Dishwasher products- not cleaning

[sconeonamission]

My dishwasher isn't washing!!!! Some are clean, some are not. The ones that aren't look like it's a dirty dish in with clean ones. It's bad. I don't actually use dishwasher powder/ tablets, i use bi carb and then vinegar in the rinse bit. Im so sick of buying dishwasher powder/ tablets, I thought I use a more natural product. Perhaps it's not working... What else can I use coz I want my dishes clean today!!

[Tinks]

Have you tried cleaning out the filters and the propellor thingy?

I usually put taht blue finish dishwashing cleaner through mine once a month but if you don't want to use chemicals maybe give it a good scrub and do an empty load with bicarb and vinegar.

[MantaRay]

I found the same thing when using bi-carb. I find that it's fantastic for light loads, but doesn't deal with things that are stuck on the dishes. So what I do is use bi-carb only when there's nothing heavy duty to come off (I rinse plates pretty well usually so this is a lot of the time, although that's probably a waste of water too ). Otherwise I use dishwashing powder, or a mix of powder and bi-carb. That seems to work well for us.

[Olive]

instead of using the finish dishwasher cleaner i use citric acid on an empty cycle to clean the dishwasher! i just use aldi powder and it last agggggggggges! im talking around 6 months as you only need a tsp of powder and its cheap

[Pandora]

Olive -- Does the aldi powder work well?
We use the aldi tablets and sometimes they are better than others.
Also no tablets ever come out of the drawer things properly, so I have taken to putting htem on the bottom of the dishwasher.

WRT vinegar, do you just put it where the rinse aid goes?

[Indadhanu]

I found that with bi-carb too, it just doesn't do the job on pans or pots, so on heavy loads we use some actualy powder (actually, its a dishwasher tablet thing, I'm sure they're no good but thats what we use). Vinegar as rinse aid. Actually OT, but since using vinegar as a rinse aid, I'll never go back to any commercial aids, I've never had cloud-free dishes before using vinegar!