My soap draw tube. 3/16” wfp tubing with an xjet style proportioning tip shoved in the end. Also using the smallest tip on the soap barb of the injector. This lets me draw about .67oz/minute of downstreaming. Adapted to a piece of 1/4” chem hose to go on the injector barb.
My house wash mix. Currently about 40oz of PowerSolve from HydroChem, 96oz water, and 3oz of RainClean 5x from Horizon Aromatics. I’m actually liking the power-solve way more than elemonator lately. Rinses off glass nearly spot free.
By my calculations, the 140oz of housewash mix should last me somewhere around 80 gallons of straight SH. It’s a nice convenient size because I can give it a good shake at the beginning of the day and get that scent additive back into suspension.
140oz/.67= 209 minutes of downstreaming.
1 gallon straight SH will get sucked up in about 2.5 minutes with the gray proportioning tip I’m using. 209/2.5 = 83.6 gallons of SH.
And that puts me right at my target of around 1/2oz of surfactant per gal SH.
Time will tell if I mixed in enough scent additive. But much easier to add than take away.
Seems like a lot of time wasted piddling around with this BS rather than acquiring new clientele and cashing checks. KISS method rules all in this industry. Wash House, collect check. Wash driveway, collect check. Clean roof, collect check. Anything else is unnecessary.
Don’t get me wrong, always test and evaluate what works best for you but there comes a point where testing doesn’t really yield anything and instead it muddies up the water when you could easily have washed a few houses in the time you spent messing around and had a few more repeat customers for next season.
Have you read any of the truck washing thread? My experimentations and time invested in “R&D” pale in comparison. Even the degreaser thread is more involved than this one, imo.
I know that for many in this part of the industry, KISS works best; nothing wrong with that. But as you might’ve gathered from the thread title here, I’m letting my nerd flag fly, and I actually enjoy this aspect of my work.
I don’t wash on the weekends (except the occasional commercial property), nor do I return phone calls or deal with other parts of the business that I’m less interested in. Some people like to grill. I like to tinker. And grill.
Also, I’m not necessarily recommending for others to follow in my footsteps; just sharing my findings (and enthusiasm). If anyone does want to give these dual barb injectors a try, it can hopefully be a useful source of information so they’re not reinventing the wheel with it.
This is really interesting - I’ve played in my mind with some digital metering so I could better understand the ratios I’m using, but so far it’s stayed just in my head lol. Thanks for sharing.
My apologies. I didn’t mean to knock what you’re doing. Just saying it’s all unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. It’s akin to the percentages discussions. Is it great to know and tinker with? Sure. Will it make much of a difference in the real world? Unlikely. In my opinion.
If you like your setup and want to keep it, Ditch those 3 ways , they don’t last long and are a pain to turn, Then get these, We’ve been running the same one’s for 3 years now , easy to turn and bulletproof.
Thanks for the tip. I’ve seen you recommend these before; I should bookmark them I guess .
Do you have them mounted somehow? The thing I like about the little poly barb valves is that they are so lightweight and can just hang from the hose wherever you put them.
But it’d be kind of nice to have some sturdier valves mounted in a more accessible location, like the front of my supply reel or something. As it is now, I have to reach past a hot muffler to flip these. But that’s usually only once a day.
After 4 large condo buildings, I’ll say this mix is killing it. Not too sudsy, and not too strong on the masking scent. But can barely pick up on the bleach smell. I haven’t had anyone ask if I’m using bleach yet; for some reason people always like to ask that. Like, “No, I add a scent additive to make my mix smell like a public swimming pool because it smells cleaner. No bleach here!” /sarcasm
I tried a 3/4" one this year. The handle was so loose it would turn back and forth from vibration. Then it leaked after a week. I guess it was a dud. I went with Banjo.
