by Paid Bourgeois, Business Manager, Benny's Car Wash & Oil Change

The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, and everything is right with the world. Well, almost everything. With the thermometer on the rise, it is time once again for those seasonal adjustments to your car washes' chemical ratios. So with the certainty of the spring rain, another article reminding operators to adjust their chemical concentrations appears in a trade journal.

Some car wash professionals challenge the necessity of changing chemical concentrations on a seasonal basis, offering queries like "Shouldn't my cars come out cleaner with a little extra chemical?" To best answer this question, it is necessary to dispel the all too common misconception that more is better. Overutilized chemicals, while contributing to the end product and expediting service in some instances, can have upintended and potentially expensive consequences in others.

Much like water softness, chemical concentration and mechanical action, ambient temperature plays a significant role in the way that a particular chemical (or more specifically, the individual components of a specific chemical) reacts with the surface of a car to be cleaned. As the outside temperature increases, the enthalpy (that is, the activity of these chemicals on a molecular level) increases proportionately. This means that for the same concentration of a given chemical, the level of cleaning aggressiveness increases proportionally to the increase in temperature, all other things being equal. So a concentration that affords a safely cleaned vehicle in February may cause oxidation or streaking in June.

               Oxidation. Now if there ever was a buzzword in the professional car wash industry, this is it. Car wash service writers treat oxidation as the common cold of vehicle ailments, offering cures from hand polishes to buff and waxes. In actuality~ the gray, hazy residue is simply the product of a chemical reaction between the paint (usually a clear coat finish) and an electron rich source. Oxidation is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Water is the most common initiating factor. And just as care must be taken to prevent iron from rusting or silver from tarnishing (common oxidation reactions), the professional car wash must be mindful to limit the effects that this reaction can have on its customers' vehicles.

There are many ways to address this problem. An operator may elect to use cleaners that are not oxidizing agents; acidic chemicals typically fit into this category. However, making such a wholesale change could rob the car wash of the cleaning potential of high pH cleaners and adversely affect the quality of service overall. As a firm believer in the benefits of alkaline detergents, I cannot recommend this as a course of action. Instead, the conscientious operator could elect to make adjustments to his/her alkaline presoak in one or more ways.

Firstly, the operator could elect to reduce the concentration of the chemical by either reducing the size of the hydrondnder tip, reducing the orifice size of the Dema valve, or adjusting the stroke length and/or rate on the injector pump. This is the easiest fix, as any similar adjustment reduces the chemical consumption per unit production, thereby reducing the cost of performing the service by the cost of the chendcal not used.

Secondly, the operator can reduce the dwell time that the chemical acts on the car to be cleaned. This can be accomplished most easily by increasing the chain speed. This method, however, not only affects the alkaline presoak but also every other product in the tunnel. Hence, the results of this type of action could negatively affect drying, and the cleaning of whitewall tires. While this reduces total chemical consumption per unit production, I would not advise choosing this course of action should another be available.

Thirdly, the operator could increase the concentration of the conjugate product (the acidic product) to a point where, after the second application, the alkaline detergent is more diluted than it normally would be. For this method to work, an operator must have an acidic product, and that product must be applied prior to the application of the alkaline detergent. This method will increase cost per unit production to account for the additional amount of acidic detergent required.

Finally, and by far the most commonly used course of action, is to wet the car prior to washing it. Now for the operators who still prep cars, this operation is accomplished already, in the course of the provision of the service. For those operators who do not prep cars, I would not recommend starting. Chemicals are more efficient if they are applied directly onto the surface that they are designed to clean, not on water that dilutes their effectiveness.

When feasible, it is always best to adjust the concentration of the chemical, as opposed to making holistic changes in the provision of service that are largely unnecessary and may even be detrimental. It would be my recommendation that you discuss these issues with your chemical representative and inquire as to what course of action should be taken.