How Much Water do you filter in an hour?

This is a picture of the " Grey Water" that we must filter before discharging it to the local sewer. Remember, this is only 20 or so minutes of water and is about 1 to 1.5 feet deep that we generate from a corner ( 15% of a single floor with 6 floors) in a 400,000 sq ft garage. We averaged 3 floors per weekend. ( Filtering slows us down ). We are filtering at 35-40 GPM's.

This water is more oil than anything else.

If that's mostly oil, then I think you should sell it by the barrel and make some money.

I think my system on a perfect day will only filter 15 to 20 gpm. That is a lot of water, and most of my customers would not even think about allowing it to pool like that.

Actually, they don't mind that. To them, it shows that we do indeed collect all the " Grey Water" and filter it. So many others just let it go done the storm drain making the owner of the garage possibly liable for the fines of 10k per day plus 1k per gallon of discharge.

1. The Sanitation Districts here in California prefers this way to prove that you have a " Water Tight Seal" over their sewer drain. That no Grey water is getting by you, or they prefer a boom. However, when you are taking 80 GPM per minute, they seam to like this way because a boom would be hard pressed to hold back 80 GPM.

2. We produce so much water, that it is near impossible NOT to have this amount of water at any giving time. In 10 minutes we can produce 800 gallons of oil black laced water. The water at times ( NOT ALL THE TIME) can be as thick as low fat milk except black in color.

It costs us $3,000 to $5,850 to dispose of and recharge our filtration system. Our Active Carbon filter is about 900 lbs alone. Our filtraion trailer is 24 ft long and takes a 20kw generator to run it.

We pull out allot of oil from the cement.

Please note, that when I say mostly oil, I mean the substance in the water consists of water with oil in it. Not gum, not dirt, not paint. Just Oil. I guess I need to be a little more carefully on my wording to those who may not specialize in deep cleaning of parking garages.

This garage was completed in the end of March for *******. We have another one under contract at the end of May for *******. EPA, County and City all show up with video and lab trucks to exam and evaluate the cleaning and the filtration system. If you do it wrong 1 time, you might as well look for something else to do in life. There is no second chances in some parts of California. In 19 years of cleaning parking garages, we have never been written up or fined.

I am not a flatwork guy, so forgive me if this post seems rediculous Jim...

If your system had vacuum recovery on the surface cleaners, would you still need to rinse? It seems like that would GREATLY reduce the amount of water being used, filtered, and discharged.

Thats a lot of water to recover through a vacuum surface cleaner.....80 gallons a minute, THATS A LOT OF WATER !!!!!!!!!!

Donny Jackson said:

Thats a lot of water to recover through a vacuum surface cleaner.....80 gallons a minute, THATS A LOT OF WATER !!!!!!!!!!

Click to expand...

I was referring to possibly eliminating the 80 gallon per minute rinse cycle, with a vacuum recovery surface cleaner.

We have tried several vacuuming techniques.

We experimented with 700 CFM to 1000 CFM. Though there are times that the 1000 CFM was considered adequate and in some cases preferred, it still did not perform as well as a complete rinse down. A vacuum can't remove 100% of all the deposits all the time.

The 80 gallon per minute rinse gives the best results. All of the residue that is left from the cleaning is picked up and carried away from the amount of water used for the rinse.

A "OK" example is washing your hands that has grease rubbed deep into the pours. Use that, God forbidden .6 -.GPM faucet (Which should be band) from a restaurant restroom, put detergent on your hand, not to much, and wash with warm/ hot water for a second or two only, and then go to an air dyer and blow off the oil and detergent. Your hand may look clean, but depending on the grease, you may still have some residue feeling from the detergent and grease on your hand. Now do the same washing, then rinse under full water pressure, under a faucet at 8 - 10 GPM with unlimited time and supply of water. Your hands will feel cleaner.

Knowing that you do have a good rinse following the cleaning, you may wish to apply more detergent without worrying about the residue left behind.

Granted this is over simplifying it, but you get the picture.

Jim,
That's an amazing system you have!!!..I am just getting into the parking garage cleaning here in NY. If you look on my website www.cleanupamericaofny.com that is the set-up I am going to use along with some other equipment that I have. That 80gpm rinse is phenomenal. I know guys that have used Fire hydrants and hoses to just rinse the parking garages and that works fine and in some cases thats all the parking garages want to pay for. I only did 2 parking garages over the years and the rinsing has always been a pain in the rear. Now I am more equipped to handle higher rinsing capabilities but still no where near what your dealing with. Considering that we do building cleaning among doing many storefronts and alot of residential we need the ability to adapt to those type of cleaning with the equipment that I have.

In your case you truly specialize and I find your system amazing!!

How do you supply 80 gpm

John,

I like your Swabby 48 surface cleaner. I thought of making one. Is yours manufactured or did you build it? How much do they cost? Is the unit have the wands underneather powered by the motor? ( Meaning Belt driven) or are they like the water power surface style cleaners?

Kory,

To answer your question.... The rinse is done with a 1 1/2 inch fire hose which supplies 90 to 125 psi at 80 gallons per minute. We sometime use two hoses at different parts of the garage for the rinse. Example, 7th floor one hose one south end the other on the north end. Of course this is over 80 gpm's ( More like 130 GPM do to splitting the water, volume will decrease). when that happens, our filters cannot keep up. We radio to shut down until we do catch up.

Everyone, Please note, that I am not explaining everything in detail though I am honored by all the questions in garage cleaning. I am more than willing to help those on the east coast and mid west by phone, though I am not going to give details on how to build our equipment.

I have been emailed asking about our equipment and our site has been hit 1871 hits just in 2 weeks. Since Monday we have been hit 451 hits. All on the filtration and equipment pages. The last thing I want is to tell my competitors how to compete with our service. It is sometimes, more than not, a cut throat business here in California.

I have been asked if I would build one. " I will pay you". Well I sure hope so IF I decide to build one. People ask how much. If I ever decide to build one for another company, the following requirements need to be met:

1. The Company would have to be on the east coast and in business for 10 years or more.
2. The costs would be in the 110k to 125k.
3. Liabilities issues have to be resolved in writing through an attorney.

Again, thats if I decide to venture in that direction. Currently I am not interested. Maybe in another 5 years.

Jim-
I own a Powerwashing business for 13 years called Clean County Powerwashing www.cleancounty.com The swabby end is a franchise and all equipment was put together by Bill Clemmons http://www.cleanupamerica.com