Sounds like a mix of issues.

Re noise levels, realize that you've gotten the lowest priced "entry level" Miele. In their own literature, it is rated as a "Q1" in noise, versus a Q4 for our Excellas (which are so quiet that I often have to look to see if the red pilot light is on to know if it's running), let alone a Q5 rated La Perla.

The cleaning issue is surprising though. Most Miele owners rave about the cleaning. What cycle are you using? What detergent? Are you sure you're seeing dirty glasses, and not glasses that have become etched?

And, I guess, if it's the right model, there is always the Miele 90 day guarantee (off their website):

"If you are not completely satisfied that MieleÂs dishwasher is quieter and cleaning better than your previous dishwasher, Miele will refund the full purchase price of the product."

It might be a first, based on the rest of us happy Miele owners.

As above, what cycle and what soap are you using? What types of things aren't clean, ie cheese baked on or coffee cups? Is your machine hooked up to cold or hot? Has Miele been out to check out your complaints? Give us a little more information please.

Per the Miele installer we have been using the rinse and hold cycle when we don't have enough dishes to run a load and once it fills up we have been using the sanitize cycle.

Sometimes there are bits of food still stuck to the plates. In terms of the glasses they are not etched because if I hand wash them when they come out of the dishwasher they look brand new. We have been using the Cascade powder dish soap, which are installer said should be fine but if there's another brand we should use let me know.

We have a repairman coming on Wednesday for some missing covers on the buttons on the controls (for some reason came missing some of the covers) so we'll ask him to check it out as well.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated!

I wonder if it's a combination of your timing and choice of cycle. Typically how long does it take for you to accumulate a full load? If it's more than a day, then I wonder if the dishes are drying completely after the rinse and hold and food is then welded on. That might couple with the fact that the Sani Wash cycle does not do a pre rinse which might have loosened the food. (This is, though, complete speculation so take it FWIW).

At any rate, I'd definitely experiment with other cycles. We almost always use the Sensor Wash cycle, which should be somewhat more energy and H2O efficient. In your case though, I'd consider the Pots and Pans or Heavy Soil settings which are designed to remove dried on food. You can also address how you load your DW (there are some remarkable threads here on how people load their Mieles).

Still, it's hard to explain dirty glasses. That is typically the easiest thing to get clean, outside of smudge resistant lipstick. What do you think is on them? Ground up food? Soap residue? Will be very interesting to see what Miele repair person says. Hopefully you can show him some of the dirty dishes and glasses to help identify the issue.

Have you put salt in the washer ? if not do it, it will make all the difference

Which Cascade detergent are you using. Cascade comes in several different formulations. Some are chlorine-based, others are enzyme-based. You want to use an enzyme-based detergent in your Miele.

Read the list of active ingredients on the package. If you see the word chlorine (or bleach), throw it away and look for one of the formulations that doesn't include chlorine in the list of active ingredients. If you don't see the word chlorine, it will be an enzyme-based product.

I use the Cascade Action Pacs with the Power of Dawn (which I buy at Costco). I get excellent cleaning results using the Normal wash program (130F). I never use the sanitary program or other high temperature wash programs.

Also, be sure you have rinse agent (like Jet-Dry) in the rinse agent dispenser. Miele dishwashers won't deliver optimum results without rinse agent.

Thanks all to the great feedback. Am going to try/look into these suggestions and will report back with results asap.

We have the excella, and I have never used the sanitary cycle, the rinse and hold just once or twice. I scrape the dishes of large food particles, load, and wash on the normal setting. The dishes sit at the most 2 days. We use cascade complete, which is enzyme based,
and a rinse aide. I've never had any trouble getting dishes completely clean with the exception of cake pans. Cake pans sometimes have crumbs left in the corner. Our water is not hard so that may be the difference. Have you checked the filters?

from my own experience with la perla, i suggest:
1. try miele's own tablets
2. try pots & pans cycle which i prefer over heavy soil cycle. economy cycle is fine for loads without heavily soiled pans.
3. make sure all dishes and pans are placed at an angle facing down. proper placement of dishes is crucial.
4. be careful not to block the spray arms from spinning

We had a terrible time with our Miele for a couple of years. Two things you should check on:

a. Is the piece that covers the water vat at the bottom (I have no idea what it's called) screwed on firmly? For some reason I didn't realize that it could be loose, so try turning it clockwise until it won't turn any more.

b. Check the upper water sprayer (it can be unscrewed and taken out) for pieces of garlic caught in the sprayholes. You can remove them. They can really get in the way of clean glasses.

Hope one of these tips helps.

Marytw

Don't groan antss. Must raise the whole house water softener question because if the OP has one that can affect things a lot. He may need to up the rinse aid dosage etc.

I also think 2 Tb. powder is 1 tb too much.

good point on the whole house softener rocco- the rinse aid though won't affect cleanability.

