Well, let's see... First I had to make the city happy. That meant a engineering report outlining the deficiencies which were basically that the roof purlins needed to be replaced. The panels on the roof were replaced about 9 years ago so they were still in good shape. I kept getting bids for 20k or so to replace roof but I just wanted the purlins done. So, I just bought contractor liability insurance and did it myself. That saved a bunch of money. Since the old raggedy flourescent lights had to come down, I replaced them with 80w LED wall packs which worked out great. Had to have a plumbing inspection which turned out ok, just had to clean out the pits and grit traps that I had planned on doing anyway. That and just general clean up and lawn maintenance made the city whole and dismissed the substandard property case. On to the actual wash. It is a 5 bay built by Coleman in the late 70's. Still has original motors with a mix of Cat 310 and 5cp pumps. Mostly the original low pressure boards but with one add on (still old as hell) and one manifold updated to a KIP integrated manifold block. For some reason, it was set up with two foam brushes caddy corner from each other. I thought this was stupid and I converted one of the low pressure boards to triple foam gun. There is a fairly new Coleman spot free system that wasn't working but after correctly wiring float switches and replacing a couple relays, that was online. A couple of pumps were pulsating so I replaced seals and cleaned valves and that was fixed. I replaced every inch of hose in the whole operation. New brushes, guns, etc. The wash has 5 Coleman vacs, all bought at the same time as the roof and spot free(after hurricane Ike in 2008) that consist of 1 regular vac, 3 fragrance vacs, and one shampooer vac. I had to replace a few filter bags that were cut and a few motors that were missing or bad. On the fragrance vacs I cleaned all of the fragrance fluid solenoids. The shampoo vac hose for the shampooer is ripped off and I have not bought a new one yet. I replaced a few Dixmor 7 timers and a few acceptors. It has been open for about a month now and seems to have a glimmer of hope after this last weekend of favorable weather. Several people have told me that it was a very busy wash in the past. The only competition is on the other side of town. The real estate is almost 2 acres so I plan on expanding with some other business venture at some point. It is in a lower income area so I have to stay on top of things but that demographic is what works for SS down here. Plus it was something I could actually afford to gamble on. If it gets half as busy as my other site, I will call it a sucess.
