We suggest that you use the following methods to contain your waste wash water and prevent the effluent from entering near by storm drains or waterways. We call these methods "Best Management Practices" or "BMP’s". Your goal should be not to let any water containing soap to enter any storm drain. With this goal in mind, you should proceed and have a great fundraiser and earn those much needed monies that your organization deserves.

BMP #1: Block off the storm drain. Try to wash the cars at the highest point, hopefully a flat surface area. At the end of the day after most of the water has evaporated, pump the remaining the water into a sanitary sewer drain. If you are at a gas station, they might have a dump for R.V. toilets. A clarifier is also good. Maybe a restroom toilet. On a sunny day most of the water will evaporate. If no one in your group owns a water pump ask the local wastewater authorities if you may borrow a pump for your event. Or vacuum up the water with a shop vacuum.

BMP #2: Select a site where the cars can be driven onto grass or gravel before washing. This way soapy water can filter through vegetation and soil before entering ground water or running off into the drainage ditch or storm drain.

BMP #3: Have a great car wash but don’t use any soap.

BMP #4: Block off the storm drains and pump left over wastewater onto the grass or into the planters thereby water the landscaping. Let most of the water evaporate before pumping so you don’t overflow the planters.

BMP #5: Pick a location where water runs off into a field or landscape directly after the pavement ends.

SO WHAT’S IN THE WATER THAT MAKES IT SO BAD ANYWAYS?

Well, first of all, we have chlorine in our tap water. There is also magnesium and calcium. And that’s before you even wash one car. If you spray the hose in the air that’s what’s in the water before it hits the ground. Due to the calcium and magnesium in the water in California, especially Southern California, it is necessary to soften our water. The chlorine and fluoride that we add to our water doesn’t help any either. Hard water spots are a major problem. Just park your car next to your sprinklers at home and you will see exactly what we are talking about. If your car is a dark color and you park it in the sun, the hard water spots will etch themselves into your clear coat and cause permanent damage to your paint job. The chemicals bake into the paint.

The desert cities such as Lancaster, Palm Springs, etc. have a major problem with this. You see, when it’s 115° F in the shade, the cars dry in three minutes. Luckily, multiple dryers can dry a car in two minutes. A crew of two can stay on top of it by drying most cars in one to one and one-half minutes. The main problem is soaping. The soap dries before you can rinse it off and the water evaporates out of the soap bucket every fifth car. The sprayer has to follow the soaper around the car, which is good because, by the time they are done, they’re hot. They can take turns spraying each other off.

If you have ever taken any chemistry classes, you know that just about everything is water soluble eventually. Water can combine with almost anything and make some pretty weird compounds, none of which are particularly good for the environment.

The hardness is water is caused by calcium and magnesium ions that form insoluble compounds. Also you can find iron and even traces of aluminum in our water. Our water is some of the clearest and cleanest in the world. It comes from the DWP (Department of Water and Power) and the MWD (Metropolitan Water District). Actually it doesn’t really come from there. It starts out as rain, drains to lakes and rivers and is brought to the people by canals, pipes and pumping stations.

So that is exactly what’s in the water before the wash. Now here is what may be in the water after the car wash. 6-22 mg/l of oil and grease. Usually this doesn’t come off the car. This is what is on the ground already that the water washes away. Yuk! How would you like to drink that in your bottled water. There are also suspended solids (TSS) with concentrations of 35-151 mg/l. Most of that is dirt, yet we can never know where each car has been and what’s in that dirt (i.e. bird droppings). There will also be foaming agents (soap) with concentrations of 0.3-1.41 mg/l which is very low. Yet I wouldn’t want to drink it or use it to make ice cubes. There probably isn’t but there could also be toluene, ethylbenzene and benzene. These are wicked ingredients that you definitely don’t want floating around in your puppy’s water bowl or your wife’s cappuccino. All other run off from car washes meets the drinking water standards and is certainly not going to adversely affect wild life or kill any ocean going fish.

The Regional Water Quality Control Board is not the only governing body concerned with water discharges. The Coastal Commission is also very concerned as well as the Department of Fish and Game. Both agencies have authority to issue civil penalties for water pollution.

