Foam brush weep or Cold Weather Soap?

[Joswhaha]

Howdy y’all
I’m in southwest Oklahoma where it January and February it could be 20-30 at night and 60 or 70 during the day. Currently my foam brush, foam gun, and wand are all on the weepmizer. I am thinking I could save some on water and on a long wait time for the first foam brush usage of the day if I had a chemical that wouldn’t freeze for the foam products.

Does anyone put something in the foam chemicals instead of weep them? Or should I just weep them and not worry about it.

 

[MEP001]

If I were close enough to my wash, I'd put methanol and some extra soap in the tank at night before the freeze and run it through the lines. I've done this a few times before, but it's just too far of a drive to do it every time. If we had more regular freezes I might set up a second tank with a methanol mix and switch it over manually before an extended freeze. I have to keep the foam brush working as much as possible since I get a lot of people who come in at 7 am and expect the foam brush to work even if it's below freezing.

 

[Earl Weiss]

FWIW I use AF soap and weep. Weep to keep lines open and AF soap to keep it from freezing on contact when it's below 20 degrees.

 

[Toms PTcarwash]

I have separate tanks for regular and winter foam brush. I mix the winter foam brush with methanol. I keep mine good to 0 degrees, but you can mix it to whatever protection temp you want.

 

[Randy]

With the help of 2Biz I designed a changeover system for my foam brush system using Output 2 on the Weepmizer to change the foam brush system over to the AF foam brush soap and purge the foam brush system of the regular foam brush soap. I have most of the parts, I haven’t found the time to finish it. It’ll get down into the mid 20’s here at night and warm up to above freezing by mid-morning so it’s not feasible to use the AF foam brush during the day. We don’t go to the car washes every day so switching products isn’t in the cards, right now we use weep water.

 

[Toms PTcarwash]

You may already be on top of this but if you're not there every day, and you use a weepmizer output to switch to winter mix, how will you turn on all of the foam brushes to purge the lines? Many ways to do it, but it needs done to or you will still freeze.

 

[Randy]

You may already be on top of this but if you're not there every day, and you use a weepmizer output to switch to winter mix, how will you turn on all of the foam brushes to purge the lines? Many ways to do it, but it needs done to or you will still freeze.

It’s really simple. A stainless steel tank, a 3 way solenoid valve, a normally closed solenoid valve, a timed relay. When the weepmizer gets below 34 degrees power is applied to the 3 way valve, switching one valve open and the other closed, one side of the 3 way valve is on the regular foam brush and the other is on the AF soap. The inlet of Flojet pump is connected to both the regular foam brush soap and the AF soap with a 3 way controlling which product to be used. Then the timed relay opens the normally closed solenoid valve which is on the weep manifold for the foam brush system, the Flojet pump discharge is connected to both the regular foam brush system and the solenoid valve on the weep manifold. When Flojet pump starts the system is purged, the timed relay is set for X amount of seconds and then closes stopping the Flojet pump. Now when someone uses the foam brush they are going to get AF soap. When the temperature gets above 34 degrees the system goes back to normal. I was thinking about using a timed relay on each solenoid valve on the foam brush board but I’d have to have a relay on each valve. Now I need to find time to put this together.

 

[Toms PTcarwash]

Yep, that will work. I do have two tanks one for normal and one for antifreeze mix, not sure about your system, but mine would need two three-way control valves. One for the feed and one for the bypass return to the tanks.
I've thought about doing this way back but decided to keep with the KISS principal. If I leave my system in antifreeze mode for a day, it may use a gallon of methanol or about $2.50. The pay back just isn't there in my opinion.

 

[Toms PTcarwash]

Not trying to deter you, just kicking around ideas. I am not sure if you can program a dead band into the weepmizer output, but if not, you could end up purging and switching back and forth several times a day or night when temps are hovering around setpoint. If this is the case, there could be a lot of waste.