[Ian Rochester]

I'm on the search for a big steam cleaner for kitchen cleans in pubs and hotels etc, but before I buy I'd like to pick all your brains as to what's out there, which is the best and where to get them from.

Just had a demo yesterday (Fri) of a Doman Contractor - very impressive, but also very expensive at £3200. 

The rep claimed it would remove burnt on crud for the inside and outside of cookers and that no other cleaning ie chemical soak or caustic dip would be required.

However the oven he demonstrated on wasn't the worst I've seen, it looked as though the build up was weeks old as opposed to years old.  Although saying that he did manage to get it all off.

I've also looked at a couple of smaller ones but have doubts whether they would be robust enough or powerful enough for some of the really bad pub kitchens I've seen.  Obviously if we are investing this sort of money, I don't want to then find that we should have bought such and such instead.

Any comments or help would be appreciated.

[lifeofgrime]

Hi

Quite new to this, but bear with me..

We never found steam cleaners to be of any use.. we have four steam cleaners ranging from a poxy indoor jobby (similar to the one which you were given a demo of, I'd imagine) right up to a steamer powered by a 5.7 V8 Chevvy engine (which is awesome).

We've always found a hefty sodium hydroxide solution to be give a far superior finish and take much less time. It also seems to make more sense that it would - Sodium hydroxide is a powerful alkali, which breaks down fat. Much of the black stuff on cookers is likely to be a fat derivative, which is why alkali solutions are so good.

The downside is: you and I are mostly fat based (no offence), so the solution tends to do a good job of breaking our skin down. Wear loads of PPE. It stings like hell... you've seen that bit in 'Fight Club', right?

We've taken to converting the steam cleaner into a steam stripper, which works wonders for cleaning carpets, but that's another story....

bottom line.. if it looks to good to be truw, it probably is (and that staining on the cooker in the demo probably WAS only a week old).

Are you seriously intersted in the larger steam cleaners? I can rattle on about the pros and cons of them if you like?

Hope this helps,

Luke

[Ian Rochester]

Cheers for the reply, we had a re-trial done with the machine on Friday, 8 bar steam, 180deg, burnt on grease/crud on hot plate and back of fryer - the steam hardly marked it!!

Not impressed, definatly too good to be true!

Back to the drawing board, I need to start looking at other options for deep cleaning of commercial kitchens, without stealing anybodys patch, it there anyone else doing this and what gear, chemicals are you using to do it?

PM me if you would prefer.  Cheers

[lifeofgrime]

we do a fair amount of commercial kitchens and have always found sodium hydroxide solutions to work the best. Any large cleaning chemical manfacturer / supplier will have their own version, but essentially they're all the same thing.

That, combined with a citric acid based degreaser for the lighter areas of grease deposits should be all the chemicals you need.

Bear in mind that some of the more aggressive forms of chemical are quite likely to damage stainless steel work sufaces - always do a test patch first.

With that in mind, abrasive cloths (although superb for shifting grime) can also scratch stainless steel surfaces.

I'm sure you can sort out the sundries, but as a starter for ten (so to speak) a strong alkali solution and a citric acid based degreaser will sort out most problems.

If you need more precise information, let me know and I'll PM you.

Good luck!

Luke

[Morclean]

We have sold sodium hydroxide solutions along with a heavy duty steam cleaner to most of our clients that clean kitchens / ovens