Spotless Car Washing Idea, Will it work?

[89turbocabmike]

Since my car is a daily driver and things get pretty dusty I would like to be able to rinse off my cars quickly without having to dry them down. My water at home tends to leave nice white spots and even with towel drying. I was wondering if I hooked up one of those Home depot/Lowes reverse osmosis filters ($199) to a plastic storage container, maybe 25 gallons with a tap for filling a wash bucket and then to my $50 cheapo electric pressure washer. The osmosis filters run off water pressure so I would tap off my garage hose and rig up a valve in the storage container like a toilet-bowl shut-off works.
I know I could get all that to work pretty easily, question is will the water be clean enough? They quote about 99% filtering efficiency. Car dealers use that ultrapure water which I think is 99.9%. Any Ideas or concepts I've missed?

[singpilot]

A 105MPH dry cycle?

[surflvr911sc]

Ro, DI or both will work great the problem w/ RO is delivery. As soon as the head pressure on the tank is lost the RO filter needs time to fill and pressurize it back up. I don’t see how it would work w/ pressure washer for more than a few seconds.

I think a better way would be to hook one up at your sink so you can use it for drinking water. Then when you wash your car, fill up a bug sprayer or similar to use as the final rinse. Maybe a paint gun (Wagner?) would work well too.

I have RO & DI but I don’t bother using it for the car but I have thought about it.

[JonT]

Don't know if your plan will work but 2 big soft cotton towels can dry a pcar pretty fast--less than 5 mins--then run over it quick with a California duster. At a diy spray wash you could do your whole car in 15 mins or less.

[1982911sc]

If you only are getting dusty I would suggest a California Duster. It won't work for insect guts or heavy dirt, however I can go months without a wash by just using the duster. My 911 only sees nice days however even if it was my daily driver, the duster is a great tool for reducing washes. I know this didn't answer your question, but a suggestion none the less.

[gchappel]

One of the local new car lots- not porshce- does exactly that. I don't know exactly what type of filter system they use, but I talked to their carwash kid and all they do is hose the cars off- they never dry them, and they look good. No water spots, etc. Let us know if it works
Gary

[89turbocabmike]

The California Car Duster is a must have as you have mentioned. Part of my problem is my cab top becomes dusty. I try to use DIY washes when I can. Everything around me is full serve.

Ryan, I'm familiar basically with the RO process but not with the head pressure you spoke of. I know that RO takes time and many systems have a reserve tank. I had thought of just having a larger 15-25gal reserve tank to supply the pressure washer. Does that mean if you have RO at your sink and open the RO water spigot that it can't rejuvenate the reserve tank until the spigot is closed again? Thanks for you help with this, Michael

[Vipergrün]

I have a spigot on the soft water side of the water line in my garage. I always wash the p-car with soft water....

CA duster is great too.

-B

[surflvr911sc]

The RO unit is always processing water until the pressure on output side of the membrane (tank side) equals the input side. As soon as you start the flow of water from the system it will begin to fill it back up until it again reaches equal pressure. The larger the reserve tank the better but even a 25 gallon tank is limited to the volume that can flow through the 1/8” ID line and regardless of the size will deplete pressure fairly rapidly. There are pumps for them that will maintain higher pressure for the entire volume of the tank, but if they could keep up w/ a hose sprayer or pressure washer I do not know.

RO systems also process water slowly. I have a 100 gallon per day system and when the tank is empty it still flows but it flows very slowly. The larger gallon per day capacity the more $$$. 50 gallon per day is the smallest I would recommend even for just drinking water purposes.

DI (de ionized) units are much faster but they can deplete the resins very quickly depending on your local water chemistry. The resins will need to be replaced fairly often so there is an on going cost factor. These are the kind of unit that car detailers use and what supposedly comes out of the self wash places “final rinse” settings.

Using them both together will make the some of the purest water you can get other than a lab.

If I were to do it, I would just fill up a “bug sprayer” type container and use it for a final rinse of the car. Two gallons sprayed evenly over a freshly washed car will go a long way to rinse the hard calcium rich water off.

