Friday 8th June 2012

Beat the hosepipe ban!

Car getting mucky with hosepipes off the menu? There is a way around it...

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In large parts of the UK we’re now two months into a hosepipe ban and cars are getting mucky. As much as I admire the spin of the water companies for promoting the ‘proud to be dirty’ campaign, my in-built automotive OCD means I get twitchy about pollen landing on my cars, let alone bird poo and actual mud.

Insert 'big butt' jokes here...

While I enjoy using a bucket and sponge for the actual car cleaning, I (and, I suspect, many others) miss the ease of being able to rinse the car with a hose and pressure washer before the actual spongy, soapy, washing part and also to remove the soapy water afterward.

So are there any ways around the hosepipe ban?

A quick read of the ‘Temporary Use Ban’ doesn’t leave a lot of room for manoeuvre this side of a £1,000 fine. However, as a well-known brand of pressure washer is advertising, you can use a water butt (or other rainwater container) to supply your hose and pressure washer.

You can connect your washer directly to the butt...

There are basically two options of how to connect a pressure washer to your rainwater supply. Most water butts now come with the universal click-connect ends to the taps so you can attach the hose direct from water butt to pressure washer. Although, given the muck that’s likely to be in your water butt, you’ll probably want to fit a filter too. These can be found for less than a tenner either online or from garden centres.

And, assuming your pressure washer is able to suck water (and most do), and your water butt is close enough to your pride and joy, you’re away and ready wash your car like normal.

However, you can also buy a suction hose and filter for your pressure washer (between £10 and £30 online) which means you can use a bucket filled from the water butt.

Technically, it’s against the regs to fill the bucket from a mains tap and then use that with the suction hose. And you definitely shouldn’t leave the tap running into the bucket with the suction hose drawing water. Oh no.

...or draw it in through a suction pipe

Using the bucket of rainwater method it’s possible to measure how much water you actually use when pressure washing your car (I told you about my OCD didn’t I?). Turns out, you can rinse a Subaru Impreza WRX wagon-sized car (twice) with less than 12 litres.

If I were using the ‘throwing buckets of water over the car’ method to rinse, then it would be six times that amount.

Setting up and using the suction hose was all surprisingly easy, the only thing you have to be prepared for is a long wait while the pressure washer initially sucks air.

I even installed a dedicated car-cleaning water butt (I’ve mentioned my OCD, right?) which, given the fact that since the hosepipe ban was introduced it’s been pretty rainy, is now almost full. Given the water butt holds more than 200 litres I should be able to wash my car until the end of the ban.

The only other trick I’ve been using to keep up on the car cleanliness stakes is that after it’s finished raining I’ve been nipping out to wipe my cars down. This does a great job of keeping the pollen and dust from building up.

A bucket of rain water is the portable option

You may laugh at all this, but the alternative is to pay for a wash, and I’m never happy with other’s standards. Wonder why that is?

[enroz]

Can i get one with a turbo?

Lost the will to live, quick, some car new please!!!!

[83TEP]

errr, has this been posted on the wrong website?

[page3]

Now if only it would stop raining for long enough...

[TonyHetherington]

Interesting article.

Fellow OCD sufferer here, and don't want to go near my pride and joy without lashings of water.

Will give it a go this weekend

[PascalBuyens]

"Beat the hospeipe ban!"

The what?

[B'stard Child]

I've been doing the same thing with a water but set up for a while now - mainly cos I hate paying for water when it's free from the sky (and I really hate paying sewerage charges based on 75% of water used)

[frosted]

Yawn

[DJRC]

Wtf is wrong with just 2 buckets of water to wash your car? One soapy, then one clean to wash it off.

[Nardies]

I thought that suction pipe was only for detergent, might give that a go later.

[RonJohnson]

Is it definitely against the regs to fill a buck from a tap and then use this bucket to feed the pressure washer? There is certainly no hosepipe involved and it would seem infinately more sensible than wasting more water by throwing bucket loads over the car to rinse it.

[Stuart]

Strangely appropriate that the chap in the picture is wearing a "MacGyver" T-Shirt.

[SimonSaid]

I liked this article I have found the best solution to the hosepipe ban for car cleaning has been the self-service jetwash though. Pay as you need (£1 for 100 seconds), costing me about a fiver a time, and the one I use stops timing when you're not using a tool, so you can take your time. Quick drive home followed by chamois, tyre and soft top gloss and it looks the business. Doing it at home with the Karcher was cheaper, but took a lot longer with all the hose/extension cord wrangling, water bucket hauling and general elbow-grease.

Quick top tip I figured out last week at one of these: the hot foam brush is typically soft enough not to scratch the paint, but to be sure there are no solid particles in it that could scratch anything, I give the brush itself a quick blast with the high pressure wand/gun thing when I'm rinsing the car. The pressure usually blasts some iffy looking junk out of the foam brush.

[PoleDriver]

Portsmouth water never had a hosepipe ban... I feel cheated!

[flashygee]

Wow,you have luck,you can wash your car @ Home.
Here in Germany is it strictly forbidden to wash your car per hand or the kärcher
in your garden with or without soapcleaner.
You must use things like Jetwash or you can get big probs with Neighbours,Police
and so on.
Its expensive when you busted.
You know the ecology thing with the groundwater and so on...

[Caractacus]

No hose pipe ban here (Wales - lol)

But we've got our own private water supply and two 1000L IBC's off the garage roof (that are always full, of course!) that I use with the pressure washer for all things motorised.

I can give the thumbs up to Karcher though - good bit of kit.

Is there REALLY still a ban in parts of the UK? Madness. Water companies waste millions of litres through crap infrastructure every day.

[MiltonRX]

How about Optimum No Rinse?Haven't tried it myself but it seems well regarded.

[jon-]

Stuart said:

Strangely appropriate that the chap in the picture is wearing a "MacGyver" T-Shirt.

Isn't that Tristan

Edited by jon- on Friday 8th June 11:40

[JREwing]

My cars are dirty and there's no hosepipe ban here. Maybe I'm just lazy and don't care. In fact, that's definite.

[Deva Link]

Hmmmm - pressure washer fed by stagnant water from a water butt....did anybody mention Legionnaires disease?

[LewisR]

This would make a great feature on the QVC channel.

That aside, I think I'm correct in stating that water from a water butt will be soft whereas tap water from many regions in the UK will be hard. This will, I think, give a better wash (less streaking etc.)

Anyone know any better?