Car washing Water softeners

Keano said:

350 litre water butt and rainwater does a decent job

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really? have you ever tested rainwater............has even more contaniments in it than the hardest water with levels and composition changing daily.........you are a braver man than me gunga din!
still say an RO or HMA unit to a closed water butt the best way. I use HMA for the car, tropical fish and the coffee machine - £40 a year to replace the 3 filter pods is worth it imo.

Hotwheels said:

I have this one, http://www.theultimatefinish.co.uk/aqua-gleam/0ppm-de-ionising-water-filter-12.aspx And it's great. No white spots just rinse after washing or like me after it rains, works a treat.

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Rather fancy one of these. With a proper snow foam blower and leaf blower

C

I'd suggest saving your money. The Aqua Gleam has a poor 'aspect ratio' which reflects surface area:volume for effective extraction of minerals based on flow rate. In addition, once the resin is 'spent' and loses its effectiveness, it has to be thrown away.

I bought the Raceglaze product which is refillable (refill around £30) and the initial cost is £100. I went for the smaller size which is the size of a fire extinguisher.

I do a final rinse with it on the 911 Turbo and it dries naturally spotless without having to rub it dry with large microfibre.
I recommend the Raceglaze over the Aqua Gleam any day. Ring the supplier. I rang both product's supplier and you'll realise the Raceglaze guys come across with a lot of product knowledge. The call to Ultimate Car Finish tried to sell me the Aqua Gleam, never told me it has to be discarded at the end of its life and need to buy a new one at £60 and could not tell me the aspect ratio and optimal flow rate.

Thanks that's useful

I suspect it'll have to wait until 2017 now!
C

Washing, or at least doing the final rinse with filtered rain water works a treat.
I even use it with the pressure washer and it not only saves water but means I don't have water marks when finished.
I'm also an advocate for washing the car in the rain; you get wet anyway, no water marks, no drying and it means you don't waste the afternoon polishing - cos you can't

Buy a 4 stage Reverse Osmosis filter system for about £120 from RO-Man and be done with it. First stage is a pre sediment filter taking out any foreign objects in Water like silt etc (yes it really is present) and then the second stage is normally carbon filters working on stages of Carbon, fluoride, potassium etc and all the greatness like chlorine that the water board put in to eat live bacteria to enable us to drink it. This generally lowers the tds readings to around 100 ppm etc and then its forced through a semi permeable membrane which takes out the last of anything of any microscopic size to get down to around 30-50 ppm. The problem then arises with the + and - particles which can only be taken out by a DI resin canister fitted on top to get a true 0ppm water which enables you to wash a car and do final rinse off with this to allow a black car to dry spotless on a hot day, anything above 100 wont do it. Im running a 100 gallon per day system and its worked well for over 10 years. For £120 you only need a copper outside tap pipe to auto tap into and your running along as you can run the waste somewhere.. The problem with the Aquagleam systems etc is they get exhausted easily and never give me a perfect finish.

I use this one:
http://www.raceglaze.co.uk/race-glaze/400-litre-0ppm-car-washing-filter/

Really very good. Refillable when the resin is finished and stops working. The Aquagleam product has to be discarded and is not refillable. It also doesnt have a good aspect ratio to get down to 0ppm. Anything that isn't 0ppm will leave mineral deposits on the car as it dries. I just do a final rinse with this, leave it to dry - spotless, not a single bit of mineral on the paint work.

We are talking about washing cars?

allandwf said:

We are talking about washing cars?

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Sounds more like advanced chemistry to me!

C

Its simple. If you live in a hard water area, when the water dries on the car it will leave water marks and miners deposits (mainly calcium salts) on the paintwork. It can happen even as you dry the car with other panels leaving deposits before you get to them.

That's where a final rinse with water passed through a water softener can help. If it has zero parts per million of minerals it dries naturally without leaving any water marks or mineral deposits.

The stuff about aspect ratio is about how well it can remove minerals for a given flow rate.

Morning chaps - I'm not an owner yet but perhaps this is a generic issue. So I thought I'd add my tuppence worth as our water hardness is about as bad as it gets. We are also coffee freaks with a rather nice machine to keep in tip-top shape.

To this end we "acquired" a top of the range Brita four stage filter to produce our own distilled water as required.. Which we just happen to rinse our car with too. Although very expensive through retail channels the units often appear on eBay for comparitive peanuts. For example:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brita-Pur...ca6942c&pid=100005&rk=3&rkt=6&sd=282307122387

The filter cartridges also turn up on eBay regularly at discounted prices.

The main advantage IMHO is the effective lifespan of the cartridge. These units are large and even in my area a new cartridge is good for approx. 6000L of water. Equating to pretty good value for money.

Not sure we are talking about the same thing here - Water softener versus distilled water. The distilled water filter doesn't state how many parts per million (PPM) of mineral is on the output side after filtration. The RaceGlaze water softener has a particulate filter plus ion-exchange resin to remove the mineral content with the result that water on the output side is completely free of minerals (particularly calcium) and is Zero PPM.

cheshiremaserati said:

Not sure we are talking about the same thing here - Water softener versus distilled water. The distilled water filter doesn't state how many parts per million (PPM) of mineral is on the output side after filtration. The RaceGlaze water softener has a particulate filter plus ion-exchange resin to remove the mineral content with the result that water on the output side is completely free of minerals (particularly calcium) and is Zero PPM.

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Indeed - filter & softener technologies are different. Unlike RaceGlaze though the Brita system incorporates both.

Ok Chesh, I am going to buy one of these, can you fill me in on lifespans an consumable costs after I purchase the £99 unit?

Its not just the spots, its the fact you then polish the mineral residue into your paintwork, causing swirling.