I think I have hard water...

I guess I have two questions: what is my problem? and how do I fix it?

All of the dishes in my new house (its an old house, I'm renting...) come out of the dishwasher with a white chalky substance all over it. It rinses right off but then as it dries you can see the white (calcium?) substance reappear. Just today I tried hand washing all the dishes to see if the problem was with the dishwasher and the white stuff is still there. So it seems like the obvious answer is that I have hard water and need to get the landlords to get a water softener (that should be fun). Here is where it gets tricky though. The guys who live in the apartment downstairs do not have hard water. Is it possible that we live in the same three floor house and only one of thee floors has hard water? How should I fix this?

Thanks for anything you guys can do.

Probably hard water but a lot of places will test this for free for you. It is unlikely that some apts have hard water and some do not because it comes with the water not with the pipes. It may just be a tolerance thing-- what you don't like, they can put up with.

You may want to try some Jet-dry in you dishwasher too.

I hate to say it, but I agree w/ CraigFL. The Jet-Dri does make a difference. We've been running ours without for a couple weeks (just kept forgetting to get it at the store) and everything ends up staying drippy wet. Our washer dry cycle is low energy, meaning it doesn't get as hot for as long to really dry things out. It depends on the rinse aid to get the water to drip off.

If yours is an older washer that does high heat for longer time, then those drips of water are going to get evaporated away and leave any minerals left in the water.

Does your showerhead have lots of buildup on it? Thats a good sign of hard water.

As for water softener and landlord. Perhaps you do have a softener for your appartment, however since you do not know about it, you have never kept it running. Ask your landlord if there is one. It is likely to be someplace really inconveninent like a crawl space, or in the basement behind the furnace.

You could put a cartridge filter unit under the sink to filter just the water to the dishwasher. Then you could take that with you whenever you move.

You could get all new kitchenware that is a milky white color. That way the hard water deposits don't show up.