I would make the investment on a RO system if you are doing alot of cars especially if the TDS levels of your water is fairly low. The only thing bad about the RO is you will be carrying the water from your house/shop to the lots and may have to refill during the day. I used to carry 1,000 gallons and could do about 650 cars with that fairly easily. I would reccomend acquiring a 2.0-2.8 gpm machine that runs about 1500psi if you can find one. The motor can be a 9hp from harbor freight, pump should run around 250 per machine and your looking at a machine that will cost a total of 550-600 and you can still try to bypass back to your tank. If i had it to do all over again and may enter that market again when things are better for car dealers, this is the exact setup I would run.
On the other side you can Run a DI tank on your trailer and string out several hundred feet of garden hose to supply the system. The only downside I see to that is you will have to check the TDS output every so often to see if you need to recharge a tank
Have any of you ever used borax as a water softner? Im saving my money up to install a ionizer but til then would like to use something else.
Thanks for the help
Since I posted this thread we have been using SOSoft from SunBrite. It doesnt make it 100 % spotless but it does make it 85 %. But also allows the water to stay on the windows longer which was our biggest concern.
When I posted this thread I just got laid off from my full time job. Here it is 3 months later and we have 15 car lots we do weekly and 3 of those lots we do twice a week. The avg price per car is $1.25. We rinse the car dry the windows and keep on moving.
I can say that it pays the bills and put some money back in the bank. On a good day we do 200 cars in about 4 hours total work time. So it's really not a bad thing when your slow or just need some fill in work.
We have lots calling us everyday asking if we have an opening. If I keep this up I can become the Ron Musgraves of the car lot side of PWing LOL
Are you getting paid in a timely fashion?Hey Bears,
The car lots are going great. We now have 25 clients that we do on a weekly basis. Out of the 25 we are doing 4 of them twice a week. We will be adding a cold water rig sometime in the near future so we can handle more lots. We have roughly 7 lots waiting for us to take over their accounts. We are washing right at 1200 cars a week sometime a little less. Once we add the new rig we will add 200-400 more cars per week.
Hey Bryan,
How many guys do you have out at the lot working at a time?
Thanks
Are you getting paid in a timely fashion?