I’ve been cleaning windows for 7 years and have a variety of commercial and residential jobs, with some commercial year round contract stuff. Just last year I bought a Hotsy pressure washer and an X-jet adjustable nozzle/pail set up, here’s my issue.
Our water locally usually runs between 650 - 850 ppm tds, when I have tried to wash a house & rinse there are hard water spots EVERYWHERE ! What I’ve been doing is carrying 90 gallons of rain water in two barrels and rinsing with that, it works, but it is a huge pain in the ■■■. Does anyone have suggestions on what else I can do ? Thanks in advance… AL
I would be trying to figure out a way to filter all of my wash water, not just the rinse portion.
2 or 4 RO membranes plumbed in parallel might give you enough water to keep a buffer tank full. The tricky thing about pressure washers is the high gpm requirement. It’s not like window cleaning where 1/2 - 3/4 gpm has you covered.
It would have to be a homebrew system to keep costs at all reasonable. Don’t forget a massive carbon pre-filter to protect the membranes from chlorine.
Just a guess, but probably using the rainwater he collects.
For those who can’t figure it out, I have an IPC Eagle Hydrocart that I use for window cleaning, yes it’s hard on my DI filter but I’ve used that cart for the past 4 years - replacing the filters as necessary, I keep my water between 0-4 ppm out of my hydrocart for window cleaning.
I have contract window cleaning jobs that I do throughout the winter, months November to late March when temps are below freezing. I have ten 5 gallon pails that I fill with purified water every 4-5 weeks. That keeps my hydrocart from getting stagnant & gives me a supply of purified water.
As I said initially (and yes, I mentioned it as to imply that I’m not a newbie to cleaning), I am new to soft washing & want to know what others are doing to reduce tds to acceptable levels. For those who can answer, what is an acceptable level of tds that won’t leave spots on siding (not glass) ? 30/50/100 ppm tds ?
Well, I softwash vinyl siding all the time with ~240tds and it doesn’t show any obvious spots. It will mess up windows however and I let the customer know that as about 80% of my work is window cleaning.
Getting really bad water spotting on these black gutters. This was just water, no chems, and there was no dirt on the gutters/soffit prior to our wash. We were washing the garage door below and then rinsed the gutters along with the door. TDS in our area is 300-400. Anyone have good ways to avoid this?
I’m thinking a DI rinse would work. I could rig a meg nozzle to wfp setup maybe so we could spray it down after washing? And better ideas?
I had this issue least year on black soffits, too. Ended up just rinsing the hell out of it and hand wiping with a microfiber towel. After that one I started notifying customers with black metals that if they have hard water it will spot it up. Luckily, not a ton of black trim in my area.
@apexwindowcleaning I just did the exact same thing last week on some gray soffits and gutters. They were brand new and spotted up so terribly bad everywhere. Went back and took the water fed pole to it and scrubbed and when they dried they were still there.
Was on a well and drainage from the weep holes were everywhere too. I one restored the whole thing and theyre better now but still not 100%. Been a huge pain.
