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How to clean a dishwasher with citric acid

cleaning PMM with lemonCleaning the dishwasher is a sore subject for many housewives, especially when descaling is required. Such cleaning is required quite often, especially when you consider that in many cities of our "vast" country hard water. You can buy special products for these purposes, but the fact is that the basis of many such products is ordinary citric acid. A logical question arises: why overpay if you can clean the dishwasher with citric acid. Moreover, this household chemistry costs mere pennies. Let's see how to do it and whether it can be done at all.

Manual care

Some housewives ask: is it possible to use citric acid when washing a dishwasher manually? From our point of view, it is not only possible, but also needs to be used instead of powders with abrasive particles and other aggressive chemistry. We take a soft cloth and a sponge, as well as a small basin with water.

  1. Open the washing chamber of the dishwasher and pull out the baskets with the tray.
  2. Pour a little lemon on a sponge moistened in water and wash the baskets with baskets.

It is better to wash the tray and baskets in the bathroom, it’s more convenient.

  1. We generously fill the bottom of the washing chamber with a lemon and a sponge to clean the surface from dirt and scale.
  2. Using a sponge and gruel from lemon, we clean the sprinklers: upper and lower.
  3. Wipe the washing chamber completely inside. You can not spare the lemon, besides it can not be washed off thoroughly, during the next dishwashing it will be washed off into the system.

To wash the dishwasher with a lemon means to clean the inside of the washing chamber from scale and dirt. Also, the lemon is merciless to microorganisms, while it does not harm the human or animal body - solid pluses. Repeat this cleaning once every 1.5-2 months.

System cleaning

The "external" use of citric acid is safe for PMM and their hosts. But you can use it to remove scale inside the system of the dishwasher. If your water supply has hard water, we can assure you that the “lion's share” of scale, and this is 97%, will be concentrated in the heating element, hoses and pipes. You can’t remove them manually from there, unless of course you are going to take the dishwasher apart. There is only one option left - automatic cleaning of the system at home, and you can do it with the usual lemon.

PMM cleaning

We take citric acid, put it in the compartment for powder or tablets. We do not load dishes into baskets. We close the door of the PMM, select the intensive washing program and start the unit. When the program exits, the PMM system will be well cleaned from scale inside. Do this procedure approximately 1 time in 2 months.

Where to pour a lemon is understandable, but how much to pour it into the powder compartment? Empirically, we came to the conclusion that we need to rely not even on the size of the PMM, but on the volume of water pumped into the system. Take a look at the instructions for your dishwasher.

  1. If it spends less than 10 liters of water per cycle, then pour in no more than 40 g. Of lemon.
  2. If the car spends about 12 liters, it is necessary to pour 50 g. Lemons.
  3. Consumes 14 or more liters? Sprinkle 60 g.

Why is it necessary to monitor the dosage so precisely? We will talk about this in the next paragraph.

When not to use a lemon

Using citric acid and other cleaning products can cause real harm to the dishwasher. Imagine that you have hard water, but you have not taken any measures to clean the PMM for several years. Of course, large calcareous deposits formed inside the machine. And finally, with a delay of several years, you decided to clean the dishwasher with a lemon. Citric acid destroys fragile calcareous deposits, all at once.

Overnight in the PMM system will be a huge amount of large garbage, which is likely to suit a powerful blockage. If such a blockage occurs, cleaning it will be problematic. But the blockage is not so bad. Scale from the internal surfaces of the flow heater can fall off so that the heater itself is damaged. As a result of cleaning with a lemon, you can “get” to a rather expensive repair. The conclusion is simple: if you have not cleaned the dishwasher inside before descaling, you should not start, it is fraught with consequences!

So,how to clean the dishwasher inside yourself using regular lemons? It seems to us that we answered this question. If you need clarification, or you do not agree with our point of view, leave comments or participate in discussions on our forum. Good luck

   

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