Each machine goes thru 45 or 50 gallons a day
1 Like
Some days less, some more. the last two properties we did were painted in April, I’m just spraying water on the buildings. If they do int wash, they lose the money from their budget next year. Easy peasy 
3 Likes
Pentair
1 Like
Im never full in both but no, 2 3500 lb. Axles.
Ahh totally makes sense, nice! One of these days im going to try and hook up a spliter to pull sh and the other side for pure soap with different restrictions along the way to try and make the remote downstream work that way if not I’ll stay bucket mixing for a while
I keep a 15 gallon drum in the bed of the truck that I batch mix in. Water, 12.5% SH, Elemonator and then downstream it with hi-draw injector.
If it’s going to be a super busy day I’ll carry an additional 3 gallons of SH in a 7 gallon carboy that I can just add water and Elemonator to if needed and just pluck my drop stick in there.
For house siding, I haven’t come across a need for hotter mix - maybe just a quick second or third soaping on the really bad stuff.
For flat work I can usually just downstream the house mix as a pre and post treat, but I keep a 4gpm Northern Tool bleach pump on the truck if I need to hit anything real bad. If it’s just small spots I’ll pull out a 1 gallon pump up sprayer with 50/50 and Elemonator in it.
With all that stated I am just a one-man show doing this mainly on the weekends. I’d definitely have to step it up if I was doing this more often.
Do yourself a favor and get a 2 gallon pump sprayer. Less fill ups far outweighs the additional weight. No pun intended.
If I can get the Chapin to die I will. 
Just did some initial testing with it. I really should have done a benchmark with my old injector, first though.
Bored out tip was giving me lousy draw rate for some reason. (Edit: must’ve been clogged. Retested and got around 1:20 draw rate)
Pulled that out, and was getting about 1:15 draw at ~8 gpm on the SH side
Then did some timed trials for the surfactant side.
The smallest tip (tan) was pulling 2oz in 4 minutes, or .5 oz/minute. That works out to ~1:2,048, or approximately 1:64 of surfactant:SH. I did all these trials with plain water, of course. Actual draw rates will decrease slightly with more viscous liquids. (Edit: rechecked this while I was updating my other test above, and pulled another 2oz in 2.5 minutes. So… there’ll still be some tweaking to do once I try this on an actual job with actual soaps)
I like around 1/2oz per gallon of surfactant to straight SH, so I will be diluting my soap 1:3. Might even go lighter than that.
Edit #3: did a bucket test to check my output. I don’t know how, but this thing is still putting out well over 9 gpm with the undersized injector and it “bogging down” to ~3350 rpm. When I bypass the injector, it runs wide open at 3600 rpm).
Now to figure out much scent additive to add to my surfactant mix. One thing about those additives, is they like to separate out over time. So being able to give the soap jug a quick shake at the beginning of a job is just another plus to keeping your soaps and SH separate.
I also seem to recall @CaCO3Girl saying straight SH doesn’t really like having soap added to it, it can degrade more quickly.
You got your hazmat endorsement? That’s 1100 lbs of bleach. Doesn’t matter if you never fill them all the way up. It’s the total capacity that matters if you ever get pulled over by DOT enforcement. (Edit, see Mary’s post below. I defer to her expertise. Carry on 
)
(Side note: I never liked those tie down bands for the 55 vertical tanks. I don’t think they’d stand up to a sudden change in acceleration/lateral load. I have more confidence in the ratchet straps tied to the headache rack on my bed.)
90% of the surfactants on the market truly hate 12.5 SH. They curdle or basically zap the SH strength. Always best to dilute.
3 Likes
Did I ever mention I teach 49CFR (how to ship hazmat by ground and rail)….and according to everything I’ve ever been taught it’s never the capacity, it’s the amount. If you have over 1,001 pounds you need placards. And the exemption for materials of trade taps out at 440 pounds.
5 Likes
Please tell us more. If the maximum allowed without placards is 1000#, what’s the purpose of the exemption?
Thanks again to the PWR community for sharing depth and insight. I am considering upgrading to a 5.5 pump and building a trailer and read this thread 2.5 times. I DS straight from a 5 gallon container and will use anywhere from 2-5 gallons depending on size of and grime on the house. I use a high draw injector that puts me at 12:1 so I get about a 1% mix on the house. I have a dual barb that pulls at 10:1 for a 1.25 % mix if I really need it.
But I mix my surfactant (apple wash diluted around 4-5:1) directly with my SH at about 1 oz/gallon SH. I simply track which bucket I use and continue the process on the next house. I am also small and not washing every day. I thought when moving up to a larger system, I would simply mix 30 gallons or so of SH with surfactant and keep that in bulk until it was gone and refill. That might take 2-3 weeks and thought that it would not break down that quickly from the UV rays in the tank. After reading this thread, I see that is not the case. It seems like you mix what you will potentially use a day at a time if I am correct.
Blessings to all, stay safe!
Yep, I see limited advantages and mostly downsides to having a mix tank that lasts you much more than 1.5 days of washing. There are certain tasks that just make sense to tend to on a daily basis. Topping off the mix tank with fresh bleach is one of them.
That said, my 20 gallon tank will sometimes last a couple weeks, between long days of large window cleaning jobs where I barely break out the washer for some screens or something. I’m in a little bit different situation, since my drums are stored off site. I’ve had no noticeable degradation in 2-3 weeks.
1 Like
Are you using Apple Wash for the cover scent or for the marker/dye once applied on the house? I thought I read somewhere that Apple Wash isn’t ideal for batch mixing if intending to see the dye on the house unless you are using it up pretty quickly. Something about the bleach, well, bleaches out, the pink dye of being stored in a batch mix. I was under the impression that Apple Wash works best with a proportioner type system. But, I could be absolutely wrong on all of this.
you are absolutely correct! Apple wash is intended to be used with the proportioner. the red dye is bleach sensitive and is used as a marker. it is also a high quality surfactant with good sense cover. you could use a dual Barb and metering valve on a downstream set up. I saw it on a video once. I don’t personally use it that way. I have found that it is super concentrated and you can dilute it down quite a bit.
So technically in order to drive around with hazardous materials you need a hazmat license. However, some people need to use hazardous materials in the course of their business. It could be pesticides, SH, even technically the fire extinguisher located in every tractor trailer is a hazmat item. So the DOT created an exemption for people that need hazmat items for work.
49CFR 173.6
Section 14 of the SDS tells you what the hazard class is for a chemical. SH is a class 8 packing group III
3 Likes
So this limit of 1000# that everyone cites religiously, you still need a hazmat license to drive with it? Just no placards required under that 1000#, correct?
