First car-wash - which kind is better for Prime Advanced

Maybe there's a business model, for a place that offers:

1. Concrete apron with an open carport style roof, so it can be used in any sort of weather: it's no fun washing a car in the rain, and in direct sun it dries too fast.

2. A hose with spray nozzle.

3. Hot water access, for filling your wash pail.

4. Electrical outlet, if you want to BYO vacuum or blower.

Skip the pressure washers. You bring your own sponge/brush, pail and car wash concentrate.

 

The type of place that I use is almost there, just not quite, but still better than automatic car washes in my opinion. The stalls are covered (see photo below) they have available water, and a place to vacuum, which is the station that you see in the middle in front of the stalls. The downside is that the water costs $1.75 for five minutes and is not start/stop it runs continuous for those five minutes. And it is a pressure washer, but that's not a big problem, you control the pressure with the trigger, basically full pressure and half pressure, even at half pressure it's more than I want but it just means I have to stand back a few feet while using it. And actually from that distance the spray fans out and it does a good job of rinsing large sections at a time and removing soap. I think for some people there might be a temptation to get in close to remove tar etc. however that is not a good idea. In theory I could fill my bucket with water from the pressure washer at the lower pressure setting and angling so that only part of the spray goes into the bucket to avoid splashback, but it's easy enough to bring the five gallon bucket from home prefilled with two gallons of soapy hot water. Yes a regular hose with spray nozzle would be better, but these places are designed for quick in and out which is how they make their money. I spend more time in the stall than most since I am hand washing, but as seen in the photo there are usually empty stalls so I am not in anyone's way.



And yes they can be used in the rain, and even at night which I have done. When it's raining, in theory I could skip the first rinse since the car is already wet, however I don't think rain removes all the loose dirt so I still do the first rinse. In theory I could skip the final rinse however again rain doesn't do a thorough enough rinse job. It does mean however that I can skip drying the car at the end

Speaking of rinses, I mentioned that I just do two, a before and after. I could also do a rinse halfway through, making the total cost $1.75 x 3 = $5.25 which is not much but I guess I don't like starting five minutes of water when I just need a minute or two. It's supposedly recycled water but still seems wasteful. It would be nice if it would start/stop, but again these places are not designed for people to hang around for a long time.

 

Yeah I've seen those pressure washer offerings up here, and they fall short. Seems to me, apartment dwellers want an option similar to a home owner with a driveway: just a regular hose, that you use off-and-on, during the washing process.

The only time I would see a need for continuous pressure washing, would be dead-of-winter knock the salt off.

 

(you) "they fall short"
(me) "almost there, just not quite"

I think we are saying the same thing? I guess great minds think alike

I understand what apartment dwellers want, I want the same thing, as I am in basically the same situation whenever we have water restrictions due to drought and I can't wash my car in my driveway. The type of facility that you describe doesn't exist, you mentioned there might be a business case to provide it, but the fact that they don't exist raises that as a question. As I mentioned the existing facilities get people in and out pretty quickly. Also I'm sure a lot of people like the convenience of the fast pressure washer system, even if it doesn't clean as good as hand washing. So I think a facility would have to offer both. However that's not as simple as it sounds, because pressure washing is based on a simple concept that you pay for five minutes of water use, and the clock runs continuously. Start/stop is a different concept because I don't think most people will be willing to pay for time when they aren't using water. And yet they want to stay in the stall hand washing their car in between a few seconds at a time of water usage, As a rough number we are talking 90% scrub time and 10% rinse time, with the owner only getting paid during the 10% of the time that the hose is running. In theory they could charge for time in the stall, however that would require keeping an employee onsite at all times which raises the costs astronomically, the current systems can run 24 hours a day unmanned other than maintenance.

So the owner would have to charge more per minute for the water usage to cover the increased time that people will be spending in the stall. But at some point most people will balk and decide they might as well go to a regular car wash, other than us diehards who are determined to hand wash our cars no matter how inconvenient or costly.

 

Don’t forget to turn off auto wipers when going through car washes