Basement mounted PW

Looking for some input or ideas for my install. The pressure washer will be mounted in the basement and have a hose reel and switch in the garage above. Planning to have a contactor near the motor and pull power off of that for a solenoid valve for the inlet supply and a flashing light in the garage. I may not be the only one to use it, so I was thinking about using a 100’ 3/4" garden hose for the bypass. That should add 2.5 gallons to recirculate that I would think would be good for at least 20-30 minutes of bypass. I may even add a hot water solenoid valve on a switch eventually also.

My garage shouldn’t freeze, but I would like an easy option of blowing down the hose reel. If I unhook the discharge it will siphon 100’ of water, but I could quickly blow it down without too much fuss I would think. Only other option I can think of for blowdown is to blow from the inlet while the output hose is hooked up, but that would introduce air into my pump that would have to be purged and could get air in my bypass.

It is an AR 3500 3gpm pump.

What do you need a PW in the basement for? Car detailing?

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It’s out of the way, cant freeze, less plumbing and wiring to run. Probably many more reasons, but those are the obvious

What’s it going to be used for?

More so what I was getting at @Mcflyfyter

Just guessing here:

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I like the idea. I’m all about tucking things out of the way to keep my shop more tidy. There’s nothing like a project to make things a little easier. Instead of using the garden hose for bypass why not get a 30 gallon tank and put it in the basement so you don’t have to worry about anybody forgetting to squeeze the gun every couple minutes? If you have kids that will be using it I give the pump 2 weeks of life because they’ll throw it down and forget…lol. As far as purging the lines you could install a ball valve in the basement and have a tank valve right before it. You could then blow out the lines with an air compressor.

What would be neat is if you could figure out a way to where when you pull the trigger the motor kicks on. Let off the it shuts off. You wouldn’t have to worry about a bypass. That’s probably bad for the motor, though.

I don’t think you’ll get as much run time out of 2.5 gallons as you might think. I’ve run my buffer tank low (maybe 5 gallons or so), and then let it recirculate for a few minutes, and the water is noticeably warm.

How about a car radiator and fan? :smirk:

Or instead of garden hose, which is fairly well insulated, why not a length of copper tubing? The tubing could be submerged in a tank of antifreeze for even more heat dissipation.

These suggestions are probably the exact opposite of the simplicity you’re hoping to keep in your system… :rofl:

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Geez Alex, I’m sure he has a deep freeze in the basement. Why not coil the garden hose in there while he’s at it. :grin:

I like the radiator idea, though.

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A car radiator would blow up under city water pressure, but the heat exchanger is a valid option. I’m surprised 5 gallons heated up that fast because most sources say 2 minutes is ok on a straight bypass. I do have 45’ of stainless tube laying around that would work, just not as efficient as copper.

I’m still kinda leaning towards the over temperature shut down. I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought about that already but it seems like a foolproof solution. Any idea how small of a filter I would need if I used a steel tank? A 100# propane tank would probably fit the bill for a bypass and would be cheap and easy.

I lot of us use the a filter like in the link. I linked the whole product page because they have different thread size. It’s the one with the beige top.

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If you use the propane tank and, can weld, take that stainless tubing or pipe you have and you’ll never have to worry about leaks. You could have the filter in the garage.

Thanks for the filter link. Are you just talking about plumbing the tank with the stainless? I would put the filter in the basement just to avoid plumbing to the garage and back.

I suppose my tank could have been lower than 5 gallons. The tanks are recessed into the bed of my truck, so I can’t actually see the water level below 7-10 gallons or so.

Also, I think my 5.5 gpm pump is very likely to heat the water faster than your 3 gpm pump.

I like the propane tank idea.

Never mind about the stainless. I was thinking about an outside garden hose feeding it. :man_facepalming:t2: Obviously you’d just tap into your water line in the basement.

Here’s another thought on the bypass. If you’d rather not use a tank you could just run the bypass down the washing machine drain or any other drain should your washer be upstairs. Instead of recycling you’d just be “dumping” that water to keep the pump cool. It’s a waste of water by I’m assuming it won’t be used enough to make that big of a difference in your water bill. I think I’d rather do your propane tank idea, though. Do you think it would need a back flow preventer?

Instead of the propane tank, why not a 10 gallon water heater tank off freecycle, craigslist, etc? Already has the plumbing connections you would need. You’d obviously need to make sure you found one that didn’t leak.

Also, another advantage to having a buffer tank of any kind, is that the cold tap water coming into the tank gets mixed with the rest of the water before being fed to the pump. So you do not get the thermal fluctuations that you would when using a long loop of bypass hose. This could be accomplished with either the propane tank, or the water heater tank.

The pump will be fine up to a steady 145° or so. It won’t be as fine going from 100+ to less than 50 over and over and over again.

I’m not a tree hugger, but for some reason im not fond of dumping down the drain. The 24ish gallons of a propane tank should give a decent buffer, and with the filter should be ok. I wouldn’t think there would be a need for a check valve, unless it was forced back with compressed air. If the motor is off the water valve will close automatically so it shouldn’t be able to backflow. In theory of course.

There is going to be a red strobe light in the garage when the motor has power, so it should be hard to forget that it is on. Between the automatic water valve, the strobe light, the buffer tank and minimizing valves, I feel like it is fairly foolproof. I may actually add a switch that can be locked out if I do anything that would take it out of service, but I haven’t really thought much on how.

Are you going to put it on its own circuit? If so, just get a circuit breaker lockout, you can immobilize the breaker in your panel.

Dang, I though I had a good handle on this but am being proved otherwise. Thermal shock never even crossed my mind. I guess I could use the tank for typical cold water and have a lockable ball valve to bypass tha tank on the rare occasion I run hot water through it.

I’m not a fan of the used water heater idea though, dont want to deal with tanks at the end of their life. Being a welder, its really not a big deal for me to weld a few bungs and a dip tube in.

I’ll have to look into breaker lockouts. I have seen them for industrial applications, but not residential breakers.

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Still wanna know what your gonna be using this for

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