petee_c

I live in Waterloo region, and we have very hard municipal water. I have my water softener set to 35 grains of hardness. It is basically liquid concrete.

I always have to wash my cars in the late afternoon/early evening in the shade of the house or garage to avoid waterspots when it's sunny out. I was working on my YouTube detailing degree, and came across Deionized water which uses a mixed bed resin to remove the minerals from the water. These systems are pricey. I got a TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) meter from Amazon for $20 and measured our tap water. It measured 520-550ppm.

With a Spotless water system like https://crspotless.com/product/dic-20/ I would only get about 140 gallons of spotfree water (based on their calculator) and that particular filter costs about $400USD. There are smaller ones that also use the mixed bed resin that are cheaper, but they also have less capacity.

I had a couple 55 gallon barrels from a defunct gardening project, so I decided to replumb them to serve my car wash setup.


In the barrel there is a 1/6hp (high volume/low pressure)utility pump left over from my hockey dad - backyard rink days. It has a garden hose adapter (bright green hose) and goes to a 100 mesh particle filter to a 30 micron whole house filter and then through 50' of garden hose to my 25yr old Karcher 110v pressure washer. The pressure washer I got on sale when the Weber St Cdn Tire had their grand openning in the late 90's. It has had very little use.

To prevent the utility pump from overheating/burning out, I have a remote wireless switch (like used on Christmas light) to turn the pump off between the pre rinse and the final rinse. Another option would be to y the output after the 30 micron filter, and put a short hose back into the rainbarrel and have a little bit of water go back into the barrel. But I don't have a hose splitter, and I already have the remote switch. I also shut off the PW between the 1st spray and/or foam cannon and the final rinse, as my oldie doesn't cycle the motor off on its own.

After watching detailing videos on Youtube, I wanted to give pressure washing a try again. I upgraded the gun to a gun/foam cannon/nozzle combo ($50) and a 50' Flexzilla hose ($100) from Amazon. I also added a set of quick disconnects to the hose ($20)

When figuring if this project was feasible, I did a quick time lapse of me washing my new EV to get a measure of the amount of trigger time I had on the pressure washer. while using municipal water. I figure about 5-6 minutes looks like a good ball park. That would be about 10-12 gallons given my PW is rated to 1300psi at 1.8GPM.


I ran the setup 1st with just the 100 mesh filter, and it seemed to run fine, 100 mesh is equal to about 150 microns. I added the 30 micron filter as a precaution. I don't think any thing scratchy will come out of the pressure washer. 30 micron filter doesn't noticeably affect the flow I need/get, and I was presently surpised.

With my setup, I can hold 33" of water in the barrels. Each wash only seems to use about 3-4" of water. I figure I can get 6-8 washes between rains with this setup.

The TDS reading of my rain water (tested on several different occasions) is 14ppm. Some say under 30PPM is good enough for spotless rinse. I washed my daughter's dark silver Golf yesterday in full sun, and we did not get any water spots. (that Golf hasn't had a wax in forever, so we had to towel dry it). I put a couple coats of Meguairs Ultimate Kwik Wax Spray on it, and will see how the beading is the next time it's washed (prolly in a month).

I already had the:
- pressure washer
- rain barrels
- wood stand for the rain barrels
- garden hose
- utility pump
- remote switched plug

For this project, I had to buy
- $70 of PVC to replumb the water barrels. Make sure you have an overflow that works. My rainbarrels did not before, and there is damage to about 40 bricks behind the rain barrels. This will need to be repaired at some point.
-$25 - 4 bulkheads to plumb rainbarrels, - I used 2 so far.
- $55 for new stubby gun/foam cannon/nozzles
-$28 Pressure Washer quick disconnects
-$100 new Flexzilla PW hose (50')
- $ 30 misc hose to 3/4" NPT fittings
- $ 27 100 mesh filter
-$40 30 micron 10x2.5" whole house filter

----
My total cost for the project was about $375. I now have limitless essentially spot free water.

