Dual injecting methanol and foam brush soap

[OurTown]

This was brought up in another thread and I wanted to try it without spending a lot of cabbage. The two issues I have with the premixed winter soap is that that it can be crazy expensive and if you mix it weak for mild weather there is not much soap in it. On our Air Logic foam brush system there is not much room for a tee off the eductor so I ran a hose down to a conglomerate of parts that I had on hand. On the Hydrominder I left the threaded type stub in but without a tip. Do you think this would make a difference vs a tee on the eductor? I did not get a chance yet to check the volumetrics with our graduated cylinders. I'm thinking about buying a hydrometer to check the percentage of methanol in the tank. One thing that bothers me is that the soap mixes in the methanol pick up tube while it sits. The photo shows it (the methanol is on the left) after it sat for about an hour and a half. Of course it was crystal clear the second the Hydrominder shut off. We used to have this issue with our presoak mixing with our booster pick up hose but for some reason after swapping out the hoses for Tygon some months ago it has not happened since. We have this on our presoak Hydrominder: https://www.kleen-ritecorp.com/p-39346-e-gap-dual-port-35gpm-kit.aspx






Holy crap that is a big photo!

 

[OurTown]

It got down to 19F last night and the soap did not freeze in the curly hose with a beige tip in the methanol. I switched to a black tip today because it's going down to 10F tonight. The next time the Hydrominder cycled and stopped the brand new blue foot valve in the methanol won't hold. I swapped it for a brand new Dema Viton and it held for a while and now it's dropping. I guess alcohol is too thin for these foot valves?

 

[MEP001]

I've been having to put a zip-tie on the hose to act as a clamp to make a good seal. The last dozen or so times I've replaced either the pickup hose or just the foot valve it leaked past the barb.

 

[OurTown]

I put a small gauge worm gear hose clamp on them. I checked the blue Hydro valve by blowing through it from each end before I installed it and it was working. I checked it after removing it and it was definitely not working. On the Dema it might be leaking past the barb because it fits loose on the 1/2" hose. I cranked the clamp a bit and it seems to be holding for now.

 

[Randy]

At 19F our car washes would be closed. If we don't close them they are an ungodly mess to deal with, to much ice and too much liability.

 

[Earl Weiss]

I think it got up to 19 degrees today. Fairly busy considering streets were still mostl wet from snow yesterday. Heck, last year we had a busy day when it as 4 degrees.

 

[Greg Pack]

I just checked a chemical compatibility chart. Looks like EPDM (gray foot valve) would be best for methanol.
https://www.customadvanced.com/printable-chemical-resistance-chart.html

 

[OurTown]

It got down to 8F last night and the brushes froze but that should be expected with a black tip. I saw one guy try to use it this morning and then just threw it on the ground.

 

[soapy]

Years ago I starting putting up signs saying foam brush might not work in freezing conditions. 99% of the time they still do work but when they did freeze people always wanted all of their money back. No calls since I put the signs up.

 

[MEP001]

No calls since I put the signs up.

I wish I could make that work. A good 10-20% of my customers can't even read.

 

[OurTown]

I just checked a chemical compatibility chart. Looks like EPDM (gray foot valve) would be best for methanol.
https://www.customadvanced.com/printable-chemical-resistance-chart.html

It is interesting that Viton is not recommended but Viton B is. I swapped it out for a different type of Dema valve (I don't have any more of the grey Hydro valves) that looks like this but has an INDP10011PX KR part number.


https://www.kleen-ritecorp.com/p-12976-plastic-14-foot-valve-with-check-strainer.aspx


I'm not sure what the little flapper is made of but the body fits the 1/2" ID hose very well and has held after many Hydrominder cycles. Just for the heck of it I checked the blue valve that I took out yesterday and it works perfect. WTH? Maybe the methanol warps or curls up the Viton flapper but after it evaporates it is fine? These foot valves drive me crazy.

 

[OurTown]

Years ago I starting putting up signs saying foam brush might not work in freezing conditions. 99% of the time they still do work but when they did freeze people always wanted all of their money back. No calls since I put the signs up.

We have three signs near our foam brush but none of them say this. Instead of adding a fourth one maybe we should just get one sign made with the four most important things people need to read:

1. Brush may not work in freezing temperatures
2. If caught using brush without meter running you may be asked to leave
3. Please return brush to hooks when finished
4. Smile for the cameras

 

[OurTown]

Oh and MEP you can voice record the signs for some of your customers. You can have an English button and a Spanish button for playback.

 

[MEP001]

But how would they know to press the buttons?

I got a voicemail today from a woman who sounded Nigerian (Not my most common customer base) no joke TELLING me to have someone come and show her how to use the car wash.

 

[OurTown]

Update:
The blue Hydro foot valve is still holding methanol good and does not bleed down at all. The system works good with a beige tip in the methanol and a yellow tip (that is what we use normally) for the soap. When it is above freezing I just shut off the methanol valve and it works fine also. The issue is when it gets colder and I swap out the methanol tip for a gray one. It was not pulling enough soap and so I thought it had something to do with the fact that there was a section of hose between the tip manifold and the Hydrominder. I re-plumbed it so the manifold went right into where the tip stub would normally go into. That did not help so I just put in an orange tip in the soap side to compensate. (next time it will be a green one) I'm assuming two things are going on here. One is that the tip sizes are vastly different and the side with the huge tip size (methanol) has a much lower viscosity and pulls it easier. Although it may be a minor issue the soap probably requires more suction to lift it because it is has so little water in the concentrate. (it is heavier than the methanol per gallon) The second thing that might be going on is that with the big tip the Hydrominder is probably not running as long per cycle so not as much time pulling soap. I wanted this to be a simple setup but it looks like it might not happen. The methanol tip is not bad to change out but changing out the soap tip is messy. We could scrap this dual injection idea and mix up the soap and methanol to make our own winter soap but it just seemed like this idea would work. Anyone have ideas to make this work before I tear it out?

 

[MEP001]

Maybe use adjustable flow meters on both products, but it might be hard to find one that will read such a low flow.

 

[OurTown]

I gave up on this idea for now and just mixed up some winter soap. I mixed 32 oz of JBS Action foam brush soap to 5 gallons of methanol. The cost comes out to a little over half of the JBS winter soap. With a grey tip in the Hydrominder it really foamed nice but I want to see how well it does on a beige tip first before I call it a good ratio.

 

[soapy]

My least favorite job next to sucking mud is to thaw out foamy brush or wands so I tend to mix it a bit strong and figure the extra $100 I might spend during winter is better than trying to get enough hot water out in the bays to thaw them out.

 

[OurTown]

The other day I decided to tear out the dual manifold and put the tip stub into the eductor. Well what do you know...the eductor had a big crack in it. Probably from all that extra weight on it. Because this idea of dual injecting works fine in my head I may try it again sometime. Next time I'll support the weight of those extra fittings and hoses.