OT: Hard water problem

[MarisaSF]

Any tips? We have a veritable coral reef in our dishwasher. Calcium build-up all over. The plumber told us to run it with white vinegar. I've been soaking and rinsing for a week with hardly any change. The same plumber said we can't use a different chemical (name?) because the inside of the dishwasher is stainless.

Anybody else have this problem? Advice? Will the vinegar eventually work? Maybe I need a stronger vinegar (mine is 5% acidity)?

[Zansu]

Is the chemical you're not supposed to use called CLR? It's a cleaning product made to remove Calcium, Lime and Rust (hence the name).

We use it in our bathrooms all the time, and I know I've used it on chrome, so I would think you could use it on stainless.

I usually buy it at Ace or Home Depot, b/c I buy it by the gallon, but I've seen smaller bottles at Target, near the drain cleaners.

HTH!

[searchdog]

We run vinegar in ours and it helped a ton. I don't think we had quite the buildup you have. Our glasses all start to look white because of all the minerals in our water, so we fill the diswasher with anything with buildup on it and run it 2-3 times with vinegar and they came out clear again and the buildup was gone in the dishwasher. Sorry I don't have any great suggestions for you. I know that one product our repair man recommended was called Glisten, but we don't have a stainless interior, so you may not be able to use that.