Before you invest in a hood dishwasher you need to put some thought into getting the right dishwasher for your needs. After all, these gadgets are not cheap, so you need to be sure that you have made the right decision before you go ahead and purchase. Once you have paid for it and had it installed, you can't really change it.

Ultimately, the decision boils down to what you have to wash and how often. If you are mainly washing crockery and cutlery, and glassware (separate from the crockery of course), a standard hood dishwasher should be good enough. However, if you want to wash pots and pans you will need a machine with a larger hood opening and possibly the ability to alter the pressure of the wash arms to produce a greater pressure.

You also need to consider whether you have a continual throughput of ware that needs to be washed, which is occurring more these days as a result of all-day dining, or whether you have peaks and troughs. You might need a hood dishwasher with a variety of different cycle options, and perhaps an intensive cycle for more difficult ware.

Another very important consideration is the space available. Very many kitchens do not have a huge amount of space available, but you need to have sufficient space for pre-washing and unloading tabling, and for it to be of enough size to enable your kitchen staff to work effectively. This means that you may need a machine which can handle hard work on an ongoing basis, yet still has a moderate footprint.

According to Tim Bender who is UK sales director for Hobart "a medium-sized site serving 100-plus people would typically require a passthrough machine with tabling, to ensure the kitchen retains its momentum, yet even this could fit within a modest three-to-four metre length on one side of the kitchen." Three metres is less than ten feet, which is not a huge amount of space.

The hood type of dishwasher is ideal for medium to large sites that need top performance and speed without taking up the space of a flight machine. However, they should also be energy efficient, but today, most are.

There are other things to consider, such as whether the electric supply is single or three-phase, whether the machine requires a pumped waste for drainage, and whether there is an extract canopy available for ventilation purposes. You also need to consider whether the machine has detergent and rinse-aid pumps because, if not, external dosing equipment will also be needed.

Water Supply

You also have to factor in the water supply in your area. If the water is very hard, such as in the chalklands of the South Coast, it may be best to have an independent water softener. However, there are now hood dishwashers that have automatic water softening built in, and also heat recovery.

When the hood is lifted, the hot air normally escapes into the area in the form of steam, but with heat recovery this can be caught and used to help preheat incoming cold water. With some machines this can produce an energy saving of over 15%.

Some hood dishwasher manufacturers, such as Smeg, now have Bluetooth capability. This enables them to connect to your tablet or smartphone and provide real time information on the amount of power being used, water, and detergent consumption. This also alerts the operator to any error codes and fault diagnostics which enables faster intervention if something goes wrong.

Filtering is another area that has become a point of focus for manufacturers. Keeping the water as clean as possible inside the machine means that the wash tank can be smaller, which not only reduces the amount of water required, but also the amount of detergents used.

Another consideration that needs to be thought about is wash baskets. Some people think that the wash baskets are not really important, but the simple fact is that wash baskets are different for a good reason. A wash basket that is good for glasses, may not work as well for plates and cups, and vice versa. You need to have a selection of wash baskets to ensure that maximum performance is provided for each type of ware.