I'd like to someday get the Simoniz/Active 1800psi 1.8GPM pressure washer from Cdn Tire. It seems to get good reviews on Youtube. It's probably quieter than the one I have, and also has auto on /stop feature for the motor/pump. It seems to go on sale often for $229, but I'll keep on using the old Karcher I have for now.

I will likely add a hose splitter with shutoff in the near feature, as this will hopefully eliminate both the remote switch I have on the pump, and also anychance of the rainbarrels losing all their water by siphoning out of the hose. (note i currently store the end of the hose above the water level in the barrels.) I will also make a bracket to mount the filters to and add a utility hook to hang the hose from.

If I end up needing more water, I may get another 55 gallon blue barrel (often $10-20 on kijiji locally) add a bulk head to it, and strap it to a dolly, and use it to hold more rain water if I see a need, and plumb that with a short 1" diameter hose as a pure Gravity feed solution to my PW. I would pump water out of the rain barrels to it through the filters. This might be needed if we get a long drought like we did last summer. (Almost all rain seemed to miss my house in July last year).

We have a large 3500ft2 house with an attached 3 car garage. There are 5 downspouts around the house, and I can fill both rainbarrels easily with any decent rain, or thundershower from the spout my barrels are connected to.

My Porsche is still in storage. Need driveway/garage space at home, and to get rid of one of my daily drivers before I want to put insurance on it. I will likely put it on the road for most of June to September this year. Having too much fun with the new BMW i4m50 daily, and our little sh$tbox Miata. Also have to balance insurance as we have a 17yr old son and 20yr old daughter at home for the summer.

SToronto

Cool man, awesome creative approach! Rain water is mostly mineral free, so that works as a free source.

I am an advocate for DI water. I have a CR Spotless however. Replace the resin about once per season, a number of cars to wash but not every week. I just use this setup for the rinse process as that is what matters. Through a pressure washer.

I used to have to disconnect and connect the CR from the loop and wheel the canister stand around. Plumbed it in-line with the water input to the pressure washer. Makes the whole process simpler, now just open and close valves depending what type of water is needed. Leave everything in their stationary storage spot.

Great to let vehicles air dry spot free, sun or not. However, washing in the sun is a futile effort.

I know it's pricey but IMO the Kranzle pressure washer is the best, hand down. Bought one about 8-9 years ago. Still runs like a champ. Used to have Karcher, Kobalt etc. Nah.

petee_c

Does your CR have a TDS meter attached? How high do you let it go before you change the resin?

I don't notice any water spots in my limitted experience with my 14ppm water... I need to place a clean panel or something similiar in the sun and splash some of my filtered rain water on it and see if it spots.

In my interwebs research, I have found a couple sites saying that under 20ppm is good enough for professional window washers, and under 30ppm should be spot free for car washing.... I do not have concrete data to back that up.

SToronto

Yes it does. I have the DIC-20 for quite a few years now, at least 4. I want to say high single digits I may see spots, I don't recall what I observed last year. Last year I recall seeing more spots than normal by seasons end, so stopped using rather than put new resin before winter. So I just replace once a year in the Spring. Just replaced last weekend. I was using it hooked up to my garden hose last few years, so more water use than pressure washer. I'm back to the pressure water hookup for this year. Mileage will vary on your starting water and water volume being fed through.

I should pull out the TDS meter I bought when looking into this, retest tap water.

Edit - I should say that I change it when it starts to show spots, rather than a number. To me it's not doing what it's supposed to at that point. Experience has shown once a year works, but I'm washing numerous cars though not weekly. So my timeline shouldn't be a certain basis for a decision. I do utilize the meter when I experience this, just to see what the number is. I also periodically check throughout the season, again just for interest. The gauge really is are there spots or not. Goal is to not have to wipe or blow dry anything. Let alone pull out quick detailer to remove spots.

SToronto

Bacteria will start to form in that water in the barrels within days. Presume it is exposed to outside air and heat which will accelerate the process.

For whatever that is worth. Probably low impact for car washing, don't drink it!

