How long before Sam is big enough to reach the kitchen sink?

My dishwasher has been acting up lately. Spots, streaks, tarnished silverware, cloudy cups. It was gross. I tried using more detergent, less detergent, different detergent, dishwasher cleaner, hot cycles, heated dry, no heated dry, EVERYTHING. I was at my wit's end with this dishwasher. So I called maintenance.

They sent out a nice man to fix it. Except the moment he came in, he said, "Is there a film or cloudy appearance to your dishes?" And when I answered "yes," he just looked at me like he already knew (and of course he did) and explained to me why this was happening. He checked my dishwasher too to be sure the element wasn't covered in something, but he concluded that my dishwasher was new and there was nothing wrong with it. The problem lies with the water pulsing THROUGH the dishwasher.

Apparently Ft Campbell cleans the water just enough so that is is passable for drinking water. So that cloudy appearance isn't from my detergent. It's dried calcium. That weird crap that floats in the bottom of my cup after my ice cubes melt? That's calcium too.

The maintenance man said that his sister used to live on post and quit using her dishwasher altogether. It was more trouble than it was worth. And it's true. I tried a white vinegar solution on it yesterday that he heard was rumored to clean it up for a bit. But after I ran yesterday's dishes last night? They were dirtier than ever. I had to wash them all by hand this morning. There was even food stuck on some of the dishes (which I've never seen before). It's like the dishwasher KNEW it had been ratted out so it was going to completely stop performing. Ugh.

So I'm going old school and washing everything by hand with filtered water. I'm sure I'll be changing the filter twice as often now that I'll be using it more than usual. I also have to bust out my resusable ice cubes so we don't accidentally ingest the nasty water while we're drinking. This really stinks. I can't say that I would expect the government to spend the extra money to install equipment capable of eradicating this problem (maintenance man explained it would cost about $4,000 per house), but to not even mention this disgusting issue upon move-in? It makes me wonder what else is going on here that I'm just not aware of yet.