A quotation for cleaning the outside of a row of sinks usually comes back within a day, and that is the problem. The number arrives before anyone has walked the line, counted the units, or asked what is actually stuck to them. Two kitchens with the same number of sinks can need very different equipment and very different labour, so the buyer who compares quotes on price alone is comparing guesses.
The information below is what a supplier needs in order to quote equipment for commercial sink exteriors — the casings, drainboards, splashbacks, legs and tapware on a line of sinks — rather than the basins' insides. Send it with your enquiry and you will get a specification and a price you can hold the supplier to.
1. What the sinks are made of and how they are built
Give the material and finish of every surface that will be cleaned. Stainless steel is the norm on a production line, but the finish matters: a brushed casing takes a deposit differently from a polished one, and a lacquered or painted panel must not be treated like bare metal. Note the alloy designation on the data plate where it is visible, and state whether the sinks are welded together, bolted to a wall bracket, or standing on adjustable feet.
Record the age of the installation and whether any unit has been repaired or re-skinned. Old weld seams, pitting and scratched finishes hold grease and change what the crew should expect to achieve. A supplier who knows the surface condition will not promise a result that the metal cannot give back.
2. What is on them, and how thick
Describe the deposit in plain terms and say where it came from. The common families behave differently: cooking oil that has baked into a varnish, sugar-based residue from processing, protein film, cutting fluid or machine grease in a workshop sink, limescale around tapware and overflow gaps, and the black grime that collects where a casing meets a wall or a floor plinth.
Take photographs, and take them properly. One wide shot of the run, one close shot of the worst surface, and one shot with a coin or a ruler against the deposit for scale. Say how long it has been since the last exterior clean. A surface cleaned every week and a surface left for eighteen months are not the same job, and the difference drives the machine, the method and the labour hours in the quote.
Be honest about what the current method is. If the crew uses a hose, a bucket and a detergent scrub and still cannot shift the deposit, say so. That single sentence tells the supplier that cold water and effort have already been tried, and points the specification towards high-temperature steam grease removal, which softens a baked-on film before pressure moves it, instead of another chemical to scrub with.
3. Dimensions, counts and clearances
Count the units and measure them. For each type of sink record length, width and height, the height of the drainboard, and the depth of the splashback. Give the number of sinks of each type, not a total for the room.
Then record the access, because access decides the cleaning method more than the size does:
- the gap between the casing and the wall, and whether that gap is open, sealed, or too narrow for a hand
- how far the unit can be pulled forward, and whether the feet or the stand are fixed
- the clearance under the sink and whether pipework blocks a wand or a hose
- the width of the doorway the crew enters through, and the distance from the nearest power supply to the far end of the run
- whether the sinks are in a servery, a production hall or a yard area, and whether the room can be taken out of service while they are cleaned
Give the total exterior surface area as an estimate. A rough figure from the measurements is enough, and it lets a supplier size a machine's tank and duty cycle rather than defaulting to the largest unit in the catalogue.
4. What has to be protected while cleaning
List every part on and around the sinks that must not be sprayed. On a typical run this includes tapware and mixer bodies, thermostatic mixing valves, temperature probes and their cabling, indicator lights, terminal enclosures under the sink, waste traps and rubber seals, and any label plate or instruction sticker that must stay legible.
State the electrical situation clearly: what is isolated, who holds the isolator key, and whether the site runs a lock-out and tag-out system. A supplier specifying equipment for a wet room with electrical fittings needs to know that context, because it is part of their safety duty and not just yours.
Ask the supplier to confirm, in writing, which of their machine's protections apply to that environment. The product page for the Fixed Steam Cleaning Machine PowerDe HW02 lists leakage protection, short-circuit protection, high-temperature protection, high-voltage protection and water-shortage protection, together with published specifications of 160° steam temperature, 0.8 MPa vapour pressure and 6 kW heating power on an 80 L SUS304 tank. Those figures are the starting point for a discussion, not a substitute for it: check them against your supply voltage, your water hardness and your shift pattern before anyone signs.
