15000 Inc. Assists First S.F. Approval of a Hoodless Commercial Dishwasher

Two years and hundreds of hours of design, documentation, on site monitoring and multiple meetings with the San Francisco Building Department finally culminated in Hobart receiving the first ever San Francisco approval for a commercial dishwasher that does not require an exhaust hood.

Under current code a commercial dishwasher is required to have a Type 2 (heat and vapor) hood and an associated exhaust fan. This helps ensure that the moisture and heat released from a dishwasher does not allow mold or other moisture related health issues to occur within the kitchen.

The downside of this requirement is that this one code requirement can make certain restaurant locations cost-prohibitive or unbuildable. This can occur for lower level restaurant locations in multi-story buildings or embedded in the interior of an existing building.

In order to provide a product that could open up many new opportunities for restaurant owners, Hobart Inc. spent years developing a commercial dishwasher that discharged zero heat and moisture.

The San Francisco building code officials were very concerned about the potential for mold growth or other moisture related problems.

In order to prove the performance of the dishwasher, a test procedure was initiated to record environmental conditions within the kitchen over an extended period of time. The field measurements included multiple temperature and humidity sensors located through-out the kitchen that recorded
conditions every 15 minutes for an entire six month period. 15000 Inc. developed a computational fluid dynamics model based on 6 months of actual field measurements to demonstrate the installed performance of the dishwasher.

Hobart even engaged the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development to help shepherd the process through the building department. The basis for this assistance was that the new dishwasher would allow restaurant development in the multitude of San Francisco high rise buildings.

15000 Inc. held multiple meetings with the San Francisco Building Department in order to secure the final approval for Hobart Inc.