[89turbocabmike]

Thanks for the explanation Ryan. I'm going to test out the bug sprayer idea with my neighbors RO. I'll have to give this idea some more thought. As I work around alot of car dealerships I love the idea of being able to just spray and go! Thanks again, Michael

[JonT]

Interesting project Michael--make sure you let us know how it works--we'd all like to know how to spend less time cleaning to allow more driving.

[Mike Kast]

I have hard well water in my house so I had a Culligan whole house water softener hooked up about 10 years ago. As far as I know the resin needs to be backwashed with salt to be refreshed and that's all. The resin lasts the lifetime of the system and the system has a lifetime guarantee. It replaces 1 part hardness with 1 part salt. The water tastes great but it has trace amounts of sodium and still leaves water spots. Or SALT spots. They wipe off easily but still... salt on the car? You can also use potassium for people on salt restricted diets. that costs about 4 times as much as salt though. I wipe it down as fast as I can. I keep about 3 or 4 towels ready for the dry cycle when I'm washing.
R/O is something I did for a saltwater reef tank I had set up a long time ago. I ran it into a 50 gallon garbage can. This is what I know about R/O...
As far as water purity R/O water is almost as pure as distilled water and may actually be too pure to drink. I heard, and it makes sense to me, that drinking pure water will actually strip your body of necessary vitamins and minerals. I promise you the Culligan man will dispute that but you don't have to be a gynecologist to know where the P&ssy is... The starved water molecules like to be filled with something and they don't really care what it is.
R/O and distilled are also expensive and use a lot of energy to produce. R/O filters work by the filter being constantly cleansed by the water it is cleaning so a large majority of the water being filtered goes down the drain as waste. I don't remember how much but I think it is a ridiculous amount like 10 gallons of waste water for 1 gallon of pure R/O water. To wasteful for my liking. Especially in California.
There is no free lunch fella's.

[onewhippedpuppy]

I think the RO system, connected to a pressure tank similar to what you have on a well would be the way to go. The RO system may filter too slow to do multiple car washes per day, but if you had a 50 gal. pressure tank, that would be enough for a final rinse. Hook up a gate valve to the pressure tank so you can connect your hose, and it would be much easier than filling a garden sprayer. It's a good ideo, there's nothing worse than looking over a freshly washed car and seeing water spots. The only problem is, now you have me thinking......

[autobonrun]

I installed a RO in my house a couple years back and connected it up to a separate faucet on my kitchen sink. I originally installed it to provide RO water for my salt water reef aquarium but use it for drinking water and to make car wash water as well. Because of the low pressure, I keep about 10- 1 gallon containers filled, as well as a couple 7 gallon containers I bought at a camping store. I use the water for both wash and rinse on my car. When I wash/rise outdoors, I just pour the RO water over the car from the gallon containers to rinse. Sometimes when its cold out, I wash it inside and use a sprayer to minimize the amount of water that ends up on the garage floor.

The RO water does reduce the spotting, but I don't think I would buy one just for car wash water. The RO reduces chemicals mechanically and by RO via filtration and by forcing the water through a membrane (hence the slow production). It removes the vast majority of unwanted components. A DI uses Ion exchange to remove even more. I may add a DI downstream from the RO to make the water even more pure for my aquarium. Hydrotech makes a good unit. The link shows typical setups and gives performance specs. Check out the RO TFC setup.

http://www.hydrotechnology.com/newtext/products.htm

[onewhippedpuppy]

Forgot to add this before, around here there is a Mr. Clean car washing system being advertised on TV for thirty or fourty dollars. Screws onto the end of a hose like on of those lawn fertilizers, and contains a soap resevoir and PUR water filter. Claims to leave a spotless finish on your car without drying, or your money back. They also say, buy now to be the first to own one, product won't appear in stores until spring. If my wife doesn't watch me closely, I might just buy one.

