this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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[–] DaGeek247@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Liquid dish soap kills dishwashers. The bubbles mean the motor and/or pump fills with bubbles instead of water and often causes them to burn out.

[–] limelight79@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

There is liquid dishwasher detergent, too.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That makes sense, you do not want bubbles and it surely will overflow. But why should they burn out because of that? There is lower resistance etc. and cooling is still mostly working. I really see no way how it damages the machine. I repaired a bunch before, so this is not coming from nowhere. So I googled and found this: https://robertbair.com/blog/i-accidentally-put-dish-soap-dishwasher-now-what And that makes total sense. It only damages if the soap "crust" builds up too much. That is not a quick thing to happen. Otherwise it is all about the mess or makes.

[–] Ibuthyr@lemmy.wtf 3 points 20 hours ago

Pumps really don't like running dry. But this doesn't happen with dishwasher soap, as it doesn't foam.

[–] DaGeek247@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

Most dishwasher pumps rely on the water flow generated while running to remain cool under normal use. When I say that they burn out, I mean that the motor literally burns its wires bad enough that the electric signal no longer carries properly.

All it takes for this to happen is for the motor to run for a length of time without anything going through it, which bubbles can and do prevent happening. You will find this in nearly every single pump that pushes water: the design requires water running through it in order to maintain proper temperatures.

Dishwashers often have a single pump for water flow, so if the washer fills with bubbles and the water gets low enough, the one thing that cools the dishwasher motor can easily stop running for a couple hours, despite technically being surrounded by water.