For more information on water quality you can contact:

California Department of Fish and Game

If the garden hose has 60 PSI of pressure or more it puts out a minimum of ten gallons of water per minute (GPM). The total amount of water usage is as follows: 5 Gallons in the bucket plus 20 Gallons to wet the car @ 10 GPM + 40 Gallons to rinse the car @ 10 GPM = 65 Gallons of water. This would be a very water conscious person in good shape who can move briskly around the car. This person would have at least sixty gallons moving down the gutter into the storm drain.

USING A PRESSURE WASHER VERSUS A GARDEN HOSE

If you use a pressure washer during your fundraiser you can wash twenty cars with one capful of soap in a two-thirds filled five gallon water bucket. Of course your soap will be biodegradable. At least twenty-five percent of the cars you wash will not require the use of soap due to previous wax coats that have been applied. These cars combine to lower your wet/rinse cycle to about thirty seconds of spray time or 1.2 gallons of water per car. This is fifty times more efficient. You can wash fifty cars with a pressure washer to the one car washed with a garden hose in the driveway. This constitutes a significant savings in water.

If you spray a car with special equipment (pressure washer) you will get a fine mist spray. The water can be applied evenly and gives the run off a spread effect. Thus the water that reaches the ground evaporates quickly. A car that needs to be soaped will have a wet/rinse cycle of about one minute and will use about two gallons of water. This water never reaches the storm drains.

You can also contract with a local professional mobile car washer or car detailer to help your group. They only use 2.4 gallons of water per car and their pressure washers only put out 2.4 GPM. If they spray a car for twenty seconds to get it wet, then soap off the dirt and then rinse the car for approximately forty seconds this equals sixty seconds or one minute of sprayed water at 2.4 gallons per minute.

Working with a local professional can be very efficient. You can also purchase a pressure washer from a large department store and do it yourself. By the time you’ve washed 150-300 cars at a fundraiser you too will become very efficient with the water. Look for a pressure washer that puts out 1,500 PSI (pounds per square inch). Gasoline driven units are best, but electric units are about one-half the cost. Remember, if you plan on buying an electric unit make sure that you have an outlet near your designated wash area. Expect to pay $300 for a good electric unit and $500 to $800 for a decent gas unit.

You may also be able to borrow a pressure washer from a local painting contractor. They use them a lot to clean the exterior of homes and commercial buildings before painting. See if someone in your group has a parent who is a painter. Maybe they will volunteer to act as a sprayer during your fundraiser since they have experience using this type of equipment.

If you will be using a straight garden hose remember that fundraisers generally use approximately 3,600 gallons of water; 360 minutes @ 10 GPM. So use shut-off nozzles or kink the hose when you’re not spraying. If you use a pressure washer you will cut your wash time in half thus allowing you time to do twice the number of cars and earn more money. You will also have a lot less water to worry about that might be going into the storm drain.

At one fundraiser using a pressure washer, we washed 520 cars with 950 gallons of water in six hours. Approximately 150 cars with 3,600 gallons of water is generally the maximum amount of cars washed at this type of function using conventional methods. At this particular fundraiser we washed three and one-half times as many cars with one-third the water. We saved the City of Thousand Oaks, California 2,650 gallons of water that day and made the kids a substantial amount of money.

Fixed site car washes also conserve their water. That is why they are allowed to stay in business during a water shortage. They use seventy gallons of water per car during their complete car wash cycle. Four gallons of water is used during the pre-wash cycle. Sixty-six gallons of water is used during the soap/rinse cycle. Nearly two-thirds of the soap/rinse cycle water can be recycled. These approximately forty-four gallons of water are captured in a 10,000 gallon storage tank where they are used over again for car washes for the next three days. This dirty water is mixed with white sudsy soap and used during the car wash soap cycle. The average fixed site car wash uses four gallons (pre-wash) plus twenty-two gallons (sixty-six divided by two-thirds that is recycled) in the soap/rinse cycle bringing the total to twenty-six gallons of water per car. In the car washing industry this constitutes extreme efficiency.

If you are extremely careful with your water usage during your fundraiser, you can beat even the best recycling car wash, which still uses around fifteen gallons of water per car. And some self-serve car washes claim they use as little as 6.2 gallons of water per car.