If you buy a used industrial dishwasher, learn some of the seven mistakes to avoid.
I was impressed by the quality of the dishwasher, but I was surprised by its size. It could have been much smaller.
It would have been less expensive if it had not been so big.
The manufacturer’s warranty is not valid if it has expired or has been extended after the time of sale. I had thought that with a three-year warranty, any problem would be covered.
I was puzzled about how to measure the temperature and make sure that it did not exceed its user-adjustable maximum value. I followed the manufacturer’s recommendation about using a thermometer calibrated in degrees Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. When I did this, I found that my dishwasher could not drain properly and it leaked because it had a cracked pump.
The two sensors that were supposed to detect a full or a low level were located on the wrong sides of the dishwasher, so they were not reliable indicators at all. They could only measure if there was enough water for cleaning or if there was too much water for cleaning which ignored what mattered: whether there was enough water to wash dishes without overflowing into the sink and making everything dirty again.
I used to think of dishwashers as “industrial” appliances, as in something that was built for industry. But I now realize that many of the dishwashers I see in people’s homes are industrial units. In fact, most dishwashers are industrial units: they were built to wash dishes, not to heat and air condition a house or clean clothes.
When you buy an industrial dishwasher, you’re committing to its lifetime cost — which is why you should try to find a used one. And if it’s been awhile since your last unit’s life cycle ended, you might be surprised at how little difference there is between new and used industrial dishwashers.
There are seven mistakes you want to avoid when buying a used industrial dishwasher:
1) You won’t know how long your old unit has been in service or what it has done for its previous owners. The best way to find out is by talking with the previous owner(s).
2) It will be hard to find out if it’s been repaired recently, because there are no service records for “industrial” units (the only records you’ll have will be repair invoices and warranty cards).
3) You’ll have little control over what the previous owner did with
The main problem with industrial dishwashers is that, if you buy one second hand, you don’t know what condition the machine is in. So here are seven mistakes to avoid.
1. The dishwasher isn’t empty: Take a good look at the door- it should be open when you start the machine. If it’s not, the power has been cut off to run the machine- and that’s a very bad sign.
2. The water pipe has been disconnected: You will also find that some of these machines have had their water pipes disconnected, so that when you turn on the machine, there’s no hot water at all but cold instead. This can only mean that someone has tampered with your appliance, which is extremely unhygienic.
3. There are missing parts: In some cases there are missing parts: a lid lock assembly for example or a defrost door on the bottom front of the machine… without these components, your dishwasher might not work properly or at all- and this is just as bad as having no hot water at all!
4. The door is warped: Dishwashers are heavy appliances, so they tend to be designed to protect against warping by having lids with rubber inserts inside them
When you buy a used dishwasher, you want it to work well and look nice, but there are some pitfalls. Here are seven mistakes that people often make when they buy a used dishwasher, and how to avoid them.
1) Do not buy a dishwasher with an open drain hose. The open drain hose is the means by which the water is drained from the dishwasher. A common problem in a used dishwasher is that the drain hose has slowly and quietly developed leaks over time. If you have the luxury of buying a new machine, it’s cheaper and more convenient to have your drain hose installed at the factory than doing it yourself.
2) Do not buy a dishwasher on eBay or from an Internet auction site because you might not get what you think you are getting. Ask for pictures of all appliances before bidding on them. If a seller is unwilling to provide pictures of their dishwasher, it could mean that they’re trying to hide something.
3) Do not buy a used dishwasher from someone who says, “I just got this one.” They may be lying or not know what they have. Is it too good to be true?
The industrial dishwasher is useful for a surprising variety of tasks. It does not clean pots and pans. How do you know if a washing machine will be any good until you’ve bought one?
The industrial dishwasher has a few simple design principles that are easy to understand. If your new dishwasher has:
At least four wheels, it can go anywhere you want to take it. You can pull it through the mud, up stairs, and over rough ground.
Its doors open easily, and close easily and securely. You don’t want your dishwasher to try to attack you with a pitcher of water or a pot of rice.
The controls are labeled, so it’s easy to find what you need without looking at the manual. If you don’t know how to use your dishwasher, why did you buy one?
The primary purpose of a dishwasher is to clean dishes. When I was working in the kitchen at my family’s restaurant, I would sometimes have to throw away a day’s worth of dishes that were still clean. The answer was to buy a dishwasher: those things are amazing. They can take a huge amount of pounding and cleaning and water and heat and detergent out of washing dishes.
I had an industrial dishwasher for a while, but it could not be repaired. It had to go to the dump. The countertops in my house were made of cement and did not break under the weight of dishes; my brother was forever throwing away dirty dishes because he could not get them back into the dishwasher.
So I bought a used industrial dishwasher from Craigslist, but it didn’t work. So I bought another used industrial dishwasher from Craigslist, and it worked fine for 10 minutes after which it stopped working again, so I threw it away again. And then I bought another one from Craigslist, but it didn’t work either.
In the end, I threw away three industrial dishwashers before getting one that worked without any problem whatsoever. The moral is: when you’re buying something used, make sure you know what you’re getting before you buy
People who have been in the business for a while tend to have their own ideas about what makes a good dishwasher. They know about features you might not think are important, and they know which brands have become unreliable over time. And that’s where I came in: I had just spent several years working as a technician for a major appliance manufacturer, and I had a lot of good ideas about how to design dishwashers.
The first thing I did was to go on the Internet and look up used dishwashers. To my surprise, there were a surprising number of them listed by the same company with the same stock photo, and most of these were still in operation. Some of them even looked like they hadn’t been used in years, but they were still working.
And many of these dishwashers were being sold by the same company that had made them.