improving the Wash Bay at my shop

[Dylan Gilliss]

Hey all,
At my shop we have a 60 foot long wash bay with 2 guns, one mounted at each end and ran off the same pump (not at the same time). The wash system is a Landa Pressure washer that is 3.9gpm and we run at 3000psi. I have two questions, my soap pick up is just a tee fitting on the suction side of the pump with a solonoid attached to the soap side of the tee. From there the hose goes to a soap-minder and just uses suction off the pump to suck from the soap minder. It works pretty decent as far as the quality and quantity of soap but the change over time kills me. When I turn the soap on it is almost 2 min until we see it at the wand, and closer to 3 min before the soap is gone after we shut it off. The change over time is way faster at a car wash when switching between soap and rinse and I'm trying to figure out how to improve my time. To clarify the wash pump runs about 80 feet of 1/2 inch hose before it gets to the boom hanging on the wall. My other questions is what is the best way to inject low pressure soap at the boom? I would like to able to run some sort of bug cleaner right off the wand so we don't have to rely on filling a hand pump with spray 9 and spraying the trucks down that way. Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[cantbreak80]

From my experience, your changeover time is primarily due to the 80 feet of 1/2” hose. There’s nearly a gallon of soapy water in an 80 ft length of ½” hose. 3/8” is more commonly used in the car wash industry. That same 80 ft of 3/8” hose/tubing? Less than ½ gallon.

Another issue is the age and material of the hose. Old rubber hoses can dramatically absorb soap. It takes longer to clear the soap from an old saturated hose. New thermoplastic hose…or even better, 3/8” stainless steel tubing from the pumping station to the boom will provide much faster changeover.

Applying low pressure product thru the same boom is possible but requires a high pressure check valve manifold at the boom to prevent the LP product line from bursting. (Maintenance!!!)

IMHO, a better LP solution would be a separate applicator gun, fed from air-powered pumps such as the Flo-Jet G57. That is how I plumb self service car washes…no low pressure products are delivered thru the high pressure system. A single low pressure gun can apply multiple low pressure products, i.e. bug cleaner, tire cleaner, pre-soak, foaming wax/polish, etc. When properly plumbed, a multi-product low pressure system has rather rapid changeover so product waste is reduced…and nearly instant gratification.

 

[Dylan Gilliss]

Thanks for the reply! We are currently in the process of figuring out what we need for material to swap the system over to stainless pipe as we are tired of chasing random Pieces of Hoses blowing. However we did plan on replacing the system with 3/4” stainless. Only for the idea that someday we may put a 15gpm pump in and run two wands at once. Perhaps I’m better off going 3/8 stainless and running an additional pump and additional line in the future to run the second wand? Is 100 feet to long to run on 3/8? I just like to have things operating as professionally as I can.

 

[MEP001]

If you're going to run stainless, use 3/8" ID. You're only running 3.9 GPM, 3/8" is more than enough. 3/4" will make your changeover time worse.

You could inject soap at the boom, but you generally lose about 20% of your pressure. It would be faster and simpler than a separate applicator, but you can really kick up the cleaning ability running it separate. That's why car washes have tire cleaner and presoak at a lower pressure.

 

[Dylan Gilliss]

I would prefer to run my low pressure soap through the hp wand and just inject it at the boom. We have over head cranes in our wash bay and it going to get to congested if I have to many booms and wands going on. Back to the low pressure soap though, any suggestion on buying a pre built manifold? Or just build one out of stainless tees and nipples. And what size of lines should I run to my boom for the soap?
Thanks!

 

[MEP001]

I just realized that using an injector at the boom will reduce your pressure all the time, not just while you're applying soap. You could add a solenoid on the main line to stop the flow and force the injector line to take over, but I'm not aware of any solenoid that will work reliably at 3000 PSI. I'm trying to think of a method that won't be complicated (i.e. unreliable) or expensive. Would you be opposed to a separate pump for the soap? For under $200 you can get a Procon pump and motor and run 150 PSI and just tee it in at the boom. Car washes use those for low pressure applications and they last for many years.

 

[Dylan Gilliss]

my thought was to have a flow jet and soap minder for each soap I decide to run, run from flow jet to a manifold on top of the boom, when I decide to run Lp soap. I’d rotate the selector to the correct position and this would kill the wash pump, activate the flow jet, and let the flow jet push through the wand. I would have check valves on everything at the manifold so the hp can’t back feed the soap lines, and the one soap can’t back feed up the other soap line. Does this sound correct?

 

[MEP001]

What kind of Flojet were you looking at? The little electric ones are not very high volume or pressure, so your changeover time with a 60 foot hose is still going to be pretty long. The G57 air operated Flojets can handle 7 GPM at 90 PSI, but you must be running a very small tip to run 3.9 GPM at 3000 PSI so the changeover will still be pretty long, and you'll need an air compressor to run the Flojet. That would probably work okay if you have quick-swap tips. You would only need a check valve on the low-pressure line, the pump should prevent anything backfeeding into the high pressure line.

