Ecolab Solid Power XL

[mich]

This stuff is super awesome. I mean, it's Phosphate Free, and it actually works, on super short cycles. 

 

I spent the whole night loading a commercial machine, only scraping food off plates, and everything came out looking wonderful. I even did 12+ loads of baked on, burnt on cheese sauce pans without rinsing it out completely (it wouldn't come off) and they all came out CLEAN. 

 

Even the glasses & silverware (I did pre-soak), came out clean. And the water being used, wasn't softened at all. 

 

I was a bit surprised that the whole solid power, Jet Dry didn't do crap for drying. Everything was soaking wet. But, I got so many loads of dishes done is so little time, I was amazed. 

 

Maybe.. I was wrong. There does seem to be GOOD formulas for commercial use, there just not in home use products. 

 

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Also - Question. Why do I have to manually drain the rinse water? The machine didn't drain it before restarting cycles, so I ended up having to do it manually. Was I supposed to do that? 

 

 

 

 

[frigilux]

Don't some commercial machines use the clean rinse water to wash the next load?[this post was last edited: 7/5/2014-22:23]

 

[stevet]

Make and Model??

Most commercial machines use the rinse water for the following reasons:

Rinse the soap off of the dishware and to sanitize them if it is a hi temp machine

The added rinse water skims the floating grease and crud off of the top of the water and sends it down the drain.

Maintain the wash tank temperature by adding higher temp rinse water to the wash
water

Aid in flash drying the dishes in a hi temp machine.

Normally, you would not drain the water after each rack, but rather anywhere after one to two hours of continuous washing. This gives you a new charge of fresh, clean water and will save soap because the soap eats up the starches and greases in the water and the dirtier the water, the more soap it will add to maintain a given level of soap.

There are low temp machines that sanitize at 120 degrees but need to add a sanitizing agent which is usually Chlorine bleach.

If your wash and rinse temps are low, no amount of jet dry will really make all the water disappear. Those hot rinses and rinse agent together will cause the dishware to flash dry.

What kind of machine were you actually using and did you happen to notice the wash tank temperature as well as what the final rinse was running at?

 

[tomturbomatic]

Is this a single tank machine in which racks do not move or a multi-tank machine which moves racks through the different tanks? If it's a single tank machine, some do hold the hot rinse water for the next wash. I would get instructions from someone.

 

[mich]

I...

Admittingly, I have no idea what the model was. I *do* know the water temperature was in the 148* Range, when I started, and I think the water heater was set to 160. There was a *low temp* sanitizer, bucket under the counter, so, I guess the final rinse temp wasn't too important, as long as it was Hot. 

 

I do know, there is a manual prime switch, for detergent... and I held it down for extra detergent, while I was running the machine. This was probably wasteful, but, I felt like it made it work better. 

 

I was however, quite surprised that there wasn't any *strong* chlorine scent while the machine was running. It wasn't until the rinse cycle, could I smell any bleach or chlorine. I really thought all commercial detergents were laden with Bleach. 

 

 

 

 

 

[mich]

Keep in mind..

I was given no instruction or help in using this thing, so, I pretty much, went along with what I've read about the operation from online manuals.

 

I pre-soaked all the silverware, and ran them thru twice. Soaked off all the nasty sugary gunk off the glasses & presoaked the wine glasses in the sink for 30mins, before loading them through. 

 

Now that I think about it... reusing the water makes a lot of since. Although, wouldn't the rinse aid, interfere with the detergent itself?