Brian 162

Good write up and idea. I recently moved to Guelph and had no idea about limited water use in the summer. I did know about water hardness. I'm on a waiting list for a rain barrel and I may try something similar

petee_c

outdoor car washing restrictions aren't too bad around here... also my neighbors don't care.... I think it's odd dates for odd number houses, even dates for even number house addresses... But with rainwater, you can wash any day.

Plastic barrels on kijiji


if you're doing it from scratch, an "RV water pump" or "RV on demand water pump" might work better... I am using the utility pump because I already had it.

Turbodan

so then are you going to have to pray for rain?
will the rain water be enough? serious q?

petee_c

In my case, I'm not sure. last year, for about a month it seemed like we didn't get any rain (at least not measurable on our rain gage) We could see it coming but it always missed us by 5-10 km it seems.

This is some rainfall total I found on Kitchener/Waterloo, which is the closest data I could find.


Doing some quick measurements on google maps, it looks like our house has about 2600ft2 of roof. I figure the downspout that I am collecting from may get about 25% of that rain coming down the spout. So say 650ft2.

each 6.25mm (1/4") of rain should net me 100 gallons, which is enough to fill my 2 barrels from empty.

We will have 5 cars at our house over the summer.... 3 of them will get washed regularly - Boxster, Miata, i4M50... say once/week. The Golf and q7 might be every couple weeks. They are a colour that doesn't show dirt easily, and the primary drivers don't care as much. I have only just started this experiment, but it looks like the smaller cars use about 10-12gallons of water to spray and rinse. the larger cars somewhere around 12-14 gallons.

It'd be nice if I got at least 1/4" rain a week, but sometimes it doesn't work out. I don't have the capacity right now to hold extra water if it rains more than that.

Brian 162

The previous owner was a plumber and he ran a 5 inch plastic pipe that ties into the downspout. When it rains it's like Niagara Falls with the amount of rain water that drains out. My neighbours are pretty chill when it comes to car washing and lawn watering

RonnyC

How often do you need to run the CR Spotless to keep it clean from algae? I was running 0 PPM and only after a week its gone up to 5 PPM, ran it for a few minutes and it went down to 3 PPM.

I have the Kranzle and CR Spotless set up also... and agree the Kranzle is the way to go - you only buy it once where with the other pressure washers my experience is they last only a few years and the gas Sthil pressure washer is loud and a PIA when you need gas... keep in mind you need a 20amp connection for the Kranzle. But the auto start/stop is nice.

SToronto

I've never had that experience, algae or visible growth. I say visible as I haven't tested for bacteria. I've even left water in the canisters over winter, like this year and no visible growth in the water or resin when dumping out. Nor does it smell foul. It's the typical smell with the resin. I usually drain them before storage and store indoors.

Maybe you should test your water source for contaminants if you are getting algae growth in a short period of time.

I have a 1122TST which uses 15A. I think the manual recommends more, it was a european manual. Looking at them now this model is 15A rated on their US site. Their NA business has grown I'm sure in last 5 years. Lots of advocates in the detailing world for their washers and subsequently users. Easily serviceable too, I've replaced springs and seals in my ownership, some DI resin made it out of the canister and into the unit. Just order OE parts online.

RonnyC

Thanks, I'll test the water... I did not check the canister's - I was just saying algae growth as it made sense as it was 0PPM at first and now registering 3-5PPM.

maybe its the resin that seeped out...

SToronto

Oh, I guess I assumed you saw algae. Actual algae wouldn't make it that far due to the filters. The TDS meter built into the machine is a dissolved solids meter, so doubt it's capable of picking up algae growth.

Maybe the resin is old and you have really hard water. Some unknowns on my end. You'll have a sense of what hard water is if you test your city water. Pick up a TDS meter and check the water before it goes into the CR. You can also test water coming out of the CR to see if your independent TDS meter matches the TDS meter on the CR. IIRC the meters themselves are not expensive. I bought a meter to test my city water before jumping on the CR, to understand if it was going to be worthwhile. If you have really hard water, you'll be changing resin often which is not cost effective.

petee_c

It also depends on the flow of the water through the canister.... too fast and your ppm goes up.... Note CR considers under 20ppm to be spotfree....