Is there a way to...

[Alpine Dreams]

Is there a way to gauge the amount of pressure coming from the tip of a spray gun? I'm aware that there are vacuum cleaner suction gauges. I was wondering if spray guns have a similar gauge for it.

I'm a little weird. I have a large spreadsheet comparing all of the self serves in town. It lists their bay count, measurements of bays, bay functions, vending offerings, amount of trash cans, amount of vacuums and a bunch of other metrics. I thought I would include this in case anyone was wondering.

Thanks in advance!

 

[soapy]

You can take a brass T and put it in the end of your wand gun with a pressure guage on one outlet and your tip on the other and check your outlet pressure. Pressure is only one part of the impingement factor. A 25% increase in water doubles the total impact at a given pressure.

 

[MEP001]

I don't think this person owns a car wash. If I caught someone removing parts from a gun for any reason, I'd have the police on them.

You can gauge the pressure by flow. The tip size is marked on the tip. A tip marked 06 flows exactly 3 GPM at 1000 PSI. If the tip is relatively new, you can measure how much water you get for a period of time into a container and "reverse-engineer" the pressure.

 

[Alpine Dreams]

You would be correct. I am a manager.

I didn't know what would be required to gauge the pressure at the tip for my spreadsheet. I was hoping there would be a similar way to gauge it like the vacuum suction gauges.

I agree. I'm not sure I will be proceeding with this metric for my spreadsheet. For my own, however, I will use this method to see what I am getting at the tips. My T gauges in the control room all read 1400 psi when the trigger is squeezed. My control room is in the middle of 6 bays so I don't have a huge spread between room and end bays. But, I would like to know how much loss occurs within the expanse of my 3 bays. Maybe I should raise pressure on bay 6 and 1 so they're closer to bays 3 and 4.

I have 6 bays running off of 6 cat pumps. 4 of my vacuums are Doyle (Super old and simple). 1 Ginn San and 1 Fragramatic that is a combo vac with fragrance and vacuum. 1 J. E. Adams air machine. 3 vendors. 1 is a Laurel 3 column and the other 2 are single column. My stand alone carpet shampooer is Fragramatic.

My chemicals are all Kleen-Rite: Sonic Wash for High Pressure Soap, Deep Blue for Wax, Bubble Up for Foaming Brush, Summer Breeze for Pre-Soak and Kleen White for Tire Cleaner/Engine Degreaser. I buy 5 gallon super concentrates and mix them into 30 gallon drums that feed into my Hydrominder.

There was an automatic wash years ago before I took control. It was installed, and removed, by Bozeman.

If you still would like to be more convinced, I would be willing to post a picture of my control room.

 

[6t7gto]

We all like pictures.
Post 'em up.
david

 

[Alpine Dreams]

I'll take one this evening when I do my nightly run.

 

[MEP001]

I didn't know what would be required to gauge the pressure at the tip for my spreadsheet. I was hoping there would be a similar way to gauge it like the vacuum suction gauges.

Nope, pressure x flow = flow, therefore orifice x flow = pressure. You just need a stopwatch and a graduated contatiner.

If you still would like to be more convinced, I would be willing to post a picture of my control room.

I was never concerned whether or not you owned/managed/whatever a car wash, I was just recommending that you not go to someone else's to take stuff apart and tee in a gauge to see what pressure they are running. You can certainly determine pressure at the bay that way, in fact I do that myself and mark the gauge in the equipment room at the desired pressure so I don't have to compensate for line loss or any other factors. I like all the bays to be as close to the same as possible so I never have to hear "This one has more pressure" when someone puts their bumper against my heels while I'm cleaning a bay.

 

[Alpine Dreams]

I don't think this person owns a car wash.

I was never concerned whether or not you owned/managed/whatever a car wash,

I get what you're saying, though. After Soapy wrote how he would gauge pressure at the tip, I instantly thought how I would not like that done at my car wash by another operator. I can imagine how they would feel seeing me do that. My family owns 3 of the 6 self serve washes left in our city. So, getting their pressure would be no issue. But, the other 3... I guess I'll either get a "feel" gauge of it or just leave it blank on my spreadsheet.

As far as the gallons per minute method, that would only be accurate if they are new, as you said, from my understanding as the tips hollow out over time and allow more flow.

 

[MEP001]

It won't be perfectly accurate, but it will be fairly close unless the tips are massively eroded. In my experience, it takes about two months of heavy use to increase flow by 1/4 GPM.

 

[Alpine Dreams]

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