Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: Dishwashers

[Joani Blank (joani]

At 08:41 AM 3/4/2003, you wrote:

> We have 40 households and a commercial dishwasher.  If we had two slower
> home-type dishwashers, the dishes would take a very long time to finish.

Actually it would take a lot LESS time Instead of one or two people hauling 
the single racks in and out of the commercial dishwasher for 20 to 30 
minutes after every meal and putting the dishes away on shelves, with two 
residential dishwashers, you just load the dishes in as people leave the 
dining room (in our community, people usually lightly scrape their own 
dishes and put them in the dishwasher, and the cooks/cleaners put in the 
straggling dishes that remain), turn on the dishwashers and leave the 
kitchen. The clean dishes stay in the dishwasher until the next common 
dinner when the tables are set right from the dishwasher. So the time it 
takes to "do the dishes" is as long as it takes to put detergent in the 
dishwasher and push the "on" button, and that ain't a long time!

Now if you typically have a really big crowd for dinner, like 75 people, 
you may well have to stack the dishes for a second batch, in at least one 
dishwasher. But emptying the dishwasher and loading it up a second time 
couldn't take more than 5 minutes, and if one load can be started early 
which it can be because high end residential dishwashers are not noisy, the 
cleanup person is usually still around after the first batch has been run.


Of course, no matter what kind of dishwasher (s) you have, there are pots 
and pans and other cleanup to do after a meal.  On the issue of 
sterilization, all modern dishwashers have heat boosters and the water is 
hot enough to kill anything. Also, virtually all bad bugs need moisture to 
survive, and having been washed in very hot water, the dishes get bone dry 
very fast and stay that way for at least 24 hours in the close to sterile 
inside of the dishwasher.

Joani



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