 

[Dylan Gilliss]

Yes the G-57 was what i was looking it. I run a 4gpm tip on the hp wand. If i wanted to run 2 different soaps i would have a seperate hose for each soap all the way to the boom in the bay, so the only change time would be when the flojet displaces the previously used fluid from the top of boom to the wand which i would guess is twenty five feet of 3/8 hose (boom is roughly 16 feet from ground and is 8 feet long) does that make sense? air is not an issue we have a very large compressor that has a refrigerated drying system on it.

 

[MEP001]

Your tip is most likely rated 4 GPM at 4000 PSI. That will be extremely low flow with only 90 PSI. You might want to test by hooking your gun to city pressure to get an idea of what the flow will be like. What you gain in changeover (if you gain anything at all) will probably be lost in the time it will take you to cover a truck with soap. I feel like your best options would either be a separate hose and gun for low pressure or just running a smaller diameter hose from pump to boom and leaving the rest as-is.

Do you by any chance have a gas-fired heater after the pump? Those have 50-100 feet of 1/2" tube in them in a coil. A guy with a car wash in a small town had such a setup in a car wash, and he replumbed the heaters ahead of the pump to solve a long chemical changeover time.

https://www.generalpump.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Spray-Tips-and-Nozzle-Brochure.pdf

 

[Dylan Gilliss]

yes i do have a boiler after the pump. I kind of forgot about taking that into consideration. Its a 1 mil btu boiler, I don't think relocating it to be ahead of the pump would work in our case as we heat the water to 225f and don't think the pump could handle that much heat. Could it?

 

[MEP001]

No, there are high-temp seals for most pumps, but those aren't meant for much above 160°. That boiler is probably 2/3 of your changeover time problem.

 

[Dylan Gilliss]

Yes your 100 percent correct. Kind of feel silly that I never took into consideration the boiler. Is there anything that exists that I can inject soap after boiler that could overcome the working pressures of the hp?

 

[mjwalsh]

A lady whose husband sold hi pressure washer units died. She called us & sold us all of his inventory of parts, reels, also an actual pressure washer with the following with a 2HP sealed Baldor Motor with a direct drive 190° F seals pump: https://www.kleen-ritecorp.com/p-15717-2sf30gs-cat-pump-3gpm-2000-psi-3450-rpm.aspx. We just sold the fancy almost brand new electric pressure washer that was on wheels to a detail shop laundromat customer. Its unloader is setup with a micro switch below it that makes the motor shut off when gun handle is released preventing the bypass from gradually getting hot.

Are any of you familiar with the following type of what appears to be chemical injection close to the nozzle of the gun based on the following picture??? I do not see any brand name on the fancy gun. I wonder if that might be an option for someone like Dylan for turning on & off flow of soap etc???

I have never encountered a gun like this before & am not familiar ... but I bet some of you have??? It helps to zoom in on what appears to be a soap feed that can be turned open or closed???

 

[MEP001]

There are injectors that work at 3000 PSI, but all injectors cost some of your pressure.

The gun Mike showed uses a bottle at the gun to inject soap. It will cause the same loss of pressure.

 

[mjwalsh]

There are injectors that work at 3000 PSI, but all injectors cost some of your pressure.

The gun Mike showed uses a bottle at the gun to inject soap. It will cause the same loss of pressure.

That bottle by the nozzle concept is so foreign to me. I did find something about the fitting near the nozzle as possibly a "foam cannon"??? The loss of pressure would be less relevant if it was set up as a foamer like in the following???

I was visualizing something a quite a bit different ... maybe a bottle with liquid concentrate ... attached to the detailer's waist with a sturdy tube & it would just be drawing the soap when the bottle's valve was metered open a small amount??

 

[Burnlife83]

Hey all,
At my shop we have a 60 foot long wash bay with 2 guns, one mounted at each end and ran off the same pump (not at the same time). The wash system is a Landa Pressure washer that is 3.9gpm and we run at 3000psi. I have two questions, my soap pick up is just a tee fitting on the suction side of the pump with a solonoid attached to the soap side of the tee. From there the hose goes to a soap-minder and just uses suction off the pump to suck from the soap minder. It works pretty decent as far as the quality and quantity of soap but the change over time kills me. When I turn the soap on it is almost 2 min until we see it at the wand, and closer to 3 min before the soap is gone after we shut it off. The change over time is way faster at a car wash when switching between soap and rinse and I'm trying to figure out how to improve my time. To clarify the wash pump runs about 80 feet of 1/2 inch hose before it gets to the boom hanging on the wall. My other questions is what is the best way to inject low pressure soap at the boom? I would like to able to run some sort of bug cleaner right off the wand so we don't have to rely on filling a hand pump with spray 9 and spraying the trucks down that way. Thanks in advance for the help!

I know this is an old post but if you still haven't found a setup you can use the Suttner St 175 dual tipped lance which lets you switch feeds on the lance and also with either of the Suttner injectors from ST160 to ST 168.Here's a video of a similar set up just with one chemical and no air using the 175 and 160

and the 164 here

. Also here's a link to download Suttner catalogues download easyfoam 365 brochure and go to page 36 to see diagrams and injector setups https://rm-suttner.com/produkte/easyfoam365-uk/?lang=en