Overcome the Top Four Warewash Challenges, Part 2 of 2

As a continuation from the blog from last week, the Nichols team wants to help you conquer your warewash challenges, starting with the four most prevalent.

Dishes not coming clean
Spotting on silverware
Lime scale build-up
Increasing chemical costs

Lime scale build-up inside dish machine:

Work with your chemical service provider to check and see what your water hardness is (your local water softener company may also be able to assist with this). In some cases a point-of-use water softener will be needed to completely solve the problem.
Properly descaling your dish machine on a routine basis will help eliminate lime scale build-up and keep it from reforming.
Using an acid based de-scaler is imperative in removing lime scale build-up from the inside of your machine. The acid attacks the hard water deposits, loosening them up and allowing the water pressure of your machine to remove them from the surfaces.
Watch this short tutorial video on how to properly descale a commercial dish machine.

Increasing cost of warewash chemicals:

More chemical is not always the answer to getting clean dish ware. If you are only increasing your chemical input, you are flushing money down the drain. There are several reasons for increasing chemical costs:

A malfunction of your dispensing equipment. This may mean you need something simple like a calibration of your equipment, or something as drastic as completely replacing your dispensing equipment.
Detergent probes in your dish tank used to monitor the amount of dish machine detergent can fall victim to lime scale build up giving off false readings causing your pump to dispense too much detergent. If your water solenoid valve is not working properly and allowing fresh water to pass by, this will also cause your detergent probe to read lower levels of detergent in the water due to the fresh water diluting the detergent and in turn will cause your detergent pump to run longer.
Extremely hard water will negate any positive impacts of dish machine detergent, sanitizer and rinse additive. In order to counter this, some companies will steadily increase the amounts of these three chemicals being dispensed in order to get desired results (flushing money down the drain). Something as simple as purchasing or leasing a point-of-use water softener can assist in removing water hardness and allow you to operate with your dish machine chemicals at industry standard levels. It is significantly cheaper to purchase or lease a point-of-use water softener for your dish machine rather than purchasing and using excessive amounts of dish machine chemicals every week/month/year.
If you are not properly pre-scrapping your dish ware before washing, this can lead to having to rewash certain items a second time. This not only increases the amount of dish machine chemicals that you are using, but it will also increase your properties utility costs due to the extra water and energy usage. Improper wash times, water temperature/pressure and the use of chemicals not designed for commercial use will all lead to an increase in chemical/utility costs for your property.

These are just a few factors that lead to increased costs. In order to properly diagnose and solve any issues that you may be having your first step should be to partner with an experienced warewash professional and lean on their experience to properly balance your warewash operation. Here at Nichols, we have several warewash experts who help our warewash customers work through issues. It’s just one more way we deliver on the Promise of I.K.E., Innovation, Knowledge and Excellence. If you’d like to learn more about the new Nichols Brand line of warewash products, check out our new Warewash Line Card or our full Nichols Brand Catalog.

About the Author: Patrick Dermyer is HACCP and ServSAFE certified. He spearheads our Laundry, Warewash, and Food Processing solutions, covering Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. If you are having an issue, chances are Nichols has a solution to assist. We invite you to connect with Patrick on LinkedIN.