Why do domestic dishwasher cycles take hours instead of being extremely fast like commercial dishwashers?
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It’s about energy efficiency and priorities. Consumer dishwashers in the 1970s were very fast but used a lot of energy and a lot of water. Looking up the cycle times for the popular 1970s Westinghouse SFK series consumer dishwasher a normal wash dry cycle was under an hour. It’s unintuitive but todays consumer dishwashers use a lot less energy and a lot less water but comes at the cost of taking 2-3 hours for a normal cycle. This trade off is generally acceptable since most consumer households do not use the dishwasher more than once a day. Fill the dishwasher throughout the day, run it after dinner and empty it in the morning.
The priorities of a commercial restaurant are different. Fast cycles are important since the flatware and utensils will be used multiple times a night thus you want to run multiple cycles as quick as practical. The speed is accomplished by higher temperature and higher water pressure. This means more energy and more water. You can further speed up the turn around by requiring a quick manual prewash in a sink. So commercial dishwashers are deigned for quick cycles.
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