Appliance Recommendations

We're looking at getting a new dishwasher.
I have no idea what we need.
I prefer really fast wash cycles. 20-30 minutes. Any more time and I might as well hand wash everything myself.

We don't need or want one of the extreme water saving machines that take 3 hours for a wash. Water is plentiful and inexpensive here, and we don't use it often enough for that to make an impact.

We have stainless steel appliances elsewhere in our kitchen. But they're already starting to rust because of the salty sea air. So if there's some special kind of finish or treatment that is better for high salt environments, tell me about it!

Anyone have advice?
Thanks in advance!

 

For most of the last decade, I spent at least one day per week in factories that built appliances. My previous company was a key supplier to the two largest domestic manufacturers, and most of our suppliers and partners dealt with multiple manufacturers. The three main US 'groups' are Whirlpool, Electrolux, and GE. The families associated with each group make just about all the domestic brands. I've been around for 'tear downs' and seen/met on the results. That is where one manufacturer would pull competing models from all the other major manufacturers, alongside their own models, and literally tear them apart piece by piece and examine the specs of each part. They'd review thickness of the material, strength, the amount of fasteners used to hold wire harnesses, the number or rivets/welds, you name it, they compared it.

Based on all of that, and many years of conversations with other suppliers to that market, I'd recommend something manufactured by Whirlpool. Specifically, for the best bang for the buck, I'd look at the nicest KitchenAid unit that fits the features you prefer.

If you had posted this a month ago, I would've been able to hook you up with a very significant discount to most major appliances, but alas, I changed jobs and that perk went with the old job.

 

Yeah, there will definitely be very positive and very negative online reviews for every model. People get excited and love their new machine. Even more often, when someone gets the rare defective machine, they will scream from the mountain tops that it was horrible and the customer service was awful. So it’s a bit of a mess wading through reviews. With time and patience you can discern which ones are consistent and posted by rational consumers and which ones are outliers and emotional people trying turn their own volume up.




If my experience in the industry can be helpful, anyone can feel free to post up SKUs or models and ask for more targeted feedback.

 

I'm hunting for something with a very fast wash cycle.
Came across this brand, Asko.
https://www.asko.com/kitchen/asko-dishwasher/programmes

Mom friends keep recommending Bosch.

Labor day sales are coming up. The timing here isn't bad.

 

Bosch makes a very good quality unit. My answers were strictly involving domestically manufactured units, since domestic manufacturing pays my mortgage.

 

That's a great tip! Thanks!

 

No, some are made here, a few are imported. I guess the "is it made in the USA" argument here parallels that of 'foreign' cars, right? If a VW or BMW is made in the US (many are), is it German or domestic? Kind of the same thing with Bosch. The other brands I referred to are US companies producing things built in the US, though for everyone some components are sourced elsewhere.

 

Thanks for catching that!

 

My husband did a complete tear down and rebuild, found the issue with our current dishwasher. A friend of mine pointed us to a junk hardware shop that is likely to have a replacement part. We're going to go that route.
We're thinking KitchenAid if we do replace.
In other news, our refrigerator is also acting up. These Samsung appliances were supposedly new when we bought our home less than a year ago.

 

We have no home warranty this time. The seller didn't offer one and my husband was convinced it was a waste of money. So now we have a home full of "new" appliances (with no warranty transferred to us for the individual appliances), and everything is breaking.
I am not at all shocked that this is happening. Husband still considers a home warranty a waste of money. I won't fight about this one with him.