When I decided to build a wash trailer, it was originally going to be used for bikini car washes. (That's another story). I started looking at tanks, pumps, hoses, and before I knew it, I was setting up something comparable to a soft wash rig. As I watched video after video about pumps, tanks, cleaners, hoses, etc, I kept seeing soft wash over and over. So I started listening to the soft wash discussions, and before I knew it, I was into mixing bleach, adding some Dawn, worrying about a suitable tank, upstream and down stream injectors. My actual first purchase was a 35 gallon tank. Then I bought another one the next day. Now at the time, I really wanted to use 55 gallon plastic barrels. But used ones are kind of scarce in my area now. Then, I started calculating the weight of two barrels full of water, and decided not to carry any water on my trailer at all. I was previously convinced that I needed a separate bleach tank and buffer tank. In the end, I decided to only carry several gallon jugs of bleach around and just enough water in the tank to make a 1% solution to do some quick spot checks. If the customer oks the results, I can quickly mjx up additional soup to do the job using the customer's water. I decided to limit my exterior wash activity to newer mobile homes. So now my final trailer configuration is down to a single 25 gallon tank for onsite batch mixing, and an empty 15 gallon spare tank that can be used as needed. My trailer is the smallest one sold at Harbor Freight, It is only 40 inches wide, and the two 35 gallon tanks I picked up from Tractor Supply were too big to fit side by side. So, that's when I bought a 25 gallon sprayer tank on sale from Northern Equipment. It turns out to be just the right size to sit right over the trailer axle. Tractor Supply allowed me to return one of the tanks. I also scrapped a home made 3 way proportional mixing manifold I copied from a video. For a number of different reasons, a single tank setup seems to be the best layout for doing small mobile home washes.
Most of us started small with as much as we could put together with the knowledge we already had. As time goes on, the next build comes along!
Soft-N-Safe Chuck said
Jul 11, 2020
OK Brett, My focus seems to change as I read and watch. I understand down streaming will not be practical for me, so now I'm working on a 3-way ball valve proportion layout and adding another 15 gal tank onboard. So far, I don't mind the learning curve such as it is. Having a direct connection to folks in the industry is priceless, and I thank you all for your patience as I finish up my alpha unit.
When I decided to build a wash trailer, it was originally going to be used for bikini car washes. (That's another story). I started looking at tanks, pumps, hoses, and before I knew it, I was setting up something comparable to a soft wash rig. As I watched video after video about pumps, tanks, cleaners, hoses, etc, I kept seeing soft wash over and over. So I started listening to the soft wash discussions, and before I knew it, I was into mixing bleach, adding some Dawn, worrying about a suitable tank, upstream and down stream injectors. My actual first purchase was a 35 gallon tank. Then I bought another one the next day. Now at the time, I really wanted to use 55 gallon plastic barrels. But used ones are kind of scarce in my area now. Then, I started calculating the weight of two barrels full of water, and decided not to carry any water on my trailer at all. I was previously convinced that I needed a separate bleach tank and buffer tank. In the end, I decided to only carry several gallon jugs of bleach around and just enough water in the tank to make a 1% solution to do some quick spot checks. If the customer oks the results, I can quickly mjx up additional soup to do the job using the customer's water. I decided to limit my exterior wash activity to newer mobile homes. So now my final trailer configuration is down to a single 25 gallon tank for onsite batch mixing, and an empty 15 gallon spare tank that can be used as needed. My trailer is the smallest one sold at Harbor Freight, It is only 40 inches wide, and the two 35 gallon tanks I picked up from Tractor Supply were too big to fit side by side. So, that's when I bought a 25 gallon sprayer tank on sale from Northern Equipment. It turns out to be just the right size to sit right over the trailer axle. Tractor Supply allowed me to return one of the tanks. I also scrapped a home made 3 way proportional mixing manifold I copied from a video. For a number of different reasons, a single tank setup seems to be the best layout for doing small mobile home washes.
Most of us started small with as much as we could put together with the knowledge we already had. As time goes on, the next build comes along!