When should you try to do repairs on your dishmachine and when should you call in the experts?  Jim White, Applications Engineer for Hobart, gives the answer and has some advice on general and preventative maintenance.

What’s a good preventative maintenance schedule for a dishmachine?

Jim White: We like to see thorough preventative maintenance every six months. We’re putting out a preventative maintenance checklist with our new manuals, and it’s recommended that you go through all of these items every six months. If you have a facility with a much higher volume and higher usage, you may need to do it a little more frequently. But in general, every six months is a good timeframe.

How does regular preventative maintenance help avoid bigger service issues down the road?

JW: It’s basically prolonging the life of the machine. Water quality is one of the biggest preventative maintenance issues a facility can address. With poor water quality, you’re going to get excessive limescale buildup over time. And you can’t easily delime the heaters, especially the booster heater. Staying on top of the water quality or deliming on a regular basis is going to reduce the limescale build up and prolong the life of those components (Hobart also offers water softeners and Complete Delime with Booster Guard which helps hard water and limescale). 

How does an operator evaluate what their maintenance team can do in terms of repairs?

JW: It all comes down to the technicians. They know what their capabilities and capacity are. 

What types of repairs can in-house teams normally do?

JW: From what I’ve seen, it’s a wide range. Depending on the capability and expertise of the maintenance team, some will do minor repairs, such as changing valves or switches. Others who are more experienced and capable will do bigger repairs — such as changing the wash pump motors or doing electrical troubleshooting. If you do in-house maintenance, it’s important to follow all the safety instructions found in our Customer Support Manuals. 

When should an in-house team use Hobart service?

JW: When the machine’s under warranty, definitely. Outside of warranty, it depends on the techs at the facility. An in-house service technician will have to get to the root cause of the issue and then order the part and wait on it. Hobart Service technicians know the machines better. Typically, they’re going to be able to diagnose and troubleshoot the issues faster, and a lot of times they have the parts stocked on their truck as well. 

Any other reasons to use the Hobart service team?

JW: Our technicians go through extensive training at our headquarters, where they get hands-on experience with the machines. When new machines are released, all the branches receive updated training, so the technicians are already in the know. And only Hobart technicians have TechConnect, where they can plug into the machine, see live data of what’s going on, and quickly diagnose and troubleshoot any issues. 

So using the Hobart service team can help prevent downtime.

JW: Correct. That’s a big plus for the operator.

Finally, are there any other resources available through Hobart Warewash?

JW: Hobart Warewash has created new customer support manuals for all our dishmachines. These manuals have much more detailed service-related information in them, so you can go through them and understand how the machine is supposed to function and how to troubleshoot any issues that may come up. They’re available for all the various models on our product web pages at www.HobartCorp.com.