Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: CH kitchen, esp dishwashing set up

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

Our experience at RoseWind (Port Townsend WA) has been different from 
that of a recent poster, who recommended a commercial fridge and 
residential dishwashers. 

We heard how loud many commericial fridges were (and heard of communities 
where they had to turn it off during meetings) and chose an in-between 
model. It's like a large residential fridge (confusingly, the brand name 
seems to be "Commercial"?), no freezer. About the size of a larger home 
fridge, but with only basic shelves. It gets used on meal preparation 
days, but in between has mainly condiments and oils in it. We make all 
the leftovers go away at the end of each meal (mostly take-home in yogurt 
tubs we stash in a dining room drawer for the purpose). Our separate 
freezer in the pantry is used for bulk-purchased organic frozen corn, 
butter, cornmeal, ice cream, garden rhubarb, coffee.   

Our stove is a Dacor, with 6 burners - all flat so very large pans work. 
Has griddle add-on. Non commercial, but not regular residential either.
Our convection oven is separate and used regularly. There is room for 3-4 
racks in it, so it has been adequate. 

We are very happy with our counter-top commercial dishwasher. The layout 
is such that the dishwasher itself is in a corner, with tray sliding in 
one side and out the other, at a right angle. A stainless steel spray 
sink precedes the DW, but we've found the pre-rinsing can use very little 
water. First people use a good silicone spatula to scrape their plate 
into the compost bin, then they drop their silverware into one small 
dishpan of soapy water, and set the scraped dishes on the counter by the 
spray sink. (The empty plastic trays stack in an open storage space right 
below that counter. Empty, they are light.) A second dishpan of soapy 
water, and a dish brush, are plenty to "rinse" each dish as it's loaded 
into the tray that is sitting over the spray sink. Usually for a big 
meal, the rinse water is only changed once or twice. Using the dish brush 
instead of the spray also keeps the dishwashing people MUCH dryer! Ditto 
for the floor. Tray is loaded, slides in, gets blasted with the 
soapy/then rinse water, tray slides out onto steel counter (which has 
room for two trays to be air drying). Our dishes are Corelle, which is 
lightweight, durable, and dries very fast. They are kept on a rolling 
Rubbermaid cart which is at the beginning of the serving line at meal 
time, then is rolled into the washed-dish area at clean  up. A quick 
whisk with a clean dish towel (a set of white ones reserved for dishes 
only) and the hot clean dishes are unloaded onto the serving cart. Zero 
carrying of trays of dishes. Glasses and cups are done last, and left to 
air dry. Silver can be done in a big flat tray, but some of us prefer to 
do it in little stand up baskets (from household drainers) which can be 
crammed into the plate-rack trays, so no water pools in the spoons. 

Just beyond the area where the clean dishes exit, we have more stainless 
restaurant gear: a counter and 3-part pot sink, where pots etc are washed 
and left to drain. 

On the other side of the kitchen we have a regular residential type 
double sink. Used in prep, and during clean up for fragile wine glasses 
and miscellaneous items such as food processor parts, measuring spoons, 
blender parts, last dishes that missed the last DW load. These go into a 
normal drainer rack. 

A lot depends on the layout of your work areas. We had excellent advice 
from architect Mary Kraus, and the traffic flow works really well. I 
think there are some shots of our kitchen on the website 
(www.rosewind.org). 

Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend Washington (Victorian seaport, music, art, nature)
http://www.rosewind.org
http://www.ptguide.com
http://www.ptforpeace.info (very active peace movement here- see our 
photo)