Carwash in Netherlands

I had the opportunity to visit some car washes in Holland and Belgium last week. I was on a business trip and schedule some visits. 

There wear two major differences from our Scandinavian way of wash a car in a roll-over machine.

Manual prewash

This guy was standing in the queue to the car wash and prewashed all cars first with high pressure then a brush.

Nylon brushes

Then the car moved in to the carwash and the  roll-over machine was equipped with nylon brushes! Today most of the EC market is using carlite brushes. Soft foam, similar to sponges, but in stripes. Not so aggressive to the paint finish as the nylon can be.

Spring has arrived to south of Sweden. Here is a photo of rapeseed on a field outside of my hometown.

Nice to know that summer is on it’s way.

Oil-separator

 

is a topic in many countries were the government is focused to avoid to much oil in the waste water from car washes.

I was at a meeting with one of the big player in car wash in our region. They have invest substantially in building new and improved oil separators but still there are car washes were they do not full fill the regulations.

The conclusion was that it has to be the chemicals.

I stated the difference between detergent and detergent.

Alkaline, petroleum and micro emulsions are all called detergents but they are totally different if you see them in a strict chemical point of view.

They also react differently in the oil separator, no questions about that. Micro emulsions are the biggest threat. Petroleum based detergents with emulsifiers is second then the ones without emulsifiers. Alkaline is the best from this  point of view.

Petroleum based detergents without emulsifiers has a big problem to penetrate the water film that is very common on cars in winter time.

We have added an additive to the detergent on the right side so it can penetrate the water film on the car so it will react and solve the contamination, read asphalt and tar, on the surface in a efficient way.

Our laboratory did a short film and the left detergent is a normal petrolium based with emulsifiers and the detergent to the right is without.

done

Some water is added first then the two different petrolium based detergents. The difference in speed of seperation between the two is huge.

 Herobiol Flash is the name of this new imporved product, to the right in the film, that could help many carwashes who has problem with the outgoing wastewater.

Limits and regulations of car-washes – heavy metals, oils and so on

Many carwashes recycle and reuse their water, yet after a while it gets too murky to use. 
Sooner or later it is sent down the drain on its way to the city sewer system, only now it is more concentrated with chemicals, detergents, dirt and heavy metals. Read more about this issue in this article by Lance Winslow.

What about Sweden then

In Sweden it came to a recommendation in 1996 as set out benchmarks for what the water that came from a car wash had to contain, or rather not contain.
There were also was limits of how much fresh water that was allowed to be used for washing a car.
That meant in practice that all new car-washes installed some form of water treatment orwater recycling system.

A few years ago,  the national targets  were  abolished and it came to an industry fact sheet instead.
Local regulations have since gone in different directions and it means that there are different limits for car-washes in differens cities and parts of Sweden.

Some municipalities cooperate and develop common rules for what to apply for car-washes.
Recently, the Västa Götaland, updated policy relating to vehicle wash.
It is available since October to read here.

Stricter requirements on emissions from past and demands for small car wash facilities from 2015.
This is the facilities that washes fewer than 5 cars per day and are not open to the public.
it should mean in practice that all the washing areas and spolplattor will be covered in the rules.

The requirements are also criteria for the car wash chemicals that may be used. As in so many other recommendations in Sweden for professional car wash as it applies to cleaning chemicals meet any environmental labels. Either the Nordic Swan or Kemikaliesvepet.

What about other countries

Of course, there are different requirements for car-washes between the different countries.
It is important to know that the conditions is different from country to country.  And some times inside one country as well
Examples of parameters that differ are:

- Type of dirt to be washed away from cars
- Availability of water
- Expansion of the sewerage and municipal sewage treatment plants 
- Culture of how to wash his car (Do it yourself, Tunnelwashes, frictionfree etc)
- Different kind of chemicals used
- National rules which affect the substances which are permitted in the washing chemicals

 If you want to read more about this topic here are some helful links to start out with:

http://www.epa.state.il.us/small-business/car-wash/
http://www.greenstampplus.com.au/downloads/GPG/VIC/GPG%203%20-%20Washing%20Vehicles.pdf
http://www.carwash.com/article.asp?IndexID=6636797
http://www.fundsraiser.com/dec00/how-to-run-a-successful-car-wash-fundraiser-environmental-concerns.html
http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/local.ssf?/base/news/122994091041630.xml&coll=1&thispage=1

Carwash Romania

 

This visit to a prospering Romania  was a view in a new world. A country with zero unemployment and a people whom are willing to explore new business ideas.

