The Heated Soak Tank That Sanitizes Hospital Kitchen Equipment

A dietary department feeds the most vulnerable people in the building. Patients recovering from surgery, going through chemotherapy, or managing a transplant have immune systems that cannot absorb a mistake, and every one of their meals passes through the same hotel pans and sheet pans that a short-staffed crew has to get clean between meal periods. Hand scrubbing is only ever as thorough as the person holding the brush on that particular shift.

The FOG Tank® is a heated soak tank for hospital kitchen equipment and cookware. Load metal or heavy-duty plastic items into the lifting basket, and the tank submerges every item at the same steady temperature for as long as the load needs while your staff move on to other tasks. Add the proprietary Tiger Carbon Removal Powder and water just once a month for continuous cleaning power. Staff clean items as soon as they come off the line, instead of waiting for the sink to open up or squeezing the job in before the next tray cart rolls out.

Cleaning Chemistry That Belongs In A Healthcare Building

In a healthcare setting with vulnerable patients, a cleaner that fumes, burns, or leaves residue becomes a problem that reaches well past the kitchen. Tiger Carbon Removal Powder, which is used inside The FOG Tank®, is non-caustic, non-toxic, fully biodegradable, aluminum safe, and food safe. There is no acid to store, no caustic bath to warn staff about, and no reason to wall the cleaning area off from the rest of the space.

A dietary department sits inside a building full of people in fragile health. Your team can rest assured that every item that comes out of The FOG Tank® is fully sanitized and safe for a healthcare environment. That means zero bacteria, zero germs.

Less Physical Strain On Dietary Staff

Stewarding and dietary aide roles turn over faster than most departments would like, and the least popular part of the job is standing at a sink working a scrub pad against baked-on carbon. Taking that task away removes a repetitive job nobody wants to be assigned. The included lifting basket also means nobody reaches bare-handed into 185° F water to load or unload, though we still recommend gloves when handling hot equipment coming out of the tank.

No Special Electrical Work Needed

Bringing new hospital commercial kitchen equipment into a department usually starts a conversation with facilities about power. The 25-gallon and 40-gallon models run on 120 volts through a standard 15 amp outlet. The 80-gallon model uses a 120 volt 20 amp outlet, and the 120-gallon and 126-gallon models run on 240 volts. Confirm the receptacle with our team before delivery and most installations come down to moving The FOG Tank® into place and plugging it in.

Hospital surveys are unannounced. A dietary tracer is part of the triennial Joint Commission survey for hospitals using accreditation for deemed status, and it pulls standards from Environment of Care and Infection Control in alongside the clinical side of patient diets. Unlike a scheduled health department visit at a restaurant, there is no window to get ready first.

Visible Residue Is A Finding

Joint Commission has named cleanliness and infection control among its top opportunities for improvement in hospitals, and equipment carrying visible residue, stains, or bioburden is part of what surveyors write up. A roasting pan with a dark ring baked into it is exactly the kind of thing noticed on a walkthrough, and it is a hard finding to talk your way out of. When that pan goes into The FOG Tank® every day instead of waiting on a deep clean twice a year, carbon never gets the chance to accumulate, and nothing sits in rotation looking worse than it should.

Hood Filters Carry Their Own Code

Every commercial kitchen exhaust system falls under NFPA 96, and hood filters sit at the center of that code, since a filter thick with grease is exactly what turns a small kitchen fire into one that spreads through the exhaust system. A dietary department running three meal periods a day doesn’t have much slack to pull filters for a long soak in a three-compartment sink that retail service and tray line dishwashing are already competing to use.

The FOG Tank® takes hood filters out of that competition entirely, though it isn’t a substitute for the certified contractors NFPA 96 still requires for the fixed ductwork and hood structure above the line. What The FOG Tank® handles is the hood filters themselves: load them into the tank instead of the sink, and they come out fully degreased without anyone standing over them with a brush. Filters typically come out around half a pound lighter than the same filters cleaned in a three-compartment sink.

Not everything that needs degreasing fits inside a soak tank. Oven interiors, prep tables, and the tray line itself all need attention too, and that’s where GrimeGo® comes in. It’s a non-toxic, non-caustic all-purpose cleaner built to the same standard as The FOG Tank® itself, which means a dietary department can cover cookware, kitchen equipment, and hard surfaces without stocking a separate industrial degreaser for hospital kitchen cleaning.

The difference usually shows up within the first few soaks after The FOG Tank® goes into service: sanitation happens consistently, fewer pans get pulled from rotation, and staff spend less time parked at a scrub sink between meal periods. The items that used to get shortchanged on a busy shift stop being a question.

To size a heated soak tank against your patient census and retail volume, call (858) 566-6212 or fill out our contact form.