Today, I washed my hands at the kitchen sink while making lunch, and was unexpectedly chastised by my partner because she had just started the dishwasher. Apparently, she has recently come across something that has convinced her that running the hot water in your sink means the water that enters your dishwasher will be hotter (checks out), and thus the dishes will be cleaner. I tried searching startpage to see if this is real, but I couldn’t make it through even one llm-slop-ticle about it before my eyes rolled back into my head, so here I am asking y’all: chat, is this real? Doesn’t my dishwasher have a heating element? Is there any meaningful difference between heating the water with a hot water heater vs a dishwasher, other than I can’t use my sink while the dishwasher is filling and I have to pour a bunch of cool water down the drain?
For my specific setup, the hot water from the sink is hot immediately if I’ve already been running the dishwasher. So, just by that, I’d assume that clearing out all of the cooler temperature water by pre-running the sink could provide some benefit. As to whether it makes a substantial difference or not, I don’t know. I’d say it’s certainly possible though.
This is the correct answer. Turning on the hot water before the dish washer starts clears out the not-too-hot water that was in the line. They don’t use that much water so it apparently makes a difference.
ETA: but washing your hands (with hot water I presume?) won’t impact the machine.