Some car wash "history"

[MEP001]

A lot of you have probably never seen anything like this, but in the 70's and 80's many car washes used what was basically a well pump setup for low pressure delivery to the bays. It would have a pump, a bladder tank, a pressure switch to keep it pressurized, and there had to be a check valve to keep the pressure trapped in the tank. This was fine for foam brush, but some equipment manufacturers and operators started using the same setup for tire cleaner. Some of those used copper lines to the bays, and 1/4" soft copper has up to 5000 PSI burst pressure. I personally know of two operators who had a check valve in a bay fail and had the bladder tank burst and launched through the roof. One of them showed me where the tank crashed back down through the roof and back into the room. If you're a fan of Mythbusters, you know that a water heater tank will reach up to 750 feet when it explodes.

 

[Earl Weiss]

National Pride had a single pump - I heard it was something used in Oil Felds that served all bays. Well they actually had 2 so one could be a back up.

 

[OurTown]

Super Wash was still installing those in the 2000s for presoak but with poly braid hose so no roof repair needed when a check valve went bad. We had the setup before our pump went bad and switched over to a Flojet.

 

[PaulLovesJamie]

A lot of you have probably never seen anything like this...

I have that exact setup for my homemade weep system, yes I actually use a shallow well pump.
Also for my well at home... minus the 5000 psi rocket laucher feature.

 

[MEP001]

National Pride had a single pump - I heard it was something used in Oil Felds that served all bays. Well they actually had 2 so one could be a back up.

I heard of those, I used to manafe a chain of washes that had them but they were replaced with stack units in th 80's. I only saw a picture of the pump in a SSCWN issue.

 

[Randy]

This summer I was doing an appraisal on a Self-serve car wash and they had 2 of the old school shallow well water pumps with the bladder tanks, 1 for foam brush and 1 for Presoak. The Presoak looked rather new. I asked the owner why he was still using that setup and he asked why is there something else that’s better, he’d never heard of Flo-Jet or any of the other options. So there are still a few of them out there.

 

[Eric H]

Monorail has this pump setup. Worked great In the north. Because the fluid was always moving there was no risk of the low pressure functions freezing. An added bonus was that the friction created with this setup kept the fluid nice and warm. I would buy a cheap well pump at Home Depot for $100 and expect to replace it every 2-3 years.
my Carolina Pride pump stand that I bought in ‘04 still used it for the presoak. They had a immersion heated in the tank to keep the temp over 100 degrees. They also used this setup as trough heat instead of having a separate trough heat system.
I don’t think I would criticize a setup like these because they are easy to find replacement parts and more importantly IT WORKS!

 

[Greg Pack]

my Carolina Pride pump stand that I bought in ‘04 still used it for the presoak. They had a immersion heated in the tank to keep the temp over 100 degrees. They also used this setup as trough heat instead of having a separate trough heat system.
I don’t think I would criticize a setup like these because they are easy to find replacement parts and more importantly IT WORKS!

Yeah, I still use that setup. But that pump running 24/7 drove me nuts. I installed an MX10 controller so the pump only ran when a bay was on. I do have a small switch to override in the rare occasion I need to heat the trough.

 

[MEP001]

Yeah, I still use that setup. But that pump running 24/7 drove me nuts. I installed an MX10 controller so the pump only ran when a bay was on. I do have a small switch to override in the rare occasion I need to heat the trough.

I helped a guy modify one which was easy, I also added a controller plus a second relay to turn the pump on with the weep system. Before that they were going in at 8:00 PM every day and turning off the breaker. Despite all those extra parts in the bay I've seriously considered doing the same thing, but the last two winters I've just been shutting down the wash and blowing out the lines.

 

[jprb]

I'm still operating a couple well pumps with my foam brush setups. They have braided plastic hose, instead of copper. I've replaced a couple of the presoak pumps with flojets, and will do the same when/if the well pumps fail on the foam brush. They are Pro Equipment (Super Wash) setups from the late 90's.

 

[Keno]

We have this setup left for foam brush at one location, tire cleaner and PS were moved to flojet when the well pumps went out. Will do the same when foam brush pump quits.