[surflvr911sc]

Originally posted by Mike Kast
As far as I know the resin needs to be backwashed with salt to be refreshed and that's all. The resin lasts the lifetime of the system and the system has a lifetime guarantee. It replaces 1 part hardness with 1 part salt. The water tastes great but it has trace amounts of sodium and still leaves water spots

As far as water purity R/O water is almost as pure as distilled water and may actually be too pure to drink. I heard, and it makes sense to me, that drinking pure water will actually strip your body of necessary vitamins and minerals. I promise you the Culligan man will dispute that but you don't have to be a gynecologist to know where the P&ssy is... The starved water molecules like to be filled with something and they don't really care what it is.

I need to step back in to correct the above. For your whole house water softening system the above comments about the resins (salts) is basically true. That is not the kind of system I was referring to though.

DI is a whole other animal- the resins must be cooked at high temp for hours (I forget the exact temp/time). You can partially rejuvenate them in your oven but overall its not practical do anything but replace them.

As far as RO water not being good for you… every manufacturer of a water filter not using RO claims this. Why? B/C they can’t compete w/ the purity of RO. I’ve seen their claims and they are so full of $hit the water comes out brown.

Again, RO+DI is as good as it gets outside of a lab, period.

This is my favorite RO/DI company- SpectraPure Inc.

[masraum]

Just another thought. I have heard of people with well waxed cars using a leaf blower to blow the water beads off. Personally, I have never had a problem drying the car with 2 or 3 dry clean towels. The thing is so small that it only takes a couple minutes. The only caveat is that you can't do it in direct sun during the middle of the day, or since my car is black and I am in Houston it can't be dried fast enough. Shade or afternoon/evening as the best place/time to wash.

[Mike Kast]

As far as RO water not being good for you… every manufacturer of a water filter not using RO claims this. Why? B/C they can’t compete w/ the purity of RO. I’ve seen their claims and they are so full of $hit the water comes out brown.

I have to apologize for my scientific opinions based on hearsay and all. It wasn't a salesmen who told me that it may not be the best thing to be drinking R/O or distilled water though. Even worse! It was my natural, organic, freakish, treehuggin', witch, chef, sister-in-law.
Starved water molecules do need to be filled with something. As they say "water always finds it's own level"
There is no argument over the purity of the water. the argument is that the purity may be a problem.
There just is no simple solution and R/O wastes a lot of water.

[surflvr911sc]

No apologies required, w/o differing opinions/comments the discussion get really boring, really fast.

The topic of water purity and the body could be a whole other discussion that doesn’t have to do anything w/ this board and would probably require a few doctors to come to a final conclusion. I would bet that there would still be differing opinions even if that were to happen. I am not a doctor, although I play one on the PP BBS, but here are my thoughts.
Even though you can’t tell by my size (do to a lazy exercise regiment) I am “mostly” vegetarian, I do eat fish though. I have been drinking RO water almost exclusively for a long time also, other than bottled water on occasion.

Your body normally processes more than it can handle and expels much of what you put into it unused, especially if you are an American. The quality of what it processes is the difference. If you are already limiting yourself of vitamins and minerals the fact that RO water isn’t adding any (and arguably, may take some away) becomes moot.

If you are eating healthy and you body is in good physical condition then it will have more vitamins and minerals than it can process anyway. I believe the benefit of not putting contaminates from impure water into your body largely outweighs the small amount of vitamins and minerals pure water might deplete.

My .02 anyway.

[sammyg2]

I saw that advertisement for MR-Clean spotless washing, my first instinct was to call BS, I can't wait to hear from someone who has tried it.
I figure no way can a small hand held system like that actually filter out all the minerals, maybe the trick is to add surfactants to the water for the final rinse to eliminate the surface tension thereby eliminating the tendency to spot. Would work in theory, but surfactants tend to be environmentally unfriendly in any strength.
Try putting a strong surfactant in a duck pond and watch the ducks sink one by one. On second thought, don't try it.

It did peak my interest, I figure in less that a year that $40 system will cost about $8.