[craigster59]

Originally Posted by t6dpilot

Former car wash owner here. 100" tunnel that had the latest and greatest equipment at the time. I had a water reclamation system installed that reused something like 80+% of the water. It had six tanks for post wash reconditioning. First two let particulate settle and the clean water overflowed to the next tank. The third tank ran the water through a cyclonic filter that reduced particulate down to less than 5 micron. The fourth tank had a honeycomb structure that let the bacteria that normally live in our water supply a place to grow. That bacteria fed on the liquid oils, chemicals, etc that remained in the recycled water. The clean water would overflow into the 5th tank where the dead bacteria would settle and go to the sewer. The clean water would overflow into the 6th tank which was reused in the wash for certain stations.

Pretty amazing system that cut down fresh water usage (cost) and did not smell like sulfur. Many of the recycled water systems at the time were filtered and while that did the job adequately, the resulting water smelled like sulfur.

So was it as great of a money making machine as some make it out to be? I've always heard carwashes and laundromats are great at producing income flow with minimal supervisory participation.