Washdown and sanitising
In food, dairy, beverage and pharmaceutical plants, a poor cleaning regime can lead to closure by standards agencies. The right washdown equipment makes hygiene faster, more consistent and easier to prove, and cuts the chemical and water you use to get
there.
Looking to clean the inside of a tank or vessel? See our CIP / tank cleaning solutions.
What is washdown?
Washdown is the routine of keeping equipment, floors, walls and high-contact surfaces hygienic. It combines cleaning, which removes soil and organic matter, with sanitising, which reduces bacteria to safe levels. Where deeper pathogen control is needed,
it extends to disinfecting. The equipment you choose affects every part of that routine: how accurately chemical is dosed, how well it covers the surface, and how long it stays in contact.
The standard to achieve: sanitising
Sanitising is not the same thing as cleaning. Sanitising is the process of the removal of bacterial pathogens to safe levels. What this generally means is that we want to achieve a 99.999% (log-5) reduction in target pathogens e.g. salmonella and e.coli. This can be validated by swab tests. For some high risk areas we might want a 99.9999% (log-6) kill rate.
Sanitising is not about achieving a total kill of all pathogens. That would be sterilisation. It is about getting to a generally agreed safe level to allow, for example, food to be processed and prepared.
Effective sanitising depends on four elements: dwell time, coverage, surface preparation and dosing. As with the Sinner’s Circle cleaning model, if you increase one element, others can be reduced, so equipment choice can influence each of them. Our article Understanding the Four Elements of Sanitising Systems for Optimal Industrial Cleaning covers them in detail.
As with Sinner's cleaning model, if you increase one element, others can be reduced. As such, you can see how judicious equipment selection can play an role in influencing each of these elements.
What good washdown equipment delivers
- Accurate, repeatable dilution. Venturi mixing uses mains water pressure to blend concentrate at consistent ratios, so results don’t depend on who is mixing.
- Better coverage and contact time. Clinging foam covers more surface, stays on longer and shows operators where they’ve already treated.
- Lower chemical use. Metering tips control how much concentrate is drawn, which prevents over-application and cuts cost.
- Safer handling. Fixed mixing points and controlled application mean less manual handling of concentrate.
Equipment choice for washdown