Considering buying a new truck. Comes with dual 10gpm machines, and a 525 gallon tank.
By my math, that would only run both machines on trigger for 26 mins, and typical spigots would only refill you about an additional 8 minutes in that timeframe.
My questions:
do you really run both machines hard all that often? (not currently running a lot of big commercial work)
The tank is about 2x what we carry now for a single 8gpm. Do you think it’s sufficient for the machines with normal usage? or will the efficiency gained be lost waiting on water because we blew through it in like an hour?
Is there even a logical use for dual 10s doing mostly residential (granted we wash a stadium and some other sizable stuff, but it’s definitely not our common job)
It may be an exercise in futility, but it’s an opportunity to get it under a payment structure that will definitely cover itself from a monthly financing perspective, so I’m open to investigating the possibility.
Thoughts from you big boys out there slinging with a 10gpm?
Just some food for thought. I ran a 4.75 gpm pump on a 750 gallon supply. ALL the trucks could draw off a hydrant for a 3 min fill up through 1.5" vacuum hose. You are well into hydrant territory with two 10’s if you want to run them efficiently
So, you aren’t really going to get 10gpm unless you go to half inch pressure hose. That’s a nightmare to use and then you have to stock house for the truck, as well as hose fittings and different injectors. I’d stick with what you know works, 8gpm. Tank size is irrelevant, is going to take x amount of water regardless of whether you wait at one job or the other to fill up.
Agreed! Tank size matters (as it relates to machine size) if you have to intentionally get off the trigger to wait for water though. That is my initial resistance to this idea. It sounds cool, but functionally I don’t think it would be good.
Pretty sure you run dual 8s on a truck though. What size is your tank, and have you found any issues washing with both on the usual 5-6gpm supply I see around here?
I would like to have dual machine trucks (at least some of them anyway). A single machine makes a helper pretty much useless when DSing with a remote. But if I go all solo trucks, no one could ever be really trained on how to function if they were by themselves doing it all…
I do run dual machines. One tank is 65 gallons. Largest is 200. If the guys are washing a house with the 65 gallon tank, and filling from the residential water spigot, they’ll have to wait once or twice for water. But, they’d have to wait anyway at the second or third house is they had a 525 gallon tank. So you you can wait maybe 20 minutes three or four times a day with a little tank. Or an hour with a big tank. Either way the wait time is the same. I don’t run big tanks because th says just a lot of weight and wear and tear on trucks. I won’t own a dually so I’m limited on the weight.
Def. makes sense…especially those times where you only need/want to run a single PW. Ours aren’t duallies either, but IDK about this flatbed, I haven’t seen it yet. Our usual trucks are all 250s (or 1 Chevy 2500, but same thing from that perspective)
Go with the 8’s and 525 tank. Even 1/2 full going to give you more capacity than you have now.
The only reason to go to the 10’s would be if you were doing a large amount of flatwork consistently. Like smaller parking garage type projects. For larger you’d need a custom built. The 8’s are a nice sweet spot and known reliability and repair costs. I do a fair amount of fairly large flatwork jobs and have been more than satisfied with my 8’s. Heat as important as the machine size on commercial.
Water, it sounds like you have about what our average is. Go with the largest you can carry. Set it up where you can dual feed. Even on commercial, water can be a big problem. Most have ok to decent flow, but lack of spigots is a huge factor. So even if you’re set up to dual feed, rarely an option on a lot of the commercials we do. But on most residential you can dual feed it if needed.
With a 3000psi engine and a 10 GPM pump, and friction loss on 3/8" being 450psi/100ft then you should be able to overcome that. Making 10GPM better than 8GPM even with 3/8" hose and being equally maneuverable (if that is a concern). No need for a fire truck, Your fire truck is the iGX800 Honda motor
Get what you want. We gave reasons for our opinion above. You’re going to lose 300 psi with every 100’ of hose. No one would run a 10gpm machine and only need 100’ of hose most the time. They’re more expensive, harder to maintain and as of last week takes about 3-4 months to get parts for. Just because it’s bigger doesn’t make it better for what we do. It all depends on what you’re going to be using it for. For a lot of applications you may need a lot more but for 99% of us on here 8gpm is fine and most can get by with less.
Oh I agree. Always get what you want, I was just curious. Also, I was giving a ballpark (high end) friction loss Per 100’. Not saying you’d need only 100’ because idk who would want to do that. Even in smaller residential applications though, why not be 25% more efficient with 10pm vs 8pm. Now you say parts being an issue and that’s a good point, but how or why is it harder to maintain than an 8gpm. Would it not be the same basically? Is this just a “I’m used to 8gpm and don’t want to upgrade” type thing? From where I’m at the difference between 8&10 in price is very minimal and negligible if you consider it to be 25% more efficient.
This is a genuine question from a fireman and soon to be business owner. I’m just spitballing and trying to gather as much info from y’all and the experience in here as possible.
Here’s a genuine answer from a retired fireman who wrote the friction loss SOP’s for his department, was given an IGX800 from Tidewater equipment they my landa dealer for free to try or and give feedback. With a 10 gpm pump it burnt 2.2 gph of fuel and put out a little under 9gpm thru 250 ft of hose. With an 8 gpm pump in burning 1.5 gph and getting a little under 8 gpm.
