Refurbished Passthrough Dishwashers

When the wash-up is a station with a person on it rather than something squeezed between other jobs. The hood design means racks are pushed through at bench height without lifting, so one person can keep a steady rhythm through a service, which is what you cannot do with an undercounter machine.

The signs you have outgrown an undercounter machine are a pile that never clears, racks queueing at the end of service, and staff hand-washing because waiting is faster. If that is happening, a passthrough is the answer rather than a second small machine.

More than the machine. You need the machine itself plus bench either side, and the hood needs headroom to lift fully, which is the dimension most often missed under a low shelf or a bulkhead. The product page gives the machine dimensions including the hood raised.

Then allow room for the person to stand and turn with a rack. A passthrough squeezed into a corner where the operator cannot stand square to it will be slower than the undercounter machine it replaced. Measure the whole run before you commit to the machine.

The hood mechanism first — the counterbalance, the springs or the arms, and the seals around the hood where it meets the tank. A hood that will not stay up or does not seal down is the defining fault of this machine type and the first thing to test.

Then the tank and boiler for scale, the wash and rinse pumps, the wash arms and jets, and the dosing pumps for detergent and rinse aid. Ask us what was replaced during the refurbishment rather than what was tested.

Many passthrough machines do, and the requirement for each unit is on its product page. These machines heat a tank and a rinse boiler, so the electrical load is well beyond what a general-purpose outlet carries, and a licensed electrician is part of the install.

Check your switchboard has the capacity before you buy, not after the machine is on site. If three phase is not available, that constrains which machines are usable and is worth telling us up front so we only show you units that will actually run there.

Work through it in order: water treatment, then the rinse aid dose, then the rinse arms. Spotting and film are usually water hardness rather than a machine fault, and a machine that was fine in soft water will spot in hard water with no change to the machine.

Then check the rinse jets are clear and the racks are not overloaded, because anything shielded from the rinse will dry marked. Keep the dosing pumps adjusted and the chemicals the ones the machine was set up for rather than whatever is cheapest.

A passthrough releases a burst of steam every time the hood lifts, and a wash-up area without extraction gets humid, hot and unpleasant, with condensation on the ceiling. Many machines have condensing or heat-recovery options that reduce it, and the product page says what a unit has.

Whether a hood is required over it comes down to your site's mechanical ventilation design, so take it up with the mechanical contractor along with the rest of the kitchen. If the exhaust hood arrangement is being reworked anyway, deal with the wash-up at the same time.

Often yes. Silverchef Rent-Try-Buy lets you rent the machine rather than buy it outright, so the payments are an operating expense and the cash stays in the rest of the kitchen.

It is also a sensible way to step up from an undercounter machine without committing before you know the new volume holds. Ask us which units in stock can be put on a rental.