Load, wash and completely clear
Wash Basin holds up to 4 clean or 4 dirty plates of the same kind. It takes 5 seconds to wash its dirty plates, whether the batch contains one plate or four.
- Load one to four dirty plates. Decide whether waiting for a full batch fits the current service pressure.
- Hold Interact to perform the cleaning action.
- Remove every clean plate. You cannot add new dirty plates while clean plates remain in the Basin.
Its benefit is batch throughput, not automatic activation.
Keep a water source
Wash Basin cannot provide recipe water. Keep an appliance with that ability for Pots, Dough and other recipes that need water.
For automatic washing, use a Soaking Sink with a suitable collection and return route. Putting a dirty plate into Wash Basin with a Grabber does not make the manual cleaning happen by itself.
Research and place it
Research a Sink blueprint. After the first random variant, the fixed cycle is:
Power Sink → Wash Basin → Dish Washer → Soaking Sink → Power Sink.
Check the blueprint before purchasing. Leave space to load dirty plates, remove clean plates and move through the kitchen. The Wiki records increased table messes when it is within two tiles of a table in the same room.
When collection stalls, check for remaining clean plates first, then whether a player still needs to perform the cleaning action.