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What Commercial Dish Machine Can I Use Without a Condensate Hood?
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
warewashing
What Commercial Dish Machine Can I Use Without a Condensate Hood?
Your facility goes through a lot of dishes. To lighten the load, you want a commercial dishwasher. Exploring possible dish machines is exciting, but you realize that many require a condensate hood. You can’t help but feel disheartened: you don't have a condensate hood and buying one would be out of your budget right now. But you still need extra help with dishes, so what are your options?
At State Cleaning, we lease, service, and provide chemicals for commercial dish machines. When you’re looking for a dishwasher for the first time, it can be difficult to find a machine that fits all your needs—even more so when you aren’t sure your kitchen can support it.
To help you determine your dishwashing options, we will explain what dish machines you can use without a condensate hood and how to know what’s right for your facility. After reading, you’ll know what type of dishwasher will best fit your facility.
Why Do Some Commercial Dish Machines Need Condensate Hoods?
Depending on your commercial dishwasher, you’ll need to have different features in your kitchen. Usually, high-temp dishwashers require more features, including extra breaker space and, of course, a condensate hood.
Because high-temp dishwashers generate such high heat, this will escape through water vapor or steam when the door is opened. With this happening consistently, the area will become misty and damp as the day goes on, creating an uncomfortable environment and slick surfaces—potentially causing a slipping hazard. When you pair a high-temp dishwasher with a condensate hood, the hood sucks up the steam so it isn’t left to freely roam the kitchen.
Condensate hoods aren’t needed by all dishwashers, but most high-temp dishwashers will use them.
Commercial Dish Machines That Don’t Require a Condensate Hood
In some cases, your kitchen may not have a hood. And if you’re low on space and/or a budget, you’ll probably want to avoid installing one. This is where other hood-free dish machines come into play:
Low-Temp Dishwashers
Low-temp dishwashers rely on chemical sanitization as opposed to heat sanitization. As a result, they don’t get as hot and will produce less steam. This means that they don’t require condensate hoods in order to function.
Instead, low-temp dishwashers use a chemical like chlorine to sanitize dishes. This reduces pathogens to a safe level without any intensive use of high heat that will steam up a kitchen.
Low-temp dishwashers can be less sought after because of preferences against chemicals like chlorine, slower cycles, and their potential bleaching effect on dishware over time. However, low-temp dishwashers tend to be less costly to lease without even considering their absence of a hood, and they perform well for low-to-medium quantities of dishes.
Ventless Dishwashers
On the other hand, ventless dishwashers are high-temp dishwashers that don’t rely on the use of a condensate hood. This means that they sanitize dishes through heat but are designed in such a way that they reuse steam to sanitize the next load. Because of this, no steam escapes into your kitchen, so there’s no need for a condensate hood.
Ventless dishwashers are a perfect combination for those without condensate hoods that still prefer high heat. They introduce no chemicals to the facility and are more effective for heavy grease and soil loads, improving efficiency all around. However, because of their use of high heat, they can be more costly to lease than low-temp machines despite the fact that they don’t have a condensate hood either.
How to Choose the Best Commercial Dishwasher for Your Facility
Choosing the best dishwasher for your facility depends on which features are most important to you.
Do you value having a kitchen free of harsh chemicals? A ventless high-temp dishwasher may be best for you.
Do you want an option suited for a low-to-medium volume of dishes? A low-temp dishwasher can get the job done.
Do you need a dishwasher that runs without a condensate hood? You can use a ventless high-temp dishwasher or a low-temp dishwasher to fit your needs.
Different machine features and availability vary from model to model, but with a little research, you can find the best dishwasher for your facility.
Learn About State Cleaning’s Commercial Dish Machines
When your facility goes through as many dishes as it does, a dishwasher just makes sense, but this can be a harder purchase when you don’t have a condensate hood. Now that you know why certain dishwashers use condensate hoods and alternative options, read this article to learn more about how to choose the right dish machine for you.
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