In a message dated 4/15/07 1:18:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
refisher@MCHSI.COM writes:

> What made me think of that was that those of you in the salt belt could
> probably wash the underside of your cars in your driveway or even garage if
> you were quick about it and if you had some idea of what to do with the
> runoff. Some of those small home pressure washers are rated at 2 or even 2.5
> gpm- You're not supposed to run water hotter than about 140 F through one of
> those pumps but most household water heaters are set slightly lower than
> that so you could get away with running the supply out of the water heater
> for a few minutes. It shouldn't take very long to wash the worst of the crap
> out.
>
> I've been thinking about this because a) I own a pressure washing business
> and b) we're probably going to move from sunny SoCal to not-quite-as-sunny
> Nova Scotia in the next 2-3 years so I've been giving some thought to how to
> keep our vehicles from getting destroyed. A quick and dirty way to get the
> runoff would be to have another person standing by with a Shop-Vac, but what
> I might do is get a several yards of gravel and make a van-sized 'wash pit'
> in a flat spot off the side of the drive. Roll the van onto the gravel every
> so often, give it the once-over and move the van to wherever you normally
> park it; do a more thorough wash at 'warmer' times when the opportunity
> presents itself.
>
> Kind of a PITA but not so much as having your vehicles disintigrate out from
> under you.
>

much easier to just park your van in the winter and buy a $500 beater car..
:<)

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