Real World Green:Hand Wash or Car Wash

[Mike Szewczyk]

I'm ashamed to say that somehow I missed the last RWG. As it happens, at one point in my history part of the family business was a car wash. We had both an automatic lane and a self wash.

One of the selling points of a car wash is that less water is used. Where the self wash was concerned, the pressure washers used about 2 gallons per minute (gpm) when full force where a garden hose is closer to 10 GPM. Even with a spray nozzle limiting the flow, the flow is still near 5 GPM.

You may think that using a bucket to wash makes up for the hose’s water flow. There is still a lot of time during which your hose is flowing, no one rinses with a bucket. Also, you really have to spray the car down to remove the big dust and dirt before you start with the bucket. If you don't, you're really just trapping that dirt in the wash cloth and sandpapering your car's finish.

Back in the day, it was $1 to run the washer for 5 minutes. People would usually spend $3. Assuming people were using the highest water flow during the wash time, people would still only use 30 gallons of water. As bad as that sounds, if you did the equivalent with the garden hose you would be using 75 – 150 gallons of water. That’s also assuming that you only take 15 minutes with the hose.

Our pressure sprayers shot water at 1500+ PSI which got the car cleaner and rinsed soap much more quickly than you can with a garden hose.

Then there is water reclamation. Our water did not just drain into the sewer like it does when you wash your car in the driveway. Cars pick up all kinds of grime. Dirt, oil, bugs, and there are also the cleaning products you use to get the car clean. It all ends up in the sewer or the ground when you wash in your driveway.

Our wash used a skimmer, sediment tank, and a strainer / filter on the water. The water would be reused many times by our automatic car wash. The sediment was hauled away by licensed waste processors.

What drives this is cost. Water costs money and if we could reduce the use by 1/2 then we made more money. Because it’s a money thing, this practice is common, not just something “green” car washes use.

I could go on and on. We very closely metered the soap used. Again, cost. We wanted to use the least amount of soap possible to get your car clean. At home, people use much more soap. We used powdered soap. Powdered soap was cheaper. Why? Liquid soap is mostly water and water is heavy and costly to ship. We could just put a few scoops of powder into a drum and fill it with water on site. It was not just cheaper, but there were less carbon emissions from shipping the lighter product and less wasted soap in the sewer.

[Katherine]

Thanks for this. I didn't realize that the car washes recycled the water they used. Maybe all of them don't. But it makes sense that people use way less water than they do in their driveway at home. Any idea how much water is used in the big automated car wash machines that drag your car through?

[Mike Szewczyk]

Unfortunately, at this point I'm just guessing. I can tell you that in most cases the car washes are using as little water as is necessary. The self serve car washes definitely use less water, the drive throughs, most likely use less water.

[Drew Newman]

Mike,
Very informative.............thanks!

[Denise Adorable]

In cleaning my car I use Waterless Car Wash NO WATER – NO SOAP – NO SUDZ. This product is eco-friendly waterless auto detailing at an affordable price.