Is Rinse Aid Necessary For Clean Dishes?

While most appliance owners are pretty familiar with their dishwasher and how it works, they may not know too much about rinse aid. Perhaps the rinse aid in their dishwasher has ran out or even the dispenser is no longer working. If this happens, you may wonder – how integral is rinse aid to the dish washing process?

If you simply care about sanitized dishes, then rinse aid isn’t particularly important to the process. What rinse aid does is it is mixed with the rinse water to coat your dishes. This means when it is used, the dishes are actually already clean and sanitized. The rinse aid is what helps your dishes dry faster.

So what happens when you run out of rinse aid or your dishwasher is no longer dispensing it? At first, you might notice that your dishes are coming out a little more moist. Dishwashers use a heating element or a condensation system that helps to produce dry dishes, but this is often designed to work in conjunction with rinse aid that makes the water slide off dishes easier. So, you may notice that a little more water sticks to dishes.

As there is more moisture on your dishes, you will also notice a rise in water spots on your glassware. Water spots aren’t a sanitation issue, but people still don’t like to look at them. No one wants to offer a guest a drink in a water-spotted glass. This means you either refill your rinse aid or start wiping glasses down before putting them up.

If your rinse aid isn’t dispensing, then chances are good that your dishwashing detergent dispenser isn’t far behind. If you need to replace the rinse aid dispenser, you will essentially need to just replace your whole dispensing unit. This is actually really simple to do, and only requires disassembling the door.