3 Secrets to Car Washing

Today I want to talk about how we all can improve our Carbon Foot Print, but before I can go into that I need for you to understand where I come from. My name is Dan Shirley and I have been in the chemical wash business for over thirty years now. Not to age myself but I was around before the foam brush invention or the pre-spray cycle was ever thought of.

History: Paints on the surface of your vehicle have changed since the days when I grew up. Back 25 years ago your paint surface was a lead based paint which made cleaning your car a lot easier. The paint was much harder than today and the dirt and road film came off easier.

Why? Well everthing breathes, just like your skin,therefore the paint being much harder didn't allow the dirt and road film to penatrate into the pores of the paint as it does today. If you magnify the paint on your car surface many times it would look like the Rocky Mountains with many high points and valleys. You might say yes but I have a clear coat on my car and that stops it, well if that stops it then why do you need to clean your car differently today? The days of plugging in 25 cents and soaking down you car and letting it sit on the surface to clean are long gone. Back 25 years ago most washes in my neck of the woods didn't have water softeners either, but we could still clean the car . So Why? It comes down to the chemicals.

Chemicals: Years ago chemical companies used everything from harsh caustics, with fillers that were made out of everything from sawdust to crushed glass. A filler is put into the powder to keep it from all sticking together, which is still used today in powders but with soda ash fillers not as before. Again though many products today are being outlawed because they won't meet the city regulations that we must abide by. Phosphates were another great cleaning property and today they are slowly going by the way of the dinasour. Everything today is about safety first and that I believe is the way it should be. But don't dispair as their are some great products being used but the application has changed a bit.

Application: Today we have pre-soak cycles, which there is a reason why they are there. The washes are able to provide a safer product with a higher concentration, than a high presure soap, and because of the lower volume of water being used, there is less going down into the sump and running over to the city water drain lines . Sumps are created to have two to three different compartments to allow the water to over flow from the one that catches most of the mud to the next and so on before it runs out to the city water drain lines. By this time the water has lost most of the solid content(which is regulated) and the water is neutralized to be safe to go down the drain. When the sump is full the truck or honey wagon as it is know comes and sucks out the heavier mud for disposal. It has to be tested before it is allowed to be dumped safely. High pressure soaps are also made at lot safer today than before, along with foam brush applications and then the clear coat protectants that are being used, which is changing very quckly today for the better. Please follow the links below to get the complete story on how you can inprove your Carbon Foot Print in Car Washing, the Five Factors in Cleaning Anything