I use Cascade or Finish gel paks and also Jet Dry or Cascade rinse agent.

My dishwasher is very bossy. The display tells me when I'm low on rinse agent and when it's empty it automatically adds 20 minutes to the wash cycle. It's a Bosch and the owner's manual states that the rinse agent makes a difference in cleaning. I usually set it to the short cycle which is only 60 minutes. I've never run out of rinse additive so I have no idea if it makes a difference or not.

We use Cascade platinum in our GE Monogram and they work well. I think they include a rinse agent as I don’t always check it.

I never use a rinse agent in my 23 year old Bosch. I use Casacade Platinum or Finish. I always thought the gel pacs included a rince agent. My dw had two filters. One is a little basket that catches stuff like errant twist ties and the other is large and lifts off the bottom of the dw. Maybe check if you have two filters? Three years old , it should still be doing well, Id think.

At our office, they turned the setting on the hot water heater down to save energy. And then the water was not hard enough to get grease off of the dishes in the kitchen dishwasher. So that might be a factor. Another factor might be how hard your water is, in terms of calcium deposits, in the lines.

HOT, not hard.

I have a 12 year old Thermador (made by Bosch, I believe). It has 3 filters in the bottom of the tub, which I regularly rinse out. I use the cheap Aldi pacs, plus Finish Rinse Aid. It has always done a great job on the "normal" stting, which is half as long as the default setting.

I run a dishwasher cleaner cycle once a month or thereabouts. It gets rid of the dishwasher detergent scum.

I use the pods in mine, both the 20 yr old Kitchen Aid previous to this one and the Kitchen Aid I bought less than a year ago (because I'd waited a year and a half for someone to have the Bosch I wanted available and got over it).

I think sometimes its too much pre-measured soap for smaller loads (have a top two racks only cycle on this one). I run an Affresh tab for dishwashers through mine every several weeks although not on a particular schedule. Easy, unlike the one for clothes washers, it can go in with a normal load of your dishes and whatever you use to clean them. Just toss it into the bottom as you are ready to turn it on.

This is the first time I've had a dishwasher with a filter and I seem to check it about every other month. I really haven't found anything in it. Twice a little bit of something that almost looked like one partial piece of cooked macaroni - whatever that was 😁

I do use a rinse agent even if the brand pod I have that month indicates its included. We don't have hard water, but some of my every day glasses are becoming vintage and they don't look as bright if I let it run clear out. I'll notice an issue with plastic not drying as well without a rinse agent too, this dishwasher has a fan system and not the 'crystal dry' feature that I'd wanted.

Have you ever opened yours during the rinsing cycle and taken a look at how clear the water, is it soapy, does it look clean.....

J Mig, most (maybe all) dishwashers have internal heaters that automatically raise the water's temp if it enters not hot enough. So long as the regular and not a quick or economy cycle is used, the water will be hot enough.

Some models, or cycles, run the heater to maintain the hot supply temperature but they don't extend the cycle to insure a target temperature is reached ... unless a high-temp or sanitize option is selected.

Rinse Aid absolutely makes a difference. Also, just wipe chunks of food off, don’t rinse. Keep filter clean. Newer machines have a lot of energy efficiency built in, but recommended products and loading are essential so old habits need to change. I can’t stress enough that manuals need to be read.

Did you check the spay arms? The little holes can get plugged with food particles. The arms should be easy to unscrew or just pop off.

Thanks for all the comments. I do put the pod into the dispenser. I really don't see anything else that seems amiss. When I have rinsed out the filter thingy, there really wasn't much there anyway. . As for which cycle, I've started using the longest cycle since I was not happy with how it was cleaning, I figured the longest should work better.

The spray arms are not blocked, and nothing seems to have changed except it's not happy.

It had been all fine and good but it's just not doing it lately and I can't figure it out.

I'm going to try to add the rinse aid

" Some models, or cycles, run the heater to maintain the hot supply temperature but they don't extend the cycle "

But some do. Same approach is true for newer washing machines too.

