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Have you ever let a small project get out of control?

DiamondWash

DiamondWash

Well-known member
All I wanted to do was replace my rinse nozzles on my SoftGloss and before I knew it I was replacing covers, hoses, fittings, bolts, wiring, air cylinders has this ever happened to you? simple $15 project turned into over a $1,000 project, same goes for when I goto Menard's or Lowe's I go in for 1 or 2 things walk out with half the store LOL :D
 
To that I would add overlooking a simple fix. I remember a while back I was working with a rep at a touch free tunnel in New Mexico. Normally troubleshooting was no real problem for me. The operator was not happy with the performance of our chemical that had worked for him when it was first put on line. The titration was within line. So was the chemical usage. We adjusted everything we could and could still not get good results. We worked on it over 4 hours tweeking almost everything we could think of and still weren't getting good results. Then I looked in the corner of the room and saw a stack of bags of salt. I walked over to the softener,looked in the tank and discovered it was completely out of salt. Filled the tank and within an hour things were great. After that brain fart I made sure the first thing I checked on a set up was the softener. Turned a couple of minute fix into a 4 hour drama.
 
yes! 2 used vacs turned into: build platforms, dig trench for wiring. paint new lights. buy posts for lights. run conduit and wire. remove old decals. remove and clean / wash filter bags. order new safe door and grind to fit. order new slug buster 2. order 24vdc transformer. order new hoses and claw tools.
 
I replace my nozzles every 6-8 months I switched from brass to plastic nozzles with the same GPM and spray angle
 
Three years ago, I rewired my bay lights to convert to CFLs. Each fixture was “Home Run” to the new lighting control panel.

This year, I decided to convert to LED lighting. So, the conductors had to be spliced from the abandoned wall-mounted junction boxes to the new purlin-mounted junction boxes…with some new conduit runs.

The 3-year-old, dual circuit astronomical time switch was abandoned, a new lighting controller was installed and programmed and the output power relays were reconfigured. Since several LEDs were to be controlled by customer activity, the coin pulse wires from the bays to the controller needed to be connected…back to the engine room.

The water boiler’s circulator was designed to run 24/7. The controller now turns the circulator off if the car wash is entirely idle for 10 minutes.

And if the roof trough temperature drops below 36F (meaning the heating cable system has failed) the controller turns on the auxiliary heating system (a warm water circulating pump that uses the rinse water tank as it’s supply). Since the rinse tank supplies the auxiliary heat, the controller has to turn on the water boiler’s circulator, too!

Because the controller has sufficient I/O, I added the 2 bill changer counters to the program…and since the controller was now seeing every coin pulse from the bays…I figured, why not add a daily and weekly “money report” to the controller’s display?

Then, there’s the internet monitoring capability for the controller…I connected that, too!

So, yeah…Out of Control!!!
 
I started a new project(S) today in fact I was walking around my vac island and a simple decal had come loose so I tore it off and then began to peel every other decal off now I'am replacing all decals on all vacuums, replacing the vac claws and new swivel adapters, ohhh how the little things will manifest themselves into larger projects.
 
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