Rinseless Car Wash

[blueline]

@dr bob
Thanks for the tip on vinegar...never thought of that for the car. I've used on shower heads for removing mineral deposits (we seem to have a lot in the water here in Tennessee), but didn't make the connection to washing my car.
My garage faces west so to avoid any sun load when I wash, its early morning before the house shadow disappears.

The SoCal water we enjoyed had minerals measured in parts-per-part. The little bit of vinegar in the bucket seemed to offset some of those. Vs. a shower head soak in straight vinegar to remove more serious deposits. Most car wash detergents have some water-softeners as part of their emulsifiers ingredient package. My vinegar addition was just a little help for the extreme local conditions there. If you have seriously hard water, it might help you too.

Here on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, we don't need to steal water from far away places. If I look west out my office window, I could see the water supply as snow if those darn trees weren't in the way. Contaminants here are primarily calcium carbonate, and at very low concentration. I'm set up for a future water softener install, but in the almost dozen years here I haven't yet felt the need. I'm ready if there's some sudden spike in hardness.

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My most recent experiences with Tennessee water was more concerned with stuff that was being actively dumped into rivers upstream. Between unregulated waste from a no-say-anything munitions operation to leaching from coal ash ponds and dumps, I wouldn't dip a toe into any of the water flowing nearby where we were. It took a bit of effort to get boiler-quality water from that stuff, and our discharge flow was a lot cleaner and nicer than what flowed in from that river. Yet there were folks out fishing in that river and the lakes between dams. It's just a different regulatory world there.

There's always room to improve! Not sure about the particulars of your experience, but I think Tennessee's waterways stack up decently - or at least a lot better these days. From the EPA's report to Congress Oct 29, 2024:

national-inventory-report-to-congress-1.pdf

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The PDF report has an interactive map broken up by state on p27 with many data sets that would likely reveal a lot more across the country, both good and bad I suspect.

However, a couple of sets of comparisons using just the "Supports Fish & Aquatic Life" segment were interesting. I figured if the body of water was good for fish and aquatic life it would signify a fairly positive outlook overall, especially considering that we have a plethora of waterway biodiversity in TN.

For that fact set (fish and aquatic life) I looked at the "Lakes & Reservoirs" sub as well as that of the "Rivers & Streams" . I realize that's only a couple of segments out of many but it is a positive for us here.

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https://mywaterway.epa.gov/state/TN/wat ... y-overview
https://mywaterway.epa.gov/state/OR/wat ... y-overview

[85targa]

I’ve used Meguires rinseless wash for garage dust or a quick clean after a drive back when everyone in my area was trying to save water.

[dr bob]

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There's always room to improve! Not sure about the particulars of your experience, but I think Tennessee's waterways stack up decently - or at least a lot better these days. From the EPA's report to Congress Oct 29, 2024:

<<...>>

This is diverging a bit. That particular little project for *** is a combined-cycle power plant at Rogersville, at the site of a previous coal-fired plant. Upstream, Eastman Chemical had added many decades of discharge 'stuff' to the river. We did a LOT of analysis of the water there, mostly to solve some of the, um, impurities issues. For most projects it's simple minerals and turbidity. At that project, extended analyses identified a lot more, even after basic mechanical particle filtering and RO treatment. The questions were about the plant discharge requirements, which were quietly relaxed for the metals. We still saw some plate-out in steam generator tubes and LP turbine blades, but not threatening to the structural integrity. Apparently the contaminants in that river were not tested for your EPA water quality reports. I suspect but can't confirm that *** and Eastman managed the interface with EPA and the state water quality folks.

The biggest telltales were all the signs along the river about not fishing and avoiding any skin contact with river water. Lots of very nice homes look down on the river and lakes formed behind the *** dams. Really inexpensive to buy, thanks to the local recreational water use restrictions.

Another project further east for the same company had no such issues, but that site had groundwater pumps rather than surface water, so the biggest contaminants were related to corn farming, pesticides and fertilizers. The minerals were easy in both places.

Now, back to the rinseless car wash discussions....