baking soda-dishwasher-disaster-help!

[gen25gen]

I ran out of dishwasher detergent a couple of weeks ago and in a pinch (baby napping, not able to run out) I remembered some people recommended baking soda online. Soooo I used baking soda in place of detergent and I had jet dry already in my rinse cycle. Well my dishes came out with this chalky awful thick residue on them. I went out and bought some Cascade--the heavy duty kind that you supposidly don't even need to rinse dishes with and reran them w/ that. It still didn't work. So I hand washed everything. Now, 10 loads later I still get quite a bit of the white chalky residue junk everytime I use the dishwasher. Not as bad as the first time, but sometimes worse than others. All my glasses are coated with it--powder white chalk, sometimes my dishes, etc. Pretty much everything.

Anyone have this problem? Any suggestions? Uggghh..I don't have time to handwash everything and when i have company it is so embarrassing. We do have hard water so a little residue has always been an issue, but this is totally over the top since I used the baking soda.

[SugarAndSun]

Wow, that stinks. Could you do a wash or two or three with vinegar? Just a suggestion.

[FillingMyQuiver]

I also suggest vinegar. Put it in the rinse cycle and it should help. I also suggest running your dishwasher through a full cycle w/ no dishes and putting vinegar in at the beginning. That should help take care of some of the residue.

FWIW, we have REALLY hard water and I find I have to add about 1/2c vinegar to the wash ever y toher or every 3rd time I run the dishwasher. It's a PIT*

[moms3kids]

i had the same issue with BS in my dishwasher w/ hard water, it actully clogged my washed and dh had to work on it... awful... NO BS when you have hard hard water i'v found out! it's not good at all. i use just about 1/4 the recomended dish soap now, i also have soft water but i still refuse to put backing soda in my dishwasher at all b/c of it.

[Jennisee]

I had the same problem when we tried baking soda and borax in the dishwasher, AND we used vinegar in the rinse. Our water is just too hard. I went back to just using a small amount of regular detergent--filling each compartment aboit 1/4 full.