Logic and Perspective instead of hype and fear

Tony Shelton

Tony Shelton

BS Detector, Esquire
Today was a day I had been waiting for, a chance to show introduce some logic into the way we look at and present ourselves.

We had a nice rain today. This is near the end of the deluge. All the really bad stuff had already washed away so I decided to throw a polypropylene debris filter down. This is what we use for basic debris filtration when using only hot water on sidewalks as specified in our city's BMP's.

My calculation on the flow is approximately 1800 gallons per minute based on 2ft per second movement with a minimum width of 1 ft and an average depth of 3 inches. (Feel free to correct if I'm wrong)

In perspective. That means in the seven minutes I left this filter in the water, as much water passed as a 6gpm skid could clean in a whole week. Notice the water is completely free of debris after the filter.


More to come
 
The previous videos were alongside my house.

This one is a minor street a block away while it was still raining a little bit.

My best calculation on the flow of this one is approximately 10,000 gallons a minute.

In the seven minutes I had the filter in the water more water passed this point than a single skid could produce in an entire month.


One more coming
 
This is a street perpendicular to the other two streets. I can't even begin to calculate how much water is flowing here.

This is all within a 1/2 square mile area in a metropolitan city consisting of 600 square miles.


One more video coming that isn't my own:
 
By contrast, here is the runoff from air filter cleaning on the roof of a building going full blast as 6 gpm.

NOTE- the video narration says it is from the whole building, but it is only from the left half. After the video I found the runoff from the other half coming out on the other side.

50 powerwashers working 5 nights a week, year round for 5 years could not produce the amount of water that empties into lake mead during one storm in ONE day. (150,000,000 gallons)
ref. http://southwest.construction.com/features/archive/0402_feature5.asp

 
Width x Depth x Speed of flow = Cubic ft All measurements in ft Speed is ft / time (sec, min, etc)

Cubic ft x 7.5 = gallons

So 1 ft x .25 ft x 2 ft/sec = .5 cub ft / sec .5 x 7.5 gal x 60 sec = 225 gpm

a lot of water in one micro-stream!
 
Tony Shelton said:
Here is one of the dozens of channels serving the Las Vegas Valley during a storm:

Any scientists care to estimate the flow here? It's about 90 ft wide and around 12 ft deep at this point.

Click to expand...

90 ft x 12 ft x (20 ft/sec)? x 7.5 g/ft^3 = 162,000 gal per sec! 9.72 MILLION gal per minute!
 
Now imagine it's 2016 and the gamble has paid off and the PW$A has convinced the EPA that we are,.......what did they say in Houston.......Major Offenders?

And vacuum or pump reclaim has become the norm.




PRE - PWNA/Hinderliter/Gamble

20 powerwashers with their machines running 6 hrs per night
20 washers x 6gpm x 60minutes x 6 hrs = 43,200 gallons of water. Most of this would never reach the MS4 even if we forced it that direction.
If half of it made it there that would be less than 22,000 gallons of water. OR the equivalent of less than 2 swimming pools of total DILUTED and debris filtered runoff.



POST - PW#A/Hinderliter/Gamble

20 powerwashers with their machines running 6 hrs per night
All the water (around 40,000 gallons) diverted to tax the sewer system
20 more small engines to run the vaccuum/sump equipment = 20 engines @ emissions of 34 cars per hour x 6 hrs = the equivalent of adding 4,080 cars onto the road that night. ref- http://bordercenter.org/chem/smallengines.htm

Meanwhile prices double for the customers, many of them won't wash at all for fear of fines or because they just flat can't afford it.

With less customers the market becomes tighter.

Many powerwashers will go out of business because of the cost and drought of customers.

On the bright side, distributors and service centers will have more equipment to sell and constantly repair. And the larger companies will have fun buying up bargain equipment on craigslist.

IF ONLY MANUFACTURERS HAD DISREGARDED THE BS THAT HAS BEEN FED TO US BY OUR OWN INDUSTRY LEADERS THEY COULD HAVE SPENT THE LAST 25 YEARS MAKING BETTER, MORE EFFICIENT, MORE SERVICEABLE, MORE RELIABLE AND MORE POWERFUL EQUIPMENT INSTEAD OF TRYING TO FORCE US TO BUY UNNECESSARY OVERPRICED EQUIPMENT OUR ENTIRE INDUSTRY WOULD BE BETTER OFF BY NOW.