2 tb. might be too much or can even be not enough. I've had Mieles for years and I sometime need 3. Sometimes it goes as low as 1/2- 1. I only use cascade and this is on my current unit in the main residence. A lot depends on the box of detergent and what needs to be cleaned. I sometimes find I need to bump up the dosage from a littel more than one. I also have city water at a pH neutral 7. The quality of water from them is fairly constant but it does fluxuate.

It all boils down to some basic things: clean dishes = hot water, detergent and time. How much of each is magic voodoo these machines try to capture.

Repairman came out, made some slight adjustments and still film on dishes (especially glasses).

As it turns out we have hard water and this seems to be the cause of the issue. Didn't realize when we bought this model or would have bought a different one.

Looks like we have to look into a water softener solution for our house or at least the area connected to the dishwasher.

Any suggestions on water softeners?

thanks

I have had my Inspira II dishwasher for one week. It was also installed by a Miele certified installer. It is the ADA compliant unit (which means that it is just a hair shorter and can be adjusted to slide into its space off of the ceramic tile- the ceramic makes the floor higher). I have run two loads through on the Normal cycle. I have Jet Dry in the rinse dispenser and Cascade powder (enzyme formula) in the soap cup. I rinse all of the dishes thoroughly prior to loading. Both loads have come out spotless. The glasses glimmer and so does everything else.
This dishwasher replaced a twenty-five year old top of the line GE. The Miele does a much better job. There was not one water spot on any of the glassware. I have well water that is on the hard side.
And it is quiet. It is so quiet that I have to check the lights to make sure that it is running. I am glad I stepped up and bought the Miele... even if it is the bottom of their product line.

This is the softener our plumber put in. I don't know anything about these so I only can say this has been trouble free. Also, I am able to adjust the desired water hardness which would be important for the dishwasher.

It takes 50 pounds of salt every other month or so -- Agway or HD has that.

Once the water is softer, take care on the amount detergent used since too much detergent plus hot water cause glassware etching.

Being able to adjust the softener, plus going to the Miele tabs solved the problem for me. The dw works perfectly.

Here is a link that might be useful: North Star

we had similar problems on a previous (non miele) dishwasher. switched to electrasol. no more problems.

We have "chunk style water", where we live, it totalled our old KA, looked like snow inside. We went with Payne softwater (a competitor to Culligan). They put a tank in the garage and hooked it up to hot water side only(was about $35). They change the tank once/month--cost about $24/month.
Everything that uses hot water staying nice and clean, even 35 year old bath tub is now free of lime deposits.
Now if I can get wife to just use the hotwater side everything, sinks etc would stay clean. I will probably add the soft water to the cold side too (easier than retraining wife and will keep toilets from getting lime stains too.
We didnt wanna be messing around with changing salt, etc so we really like the soft water service.
Gary

I've been using Electrasol w/my Bosch dishwashers since Day 1 with very hard water. No issues thus far. The water here's 2.5x harder than the definition of hard water.

You mention that you use the rinse-hold option. Make sure you don't use any detergent with this cycle. It's just there to knock the loose bits off and hopefully keep the dishes from smelling until you finally get around to running a full cycle.

I had to buy an water softener for my home since all my plumbing was getting roomed and white calcium was on everything. I live in a town with one of the hardest water.

dodge1959, Why did you get the softner just installed on the Hot water line? If they installed it on the cold water line, this would have fed both your hot & cold water.

I put it just on the cold side, as I would have had to come up with some kind of bypass for the water to the yards. Front might be fairly easy to bypass, but the back could be a problem as the water pipes run through the house to get to the back yard. Last time guy was here to change the tank, I asked him about it and He thought it was "Doable" for probably not to great an expense.
He recommened going to a larger tank bout $35/month.
Once I finish a couple other projects in house (New Hunter Douglas Blinds for Master bedroom)for one, I will get an estimate.
Gary

Didn't think about the outside faucets. Mine was originaly connected to the water softenr and then I had moved them onto the water line connected to my lawn sprinkler, which is on a different meter.

Instead of buying a house water softener you could consider stocking up on Glass Magic.

If you do get a softener, take care not to end up with etched glasses due to too much hot water, too much detergent and long cycles...if you are going the softener route, do a search for more threads on GW on this issue.

Good luck!

Here is a link that might be useful: link to Glass Magic on amazon

A whole house softener may bring a whole slew of other problems. Some with whole house softeners end up with major etched glass problems due to use of phosphated detergents. You may need to switch to a non-phosphate detergent if you will be feeding softened water to your dishwasher.

The ideal solution would have been to get a Miele DW w/ built-in water softener. That way the computer in the DW will soften the water to the ideal level for cleaning dishes without etching your glassware. Is there any chance of exchanging your DW for one with a softener? It will be much cheaper to pay for a higher end Miele DW than buying a whole house water softener.

Boy am I sympathetic to andybp. The comments of contributors to this site have been invaluable as we remodeled our kitchen. We have since moved. In our remodeled kitchen, we put in the top Miele dishwasher available. We now live in a place that has another Miele dishwasher. We have tried different detergents, different softeners, different cycles:: the dishes do not clean and the glasses become cloudy.