There's very little water used in dishwashers these days. So even though the power is 110V and the heaters by consequence are puny, they seem to have enough umph to make a difference. We try to run the hot water before starting a cycle (long run from the water heater in our second home that has an el cheapo brand and model). When I've realized the other person in the house has started it without running the hot and I've opened the door mid-cycle to check, each time the chamber has been quite steamy, presumably from heated water. I wouldn't assume all machines are necessarily the same.

Salonva, is your fillter a mesh? Did you scrub it with dishsoap until there was nothing on it at all? I know my daughter in law didn't ever actually clean the mesh, just cleaned the larger grid plastic thing. It really affected how clean the dishes got. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61sED-ABR28

I use Cascade premium pods put in the dispenser. My Bosch always indicates when it needs the rinse agent and I use Finish.

Yes, I have cleaned those filters on the bottom per Oly's youtube she shared. I really do find youtube generally super helpful. I'm going to look a bit more and try to solve this. I have had great luck with youtube and been able to really fix appliances in the past but this one is so far stumping me. It worked better until a few months ago..... Going to go down the youtube rabbit hole as so far I haven't found anything that's made a difference.

The model number of your dishwasher hasn't been cited, regards to the capabilities, cycle and option choices, etc. There also hasn't been clarification on whether you're rinsing dishware before loading. Units with soil sensors will reduce the number of water changes, the wash time and relatedly the heating during the wash period (and possibly the final rinse) if the detected soil level is low. Most soil sensors nowadays are optical for reading the clarity of the water.

Dadoes, I've noticed the opposite. Both my two washing machines (same brand, different models) display minutes remaining. When water seems to need heating, I've noticed the time display freezes and remains unchanged for several minutes before continuing.

With one dishwasher, a Miele, the cycles seem to lengthen when there's more soil or if the water needs heating but the cycles never seem to be shorter.

Not 100% on topic but related to a couple comments posted here. I welcome corrections to any of the following, if warranted:

Re scraping/rinsing. There’s a common thought that the enzymes in detergents need food on the dishes to eat. Enzymes aren’t alive, they don’t eat, they are proteins that break down food if it’s there, and don’t if it’s not. If you have a load of pretty clean dishes from breakfast and lunch, do you feel the need to find something to dirty them up with prior to running your cycle? I believe that the recommendation to scrape rather than rinse has nothing to do with the enzymes working, just that the enzymes make it unnecessary and wasteful to rinse.

These enzymes are denatured (not killed) at temperatures in the low 100’s °F, lower than what’s likely coming from the tap. Fortunately there’s mass from the dishwasher walls and dishes themselves to absorb some of this heat from the water, giving the enzymes a relatively brief period of time to work earlier in the cycle. By running your faucet to purge cold water from the pipes, you’re shortening the window of opportunity for the enzymes to do their thing.

Again, please correct me where I’m wrong.

I recommend you remove the wash arms and check all the holes to make sure they aren't blocked. Run a dishwasher cleaner such as Afresh or Lemishine.

Have you checked the machine mid-cycle to see if the arms are spraying and the wash water is nice and hot?

Interesting, food. I didn't know that enzymes lose effectiveness in higher temperatures.

My water heater tank units are set to keep water in the range of 120-125. I know many use much higher settings, something I've especially noticed in other parts of the country, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because of heat loss when it's cold? It seems wasteful to me and so I use a lower setting.

Without giving the hot water a head start, it would come out stone cold. Even with the headstart, it's lukewarm by the middle of the cycle when several drain then fill events remain to happen. I trust the Miele would do whatever is necessary to have proper operating temps, because I know it can even be set up with a cold connection only. I wouldn't trust the GE to do the same.

(I'm judging water temperature for the machine fill at the sinks adjacent to the dishwashers)

The model is PDT715SYNFS.

I do tend to rinse, scrape before loading. I typically run it every other day as it's just DH and I here. The thing is it HAD been working fine, never noticed a problem but somehow something has changed.

I have cleaned the filters, and checked the spray arms- no blockage.

I never used the rinse aids, but will do that. I guess I never thought it was really needed but I have added it so the next wash I'll be curious to see. The dishes were getting clean but there would be residue on a few and it happened more than once or twice.

I'm going to study my manual again to see.

After reading this thread and watching the video, I cleaned the filter in my dishwasher for the first time ever! It was pretty gross. i hope you get your problem figured out