 

I hired a car and drove through Bucharest and I was surprised to all nice fellow drivers in the traffic. No sour faces over a bit lost Swede on the Romania roads, navigators are overestimated, on the contrary most willing to help me. That was the first impression I got and that impression hold on for the rest on the trip.

 

Now to the car wash business!

 

Manual wash is 90% of the market and most of them are located in 3-5 car wash bays. They use an alkaline pre wash and rinse with high-pressure. Some times they use a hand shampoo but the result on the first step should be good enough.

 

Traffic film removers are hard to get. Touch less cleaning is one of the toughest cleaning you can do if you want a good result. I use to say make a cross on the dirty car and then wash it with a touch less cleaner. If you don’t can see the cross you made it, if you can see the cross your touch less cleaner is no good!

 

So far, soon 20 years in the business, I have not seen any chemical that have done this in winter time.

 

Lahega suggest a good alkaline degrease, Autosafe 648, high-pressure with water then wash the car with a sponge and a mild shampoo like Carsoft Velvet. You will have a good result with no residues of traffic film.

Labour costs

 

We all have a nagging auditor who is asking how you can reduce your costs.

I was in Krakow and watch how they did there car wash business.

 

They did it like this:

 

High-pressure the whole car, two guys

Hand shampoo, two guys

Let it go through a tunnel wash with brushes

 

I did some suggestions and they could save one labour cost on the way.

 

My suggestion

 

Pre wash with an alkaline degreaser, one guy

High pressure, one guy

No hand shampoo

Let it go through the tunnel

 

In this case they will save labour costs

They reduce scratches on the cars when they stopped with the hand shampoo with a sponge.

 

Read some more in Professional Carwashing

Winter on the roads in Sweden means dirty cars

Large snowflakes, or more like hail fell down around me.
So the distance I was driving with summer tires on winter road conditions were not more than ten meters as it was to drive up to the gate.

In Sweden, there are two types of winter tires.
One type is made of a rubber which is a little softer when it is cold outside, and the other type have studs or spikes.
These are metal studs gripping the surface really well and gives a good grip.
Especially when there is snow and ice on the roads so has the benefit of these types of tires.

Just these tires gives us very special conditions when it comes to keep our cars clean and nice in the winter.
Studs tear up the asphalt from the roads and this, together with the salt which is spread to melt snow, becomes a really tough and black dirt, which gets stuck on the cars.
And this stucks on all cars traveling on the roads, not just those who have spikes in the tires.
Traditionally, to wash away the dirt during winter in Sweden we use degreasers containing solvents petroleum.
Either in pure form or in emulsion form- microemulsions!

Carwash Latvia

After a good trip into Latvia were I visited different car wash facilities I can conclude that they wash car very similar to our way in Sweden. Some differences are there.

 

The company that I visited was also included gasoline dispenser system to different oil companies so they would have a more even sales and service around the year.

 

The automatic washes was equipped with following stages:

Pre wash normally an alkaline cleaner

Foam

Shampoo

Rinse

Wax

Polymer wax

 

Brushes were not carlite as in Sweden but nylon because the very dirty car. They have tested carlite but they didn’t get the cars clean and the carlite were dirty very fast. Probably because the used a to mild shampoo. If they used our Carsoft 343 they would probably have a better result.

 

A lot of the stations used there own water from there own water well. Some stations had a lot of iron in the water as you can see in some of the photos.

 

The wash bays were due to the iron hard to keep clean and nice. There our Serit Protect program could help out a bit. This system makes it easier to have a clean hall.

 

One thing was new for me. In some DIY, do it your self, facilities they put in up to 6 cars at a time. There the owner of the car washed the car then drove through a rinse and drying system precisely like the ones in the automatic carwashes. This give a better speed in the washing and a better end result to the customer. Nice!

 

Carwash in Denmark

I was in Denmark and visited a distributor of car-washes. Their system was quite magnificent in the case of remote monitoring. 100 washes were connected through the Web with cameras and a control and debug programs that made it possible to fix a lot of the errors continuously during normal operation.

Each carwash had 4 cameras. There were monitor detectors to feel if there were people in the carwash hall when they shouldn’t. The system was linked through a mobile warning system to a number of telephone hotlines. An SMS gave the guy a warning when there was an error in one carwash.

This distributor could so easily see, make an action and report what happened to the customer without even be in the facility.

Our Internet-based control system WashEye is a perfect match to this system. In that way you can connect on call duty, chemistry consumption and maintenance to the same report system.

Regarding consumption of chemicals as 1 / 7 in Denmark compared with Sweden and Norway much because they do not use any of pre-wash.

 

Head focus is dry cars and clean rims. If the car is clean is on third place of the customer’s point of view.