When this unit breaks down, and it is showing signs (a high pitched noise during one of its late cycles), we will not be looking to replace it with a new Miele.

dean - did you ever consider that the less than clean dishes and etched glasses might be a symptom of your water at the new house and not the DW itself?

In almost all cases the cloudy glasses in a Miele are due to poor water conditions, too much soap and or operator error.

I didn't read through all the above comments.....
I have a Miele dw which I have had 4 years. The dishes come out sparkling every time. Installer said 1 T. dishwashing powder,...NEVER liquid. Keep the jet dry full. Make sure you turn your hot water on and let it get hot before starting machine. Clean by placing 1/2 cup TANG IN THE TOP AND 1/2 CUP IN BOTTOM and run empty.

I'm sure the Miele cleans well under optimal water conditions. But the dishwasher we replaced cleaned perfectly well. The Miele, in the exact same situation, did not. Furthermore, we have had two different Miele's in two different houses with two different water systems.

It is clear from reading this site and others that Miele users have created a whole range of solutions and explanations that sometimes do, sometimes do not, address the problems with the machine. I can't think of an appliance that has generated as many "remedies."

I would just caution people considering a Miele: it may not be the machine for all circumstances.

deanh brings up a good point.

what people need to realize about these though is that they are "high performance" machines and they have some niggles to follow in order to run correctly. This may not be in everyone's lifestyle to put up with these things but it shouldn't be a knock on the quality or performance of the machine because one chooses to use it in a manner that is not consistent with the manuf. specs.

It's kinda like buying an expensive sports car or truck and using low grade gas and poor quality tires then complaining that you 100k zipster sputters , has poor acceleration, doesn't hold 4 people, and has a much worse ride on the dirt roads then did your 84 Coupe de Ville.

The two are not mutually interchangeable even though they are both automobiles.

Okay, we have a softener on our hot water line only (same problem with not wanting salt in the garden). We have a Fisher Paykel dishdrawer (it's a double unit but only one works) that in general gets the glasses clean. It's also really noisy and the cycle is about 50 minutes long.

Should I be worried about etching our glasses? I didn't realize that it's phosphates plus softened water that creates the etching. Does jet dry help with preventing this?

I'm so confused - any chemists out there? We're about to buy either a Whirlpool or a Bosch, but of course, we're not planning to get rid of the water softener!

I would also love some advice. We purchased a Miele a year ago (Model G2000Vi -G2470SCSF for $1,699.00) and I just assume that it wasn't a very good dishwasher. But it seems to be getting worse and now I'm wondering if something is blocked or not working.

We don't have cloudy water, but it does not do a good job of getting food off. Any food gets enameled onto the dishes, and worst of all, any glasses put in the upper rack get bits of dried food baked onto them. It's as though all of the food particles in the dishwasher just wind up drying hard onto the glasses in particular, and it is harder to wash them when they come out (and they look disgusting) than if I just washed them by hand.

I'm pretty sure it's not our water, because when we moved in, we used a 30 year old dishwasher that was already there for two years and our glasses came out great. Is there something blocking the spray somehow do you think?

I have a La Perla which was installed in 2006 and have no trouble at all. I have extremely hard water and a whole house water softener. My builder ran an unsoftened water line to my kitchen which has proven invaluable with the MIele. I feed super hard water to the La Perla, which then softens the water to the perfect level determined by Miele using the built-in softener in the dishwasher. Dishes are perfect every time.

This is the setup I would recommend for anyone contemplating a Miele dishwasher in a hard water area. I would not feed softened water to the dishwasher because you will have problems with etching.

sshrivastava, I assume this is a cold water line running to the La Perla?

The ultimate culprit in the etching is the trisodium phosphate contained in the detergent. According to the Water Quality Association website I just looked at, you can have etching problems with phosphate detergents whenever you use too much. The problem is exacerbated by temps over 140 degrees (which apparently convert the phosphate to a more reactive form) and by the use of soft water. If the water is soft (naturally or through an added softener) you will need MUCH less detergent. Thus what was a reasonable amount with no softener becomes a detergent overdose with softener.

As for the particles deposited back on dishes, I once had a similar problem occur w/my Miele out of the blue. The instruction manual said to check the basket/screen thingy in the bottom to see if it was in place--it wasn't! Somehow it had gotten loose, so after I fixed that by a turn of the handle, things were fine.

Just a thought on a whole home water softener and use of detergent.

Soap will also interact with "hard water" so while many manufactures are saying to use less soap, if you have really hard water, increasing the soap usage and turning up the rinse aid dispenser can help. Now I am not saying to fill the soap dispenser and add another 1/2 cup of soap for good measure hahaha... but if you add an extra teaspoon or 2 of soap and turn up the rinse aid dispenser, you may improve your results a great deal. This worked in my home.