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Industrial / Re: Maintaining Water Pressure - Car Wash

« on: October 11, 2017, 02:16:23 PM »

Thanks for the response.  I found out that there is a two inch water meter/main that supplies my car wash.  How can I go about determining if the water supply is adequate, so that I can work to boost the pressure?  What type of business deals with type of issue?  I've talked to two plumbers and I'm thinking that I need to find someone who specializes in these issues, but not sure what to look for.  I like the idea of a large supply tank.  I've got a tank to capture the reject water from my reverse osmosis system and I pump that water into my rinse tank via a float valve and submersible pump.  I've got the float for the city water shutting off when the rinse tank is about 2/3 full and reject water fills to the top before shutting off.  I've been thinking about adding a feed from the city water to the reject tank and using a mix of reject water and city water to gravity feed my IBA rinse tanks.  The tank is 400 gallons and I think that it would easily keep up with demand and eliminate the need to use the 1 inch float valve.  I'm planning to have a larger rinse tank to feed my self service pumps, so that I won't need a 1 inch float valve on that side.  I've also had the thought of capturing rain water to use for all rinse functions (self service and IBA). Thinking that I could do a combination captured rain water and city water with that type of set up.  Water is by far my biggest expense, so reducing that expense by any amount would be helpful to my bottom line.  The city charges me 1:1 for sewage costs, so the savings would be multiplied if I could capture some rain water for rinsing.  Do you have any thoughts on this idea?  Am I dreaming?  I appreciate your help.

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Industrial / Maintaining Water Pressure - Car Wash

« on: October 10, 2017, 11:15:14 PM »

Hello, I've been reading through the posts on this forum this evening in hopes of learning what I need to do to maintain the water pressure at my car wash.  Full disclosure...I have little idea what I am talking about, so I apologize if I don't explain this well. 

My wash has five self-service bays and one in-bay automatic (IBA) wash.  I have a 2 inch main pipe coming into the wash, but I understand that the water meter that feeds my wash might be smaller.  I'm going to speak with this town this week to determine the size of the meter. The static water pressure is 70 PSI and the dymanic pressure is 65 PSI.  The self-service bays require 3.5 gallons per minute when the high pressure is in use (17.5 gpm if all are in use at the same time).  The self-service bays are gravity fed via 60 gallon rinse tank which is supplied by a 1 inch watts float valve.  I've not been able to determine the gpm requirement of the IBA and I'm waiting on the manufacturer to respond to an e-mail or call me with some information.  I think that maximum demand for the IBA is about 28 gpm.  I also have a reverse osmosis system that kicks on a frequent basis.  I have not tried calculating the gpm demand of that system, but I think I can figure it out.

I have an opportunity to add a second IBA which will have a similar demand to the current IBA and I'm concerned about water supply and pressure.  In attempt to free up space in my equipment room I installed a dema mixrite chemical proportioner for a wax that I provide in my self-service bays.  The mixrite is compact and works much better than my previous set up that relied on an air powered diaphragm pump to push the wax.  I've been trying to tweak the mixrite and have noticed that it stops working altogether when the float valve for the IBA opens up.  Performance drops off noticeably when the Reverse Osmosis system kicks on. 

I'm hoping that I can have a system installed to maintain the dynamic water pressure at 65 PSI.  Any thoughts or information to point me in the right direction for calculating the needs at my wash and possible options that exist would be greatly appreciated.  I've looked at a lot of different booster pumps/booster systems online, but I'm kind of lost. 

Thanks