The Potential of 1 Tablespoon of JetDry

Today I inadvertently discovered the voluminous potential of JetDry. It turns out that a pretty small amount (about a tablespoon) easily generates enough suds to flood a kitchen.

In the time I've lived in my apartment we haven't (until yesterday) put JetDry in our dishwasher. Thus, water spots and wet dishes have been the norm. The purpose of JetDry is to combat these very effects: about 0.1 fluid ounces of JetDry is used during the rinse cycle to remove hard water deposits and helps the dishes dry cleaner and faster.

My roommates and I have been talking about getting some for months, but it wasn't until yesterday that my roommate Nelson purchased some. Immediately upon his return from the store Colin and I excitedly looked on as he filled the reservoir in the dishwasher. With great anticipation we decided to rerinse the already clean dishes in the dishwasher with our newly JetDry-ed water.

The dishwasher had been running only a small fraction of a minute before JetDry was streaming out of the bottom of the dishwasher onto the floor. We stopped the dishwasher and started looking for the cause. After removing the inside panel of the door and analyzing the purpose and function of various components it became clear that the design of the JetDry reservoir was such that if you overfill it the JetDry leaks prolifically into the inside of the door. It is also very difficult to tell how full the reservoir is without dismantling the door. Thus, we had probably overfilled it by at least a half pint. Closing the dishwasher door allowed all of that JetDry to run down the inside of the door and start leaking everywhere.

I cleaned up the inside of the door and let it dry overnight. It looked like everything was working okay, beyond the obviously poor design of the reservoir, so I put everything back together tonight and resumed the rinse cycle we had started yesterday.

When I came back out to the kitchen fifteen minutes later I discovered that foam and water had been oozing out around the door for most of that time. The lake extended out for a good portion of the kitchen. I stopped and opened the dishwasher to find about six inches of JetDry suds in the bottom of the dishwasher. It took a little bit of sleuthing to discover the problem: it turns out that a small amount of JetDry had gotten into the bottom of the dishwasher when we filled the reservoir initially. It also turns out that a little bit of JetDry goes a really long way (remember it normally only takes 0.1 ounces per cycle). It took a half dozen cycles of filling the dishwasher with water on a rinse cycle and then promptly draining out the water before all of the JetDry was flushed out of the dishwasher.

In the end the dishes in the dishwasher were indeed spot free and dry. Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the difference it has made so far. No more spots. No more wet dishes. I think it's certainly been worth the hassle of filling the dishwasher with a little JetDry.