. Fill identical containers from different sources. Weigh which container is heavier, there are more impurities.
You can go the simpler way: call the water utility and find out the degree of hardness in your area.
Of course, these methods are very subjective, so they will not give an exact result.
Exact Methods
- test strips – Come with some PMM models. They are coated with a special compound. Just dip the test into the water, and after one second compare the indicator with the table.
Depending on the company, you need to immerse for 2-3 seconds, after which you need to wait half a minute and compare the result.
If there are no test strips in the kit, you can buy them at specialized or pet stores.
- TDS meters – this is a special device. With it, you will determine the exact amount of impurities, as well as the electrical conductivity of water. A useful thing that can be used at any opportunity. Minus – the tool is not cheap.
How to set up and adjust the water hardness sensor
The water supply filter (softener) for washing machines and dishwashers is installed on the tee tap during connection. It retains heavy impurities, small debris, rust.
You can install the water filter yourself. It is important not to forget to clean it periodically.
As we wrote above, salt is loaded into the ion exchanger. Once you have determined the hardness level, do this:
- Open the car door.
- Take out the bottom basket.
- In the pallet you will see a tank with a lid.
- Remove the cover.
- Fill the hole with water.
- Fill it up with saltwhat dishwasher salt to choose, read in one of the previous articles).
Next comes the automatic installation and adjustment of water hardness:
- There is a special regulator on the car door.
- To adjust the operation, turn the arrow to the desired value. The more impurities the test showed, the higher the value on the sensor should be set. This is how the system determines how much salt to use for optimal results.
- The indicator on the control panel will notify you that the salt will soon run out.
Manufacturers of tablets and combination products claim that their products replace detergent, salt and rinse aid. So you don’t need to buy anything else.
Now let’s turn to logic: you put the pill in the compartment on the door, the reservoir in the pan is empty. Water, entering the system, passes through an empty ion exchanger, is heated by a heating element and only then enters the chamber, from where it washes out the detergent. It turns out that while the pill works, the plaque will already settle on the details.
Of course, to understand this, you need to know PMM device. Therefore, the average user is “guided” to advertising and the persuasion of manufacturers. Be vigilant and be sure to use dishwasher salt.
Watch a helpful video:
We talked about adjusting the dishwasher and checking the hardness of the water. Use these tips and forget about scale.