I have a 4gpm belt drive that I plan on putting in my 8FT bed. I’d like to hold off on a trailer for now until I get enough business to get a nice setup.
So for now I’m wondering what size chem tanks I should get for down streaming?
Figure two residential jobs per day. Possibly one commercial job per week like a McDonalds drive thru.
Also how can I mix soap with SH when down streaming? Past customers seem to like both lemon and cherry. I’d like to avoid batch mixing if possible. Is there a way I could pull in both soap and SH?
@silveradopw Welcome. There is a lot of good knowledge on this forum, so read as often as you can and search for answers. Any question you have has probably been asked and answered. The information is here somewhere, just be patient and look. To answer your initial questions, you could use a 15 gallon drum for your SH. It is fairly easy to move around and it will get you through the day. For your surfactant, add about an ounce per gallon of SH and stir it in the SH. Some folks add a bit more or a bit less. Experiment until you find what works with your injector and equipment. Use a real surfactant like Elemenator, not a dish soap. When working out of the bed of a truck you will need either a skid or a sturdy, durable base in which to securely mount your equipment.
A 15 gallon drum should get you through a day just fine as far as just house washing. But if doing an asphalt shingle wash, real dirty concrete driveway, or anything else that will take a bunch of 12v spraying, 15 gallons may not be enough.
I batch mix so I usually carry 15 gallons of “mix” and downstream it over the course of 2-4 jobs. I’ll oftentimes carry 5 gallon pail with just bleach in it if I need to mix more in the field or if I just have a troublesome spot I want to downstream once and be done with it.
If you intend to carry 15 gallons of bleach and meter it down from there it’ll last you quite a bit. But keep in mind that that drum is around 160 lbs so it is no small task to move/load it by hand.
Also, cleaning a drive thru will require different chemicals than cleaning most house siding. You may need separate tanks for each.
Looks like I may get some small tanks or just use the 1 gallon containers for lemon/cherry soaps. Then get a dual port injector with metering valve.
Might just opt for a 35 gallon SH tank then. Especially for the larger jobs like you said.
As for commercial work, would it make sense to use a pump up sprayer for rust/iron & degreaser on pavement? Or should I just use the dual port injector to mix SH with degreaser?
Getting a dual port injector is asking for twice the headaches! The inadequate check valves are problematic and you invited another into the mix. Please just spend 0.64 cents and split your line feeding your injector!
I can’t shed too much insight onto this particular subject as I don’t dabble with commercial work. But, I would figure out what chems you are hoping to use and determine whether you can still obtain favorable results with downstreaming. Perhaps downstreaming will dilute the product too much in some cases. If that’s the case, you’d either apply chems with a pump up, 12v, or something of that nature where there is no further dilution happening. Pump ups are great for smaller areas and spot treatments. But if I wanted to wash an entire drive thru area I’d look at something that requires less physical effort.
