My dishwasher takes hours to complete its loads

I gave up and pressed cancelled and opened the dishwasher and found my dishes clean. the load keeps on going on and on...its annoying waste of money.

There are several different cycles to the dishwasher. Some take a short time and some take a long time.
I looked at your link. Seems you bought a machine that only has one cycle? What does your owners manual say?

According to your manual,

Quick rinse takes 10 minutes
Light wash takes 1.5hrs
Heavy wash takes 2.0 hrs
Pots & Pans takes 2.5hrs.

Based on those times it would appear that there is nothing wrong with your dishwasher other then it takes one heck of a long time to wash.

Thanks for the info FlashFyre but I'm a bit confused. I didn't think that dishwashers heated up the inlet water unless you use the heat cycle? I also didn't think you could change the cycle time based in inlet water temperture since a timer doesn't based it's time due to what the water temperture is. In other words you decide whether to use the heat cycle or not. The only thing pre heating the water would do is eliminate the need to use the heat cycle. Am I still confused?

copperprincess wrote: ↑I gave up and pressed cancelled and opened the dishwasher and found my dishes clean. the load keeps on going on and on...its annoying waste of money.

You mean you hear the dishwasher still washing after two hours, or the lights don't change to FINISHED after two hours.

Has OP left the dishwasher alone for 4 hours and see if it stops/changes lights by itself?

1) How about checking your manual before crying wolf here
2) Yes dishwashers just like washers heat up the water
3) I wouldnt jump to any conclusions until you observe it properly and repeatably

I think a lot of the newer energy efficient dishwashers take more time than the older ones. My sister has a new fancy one with steam/etc and it takes like 2+ hours as well.

As other poster mentioned, sounds like it is in your manual. Probably best to ask about cycle times before buying a new one now adays.

bluenote wrote: ↑1) How about checking your manual before crying wolf here

I already have see my earlier post below. Bottom line is dishwashers range in list price from about $300.00 to $3000.00 and Copperprincess has an entry level dishwasher therfore it may take twice as long to complete all cycles yet in the end hopefully you'll get the same results.

Maymybonneliveforever wrote: ↑According to your manual,

Quick rinse takes 10 minutes
Light wash takes 1.5hrs
Heavy wash takes 2.0 hrs
Pots & Pans takes 2.5hrs.

Based on those times it would appear that there is nothing wrong with your dishwasher other then it takes one heck of a long time to wash.

If Copperprincess is replacing an older dishwasher, the current ones--in general--have very long run times compared to older ones, but it's much more efficient. I changed a 20 year old dishwasher earlier this year and the manual even warned that if you're replacing an older dishwasher, you may be surprised by how long dishwashers run nowadays. I'm not sure how it's more efficient; maybe longer hot water cycles rather than several hot/rinse/hot/rinse cycles? Anyway, my new one is a lot more quieter and seems to do the job better.

I usually run mine at night before going to bed, so whether it takes two hours or five, I don't care.

jm1 wrote: ↑I usually run mine at night before going to bed, so whether it takes two hours or five, I don't care.

likewise

and newer ones take a lot lot longer. I think I have one of the most expensive dishwashers you can buy and it takes 2+ hours. The new ones take longer but are very efficient. It's like driving your car at 30km/h

A lot of the newer dishwashers only run one spray arm at a time in order to keep the noise factor down. So... you want a real quiet dishwasher... it takes a real long time to do the dishes...

The amount of electricity and hot water it would be cheaper an faster to wash dishes on your own.

gnuman wrote: ↑The amount of electricity and hot water it would be cheaper an faster to wash dishes on your own.

it would be cheaper to also take cold showers and sell my car for a horse.

I scanned down the Consumers Reports listing of dishwashers they had reviewed and for virtually all of them the typical cycle time was about 2 hours. The odd one was slightly less and the odd one was significantly more but 2 hours was a good average. Pots/pans cycles are probably a lot longer. The reasons for the long cycle time is of course energy efficiency reasons. Because of the long running times a quiet dishwasher becomes more important than ever.

Cold water incidentally doesn't clean dishes very well at all so most dishwashers have to have heaters since the water coming in isn't usually hot enough. The only heat you usually have control over is in the drying cycle portion of the wash.


Refrigerators have also changed over the years for energy efficiency reasons. Smaller compressors are more efficient running steadily for a long time than large compressors frequently cycling off and on.

gnuman wrote: ↑The amount of electricity and hot water it would be cheaper an faster to wash dishes on your own.

But that would have been true 50 years ago as well. Manually doing dishes has always been and will always be cheaper than a dishwasher.

Thank you guys for the feedback. And I have read my manual before crying wolf here. The light wash was suppose to take less than 2 hours: 1.5 hours. And my dishwasher went over that time since i was watching my time carefully. Also, no lights changed, which confused me even more. And so when I took out the dishes after canceling the load before it stopped itself, i saw the dishes were clean and that the load was going on and on for no reason.
Thank you woof for referencing consumer reports. Made me feel a bit better that im not the only one with this confusion.
In fact, thank you everyone once again.