One rack cycle, six stages — and every product owns exactly one of them

Six stages. One rack cycle. Three machine programs.

CI360™ is a task-based program, not a product shelf. Warewash runs as a closed cycle: presoak, wash, rinse, sanitize, verify, maintain — and back to the next rack. Each stage has one job and one product lane. The program fails when the lanes blur: two detergents in one machine, a hand-sink detergent poured into a machine tank, chemical sanitizer stacked on top of a machine that already sanitizes with heat, or a delime cycle that only happens when scale is visible on the arms.

The controlling variable is temperature. What the final rinse actually delivers decides the detergent, the rinse logic, whether a chemical sanitizer is required at all, and how tight the deliming interval has to be. Every other decision on this page follows from that one measurement — and it has to be a measurement, not an assumption.

“The machine should not be asked to solve a problem that belongs in the presoak sink. Raising detergent feed to chase protein soil etches glass and films ware.”

Presoak is a staged step, not a standing bucket. It earns its place where protein soil recurs — egg, dairy, meat, and baked-on organic residue on flatware. Enzymes need both temperature and time: hold the bath between 37–50 °C, because colder water slows the protease and hotter water denatures it. Then rinse the ware before racking, or presoak residue carries into the wash tank and foams the pump.

“One detergent per machine. Two is not insurance — it is double alkalinity, etched glassware, and a rinse problem you will spend a week chasing.”

The wash stage is where soil is removed, and it is the only stage where the choice of product is genuinely a choice. Liquid alkaline covers most high-temp and many low-temp machines and holds performance in hard water. Phosphate-free granular is the lane where discharge is restricted or a dry feed suits the site. Non-chlorinated glass chemistry is a separate lane entirely, because chlorine is what puts odour and film on beverage glass.

Set the feed at 2–4 mL/L through the dispenser, then verify low foam and first-pass cleanliness before touching the controller again. If ware is coming out clean but not clear, the answer is almost always rinse aid or scale — not more detergent.

“Sheeting is not cosmetic. Water that beads is water still carrying hardness onto the ware — and it will dry there.”

The final rinse does two jobs on the same pass. The rinse additive neutralizes hard-water residue and drops surface tension so water leaves the ware as one unbroken film. The sanitize step is either heat or chemistry, decided entirely by what the machine actually delivers: thermal on a machine holding 180–195 °F at the rack, verified iodine or chlorine on a low-temp machine, and iodine at 12 ppm on bar glass.

Where a machine has two rinse pumps, keep rinse aid and sanitizer in separate lanes. Where it has one, use a combined feed only if both the controller and the product are designed for it. And never dilute iodine with hot water at the eductor — it strips the residual you are trying to verify.

“Most warewash failures are drift, not chemistry. Verify temperature, feed, and delime interval before you change a single product.”

Verification is a stage, not an afterthought. Four readings — final-rinse temperature, sanitizer ppm, sheeting behaviour, and rewash rate — catch nearly all warewash drift before it reaches a customer or an inspector. None of them takes more than a minute, and all four belong on a shift log rather than in someone’s memory.

Deliming is the maintenance stage that keeps the rest honest. Missed delime cycles are the most common cause of film, cloudy glass, weak spray pattern, and a booster that no longer reaches temperature. Set the interval by measured water hardness and run it off the daily line — never during service, and never in the same cycle as detergent or sanitizer. The manual three-compartment line runs beside all of this on its own chemistry, and that chemistry never enters machine dosing.

One system, three machine programs — what changes is the kill step, not the logic

The stage sequence stays fixed. Temperature decides the sanitize lane and the chemistry that supports it.

CI360 warewash scales from a single undercounter glass washer to a rack conveyor in an institutional kitchen on the same six stages. What moves between deployments is the final-rinse temperature and therefore the sanitize step — thermal above 180 °F, verified chemistry below it, and iodine at a tightly controlled 12 ppm on bar glass.

Set it right once, then hold the numbers

Commissioning turns the stage architecture into set-points any operator can hold.

Commission the machine with verified sanitizer ppm, detergent feed, rinse performance, and PM intervals, then document the set-points so results do not depend on who is on shift. A warewash program that lives in one supervisor’s head resets every time that person moves on.

CI360™ Warewash is a task-based program guide, not a substitute for site-specific procedures. Confirm dilution ratios, dwell times, temperatures, and sanitizer concentrations against current product labels, SDS, and the applicable local health authority requirement before use. Sanitizer concentrations and final-rinse temperatures are regulated values — verify them against your jurisdiction. Follow site SOPs, training, PPE, and applicable regulations. Never mix acid descaler with chlorinated or alkaline chemistry. Product names follow the Chem International catalogue; linked names open the product page on chemintonline.com.