Your Kitchen’s a Hot Mess

We show you how to manage an easy
Hand-wash Station and/or Dish Station
to get your food permit

Hand-Wash: We asked NV Health Dept and they confirmed this Sink Station meets the permit requirements for Burning Man!

Click the Pics to Order from Amazon (#ads ↓):

How To: The sink kit has a built in 5-gallon tank. Just add hot water. It operates by foot pump so both hands are free to scrub.

You must provide your own holding tank, a wide-mouth jug that won’t tip over easily. We use old 5-gallon blue office-cooler jugs (from Craigslist or your local water company). Or buy some jugs online (#ad). The sink drain tube drops right into the jug! The supply tank is 5 gallons so if you match up with a 5-gallon waste tank, it’s brilliant, thank you very much. (You may want to strap the sink down with a bungee and rebar stake or Lag).

You also need CAPS for the blue water jugs. Label waste jugs so no one thinks it’s clean water (we tape over the Cap with duct tape and label with marker).

The food permit requires soap, paper towels, and a trash bin. This sink kit has a built in soap pump! The build-in paper towel hook doesn’t work in the wind, so you can hack a PVC tube and bungee cord as a paper towel rod, and rig it around the sink unit.

The permit requires a label on the sink “Handwash Only” and “Wash 30+ seconds” so write that directly in the sink bowl with a Sharpee.

*Note: This is a great small semi-portable rig for small operations, such as gifting hot-dogs on deep playa or a quick food-gift at your camp. It’ll get you through an inspection. It’s too small for a major 125+ person camp where you’re making meals every day.

Other Essentials (#Ads↓):

Food-grade Thermometers and Cooler Thermometers: Get several, they always get lost. The inspector will expect you to have thermometers on hand and remember the magic numbers: 165 for chicken, 145 for other meats. 41 or below for coolers.

  • 165, 145, 41

You need gloves, sanitizer spray and wipes. Cheap tongs are always handy.

For playa-tested coolers and how to make your ice last forever, check our other tutorial.

Dishwashing Station:

If you’re running a big kitchen or food camp, you’ll need a dishwashing station that meets the Food Permit rules. There’s a fantastic tutorial here: https://playatech.com/downloads/dish-delight-portable-dishwashing-system/

You will need Test Strips (#Ad↓) and sanitizer.

Household bleach is the easiest. You can get bleach anywhere. Just get unscented, normal cheap bleach.

You will mix sanitizer for your spray bottles and for the 3rd basin of your dish-wash station. The inspector will expect you to know how to mix and test the sanitizer

  • 1.5 tsp bleach per gallon of water

  • Test for approx 100 PPM

  • Adjust bleach ratio as needed.

  • Label your spray bottles “Bleach Sanitizer”!!!