Dishawasher mods I thought someone else would have thought of this!
My mate and I have started making a mod for an old dishwasher we are keeping the bottom shelf but wit all the plate racks etc removed to which we attatched a system of poly pipe and retic risers which go inside the bottle necks to within 4 cm of the bottle base once on. We are making the second shelf now but this needs to be custom because the old shelf was too close to the top and wouldnt allow bottles to stand but its already half made.
Im now working on the solenoids and water containers so that the machine will do as the commercial washer will do, first hot clean water then hot bleach and detergent then hot clean, then warm with sanitizer then hot clean rinse.
Weve tested the unit with only the standard pump with really dirty bottles ie. not washed at all and left to dry out with beer still in bottom (two went mouldy) so this test was extreme then wacked em in, we got the machine to hot rinse, hot detergent then a hot rinse, and they came out sparkling clean, and we didnt use dishwasher detergent as this contains rinse aid which is bad for your beer apparantly, so all in all the results were good so we should be able to clean around 30 bottles at a time, any more and pressure drop may be a problem!
So its pretty easy to do and the electronics mods wont be expensive but youd need to know a bit about electronics to tackle it but your local dishwasher guy would be able to point you atleast in the right direction.
P.S. Retic pipe isnt food grade so we are considering a copper system as another slight problem was one of the risers popped off due to pressure so really a stronger pipe system is needed but i dont feel copper would be hard to do.
