pure water products

[Rick Peters 14]

They are claiming that they have a filter that can be hooked to a garden hose and Im thinking then to a pw you get a spot free wash. The price is really decent. I havent found out the gpm output of the filter yet, just wondering if anybody has tried these or knows about them. thanks, Rick

[karlosdaze 14]

These filters have a limited life and are readily available over in the UK in supermarkets. The life depends on what hardness/softness your water is. Here is a link to a top manufacturer in the UK that sell them, mainly for the residential market.

http://www.ionicsystems.com/cars/home/index.html

The distributor for Ionics in the States is:

http://www.eaglepower.com/

If you are using a lot of pure water, I would suggest investing in an RO/DI system used by window cleaners for working at height without leaving the ground. Otherwise known as a water fed pole system (WFP).

[Mountain View 14]

Probably a DI filter. My memory may be a little faulty but I think DI water can do long term damage to a PW pump (or any metal). Because the chemistry of the water has been altered it is "hungry" and as a result it may cause metals to leach some of their ions into the water which may, in turn, cause some degradation of the metal(s) concerned. It's not an immediate thing, takes awhile for the effects on the metal to show up. I'll have to dig out some old water treatment books to double check myself.

[CCPC 26]

------:lgsick: ------

[PLD 14]

My father in law (and several other big boaters), purchased similar devices for washing their fiberglass boats. They are just super sized water filters and softeners. Apparently they are quite successful, and will function at full hose bibb rate. As for longevity, they hold up fine under 2-3 washes/week. 4000 gallons/day, however, is a whole different animal...

[Tim UK 14]

FWIW, yes, the use of pure water in pw is NOT to be recommended.

We don't use pure water in pw here in the UK for the reasons given.

If you are in a particularly hard water area, these simple bolt-on units will fail very quickly.

[Rick Peters 14]

Thanks everyone, the information you gave me was great. Looks like I will be trying something else for the spotting I get on fleet washing, possibly a rinse agent. Landa has one Ill give a try. Again thanks to you guys across the pond. Rick

[Scott Stone 604]

For what it is worth, I do use DI water for my fleetwashing in a lot of cases. We have really hard water and it is necessary to get the quality of work that I expect. As for being hard on pumps and other parts, it does attack the metals and try and remove the Hydrogen atoms from it and causes hydrogen embrittlement. When I started washing this way, I was told of all sorts of dire consequences to my equipment, but felt I had to in order to satisfy my customer.

My experience has been that it is not excessively hard on the pump. I have had to replace a pump twice in five years. This is an easy 5000 hours for my machines. Incidentally, I have replaced the engine on the machine three times. The coil stays clean. After a certain length of time it does eat the zinc from teh galvanization off of the interior of the coil. This does cause the machien to shoot rust out and that is really bad. It manifests itself as being black water. In order to combat that I use the machine as much as possible for flat work and other jobs with tap water. This causes a lime buildup that usually has to be descaled, but with DI water it is not necessary.