5. Utilities: power, water, drainage
Three facts decide which machine can even be used on site.
Power. How many amps are available at the nearest outlet, what the voltage is, and how far the cable has to run. A fixed unit on a 220 V supply is a different proposition from a mobile unit that has to be driven across a site, and the Cleaning Equipment Series covers both.
Water. Where the crew fills from, whether that point is beside the line or across the building, and how hard the water is. Hard supply scales a heater, which is a maintenance cost the quote should acknowledge. Record your last water hardness reading if you have one; if you have never tested it, ask for a test before you commit to equipment.
Drainage. Where the run-off goes. Greasy water from an exterior clean belongs in the site's waste route through the interceptor, not in a prep-area sink or a surface drain. Say who owns the interceptor, how often it is emptied, and whether the crew doing the clean is allowed to move the sinks to reach the floor beneath them.
6. Frequency, downtime and who does the work
Say how often the exteriors are cleaned now and how often they should be cleaned. Then say how long the line can be out of service, and at what times. A kitchen that must be back in production by six in the morning has a different specification from a workshop with a free Saturday.
State who will do the work: your own crew, a contract cleaner, or the supplier's team. If it is your crew, give their shift pattern, how many people are available, and what training they already hold on pressure and heat equipment. A quotation that assumes a trained operator and hands the machine to an untrained one is not the same purchase.
7. The standard you will accept, written down
Agree the acceptance criteria before the quotation, so the price is for a result rather than for a machine and a hope. Write checks a supervisor can verify in seconds: no visible oil film on the casing, no residue in the seam where the drainboard meets the splashback, no scale ring around the tapware, no loose debris under the unit, floor dry within a metre of the line, and no detergent smell on a surface that touches food or product.
If the sinks sit in a food or pharmaceutical area, add the hygiene paperwork to the same conversation. Whether the method has to be recorded, who signs the completed task, and whether an inspector may ask to see the record all affect the method chosen.
8. The site survey and the trial
Ask for a survey of one representative sink, on site, with the deposit in the state it is normally in. Photographs help, but the smell, the temperature of the room and the awkwardness of a particular gap do not survive in a picture.
Then ask for a trial on the worst unit before you order. On the trial, record three numbers: how long the job took, how much water was used, and how the surface looked afterwards against the criteria in section 7. Those three figures turn a sales conversation into a comparison you can repeat with a second supplier. Where the trial shows the standard is not being met, that is a finding about the method and the specification, and it belongs in the revised quotation.
9. What the supplier should put in the quotation
Before you send the enquiry, decide what you will require back. A quotation worth comparing states the following:
- the exact model, with published specifications for temperature, pressure, tank volume and power, referenced to the product page rather than to a datasheet that appears only in the email
- the attachments and nozzles included, and which one is intended for casings and seam work
- the utility requirements: supply voltage, water connection, and the space the unit needs
- the method for your deposit, in the order the work happens, with dwell time and number of passes for the worst surface
- the expected time per sink and the expected water use, stated as figures from the trial rather than as an estimate
- spares to hold, the service interval, descaling routine, and the response time when the unit stops heating
- training for the crew, and who signs off that they are competent to run the machine
If any of those lines is missing, the quotation is not complete. Ask for it in writing before the price is treated as final.
10. Sending the enquiry
Package the enquiry so it can be read without a follow-up call: the equipment register with materials and dimensions, the photographs with a scale reference, the deposit description and its age, the access measurements, the utility facts, the frequency and downtime window, the acceptance criteria, and the names of the parts that must be protected.
Shenzhen PowerDe Automation Precision Equipment publishes specifications for each machine in its cleaning range and can specify customized steam cleaning equipment against your line layout, deposit type and duty cycle. Send the register and the photographs through the contact page and ask for a method and a configuration matched to your sinks, with a trial on the worst unit agreed before you order.