HOW DO WE GET THOSE WASTED 25 YEARS BACK???????????

Is this really "for the children?" What children? The children of the distributors or the larger companies? Putting an additional 40,000 gallons of water into the sewer system and the equivalent the emissions of 4000 cars on the road each night is good for what children???????

Making companies pay so much that they refuse to clean that nasty sidewalk your two year old is now falling down on and touching with her hands outside the restaurant is good for whose children??????

It's for the children.........it's the biggest BS and hoax ever perpetrated on an industry and we fell for it hook line and sinker. And many of us still are falling for it.

How long before the mask comes off and the icons are revealed for what they have really done to us?
 
For the record I'm not making the distributors out to be the bad guy. They were fed the same song and dance we were and they were simply trying to make a living based on what they believed.

I'm also not blaming guys who sell vacuum equipment for situations where it will increase speed such as indoors, on large plaza areas, highly contaminated areas or concentrated grease or petroleum spills. There is a market and a place for this type of equipment, but EVERY CLEANING SITUATION IS NOT IT.
 
Great Documentation and Facts Tony!!
 
So where do we go from here?

When the PW@A BMP's were being REVEALED to us there was what appeared to be an opportunity for us to give suggestions for approval.

One big thorn in the BMP's was the hot water issue. Hundreds or jurisdictions including Las Vegas, The San Francisco Bay Area and many others have BMP's in place already that have no mention of hot water whatsoever. For normal plaza cleaning they have used common sense and state that runoff without soap must be screened for debris and the remaining runoff may go in the storm drain.

The PW#A says the same thing......but with one elephant in the room disguised as a small detail. Their BMP's state that only COLD water plaza cleaning is allowed to be mesh filtered and then go in the drain.

Why is this a big deal??

Here's why. Effective cleaning of most flat surfaces requires one of two things, SOAP or HEAT. What the Pwn@ BMP's did was effectively make all effective surface cleaning require reclaim.

Why? Robert says it's because it "EMULSIFIES" whatever dirty substance is on the concrete. What????? Of course it does. That is the difference between cleaning and just spraying water.

So, in effect, the PW#A says we must reclaim if we actually CLEAN something.

Why would an organization that claims to represent us come up with BMP's that are more restrictive than the Bay Area of San Francisco?

Apparently that question has drawn a line in the sand between contractors. Some think I'm the bad guy for daring to question an "icon" in the industry like Robert. Others who don't know who Robert is, or don't care for the techniques they've seen over the years with Robert himself or the PW#A can easily see that making BMP's that are more restrictive than what the governments already require can't possibly be good representation of contractors in our industry.

That's ok. I'll keep fighting for both sides of the line. I don't mind being the bad guy. I sleep good at night knowing that nothing I've done or stood for has ever been tainted by a profit motive on my part. PWI and Ron have taught me a lot and I'm trying to repay.

I was right about the UAMCC a couple of years ago when most thought I was the bad guy. Once the truth came out few stepped forward and said "hey, you were right". I will be found to be right on this also, but when the truth comes out don't worry about telling me I was right, it's not important to be recognized as right, it's important to make positive contributions in an industry where the contractors have been at the mercy of anybody who wants to make a buck off of them.

What are the plans to make positive contributions? I am going to work my hardest to bring some common sense into the perception of our industry. Within the next two years we will go from "major offenders" to "major defenders" of a clean environment for our kids and yours.

The regulators I've met with over the past year bear little resemblance to exaggerated version we've been told about. There are exceptions to the rule, like the situation in Houston, but that is not the norm. And only Ron was able to turn things around there. I wish I had been there.

Since the PW#A listened to nothing we had to say about the BMP's and further even lied about "shopping" them to the municipalities, they have effectively abandoned the contractors and represent ___________ and ____________ and ___________. You fill in the blanks. You can put whoever you want in those blanks, but "contractors" is not one of the answers.

If you want to change the perception of our industry join the UAMCC to help them get the funding to make real change so we can work smart, legal, cost effectively and freely. There are things that need to be done and it will take a concerted effort of a lot of us to do it.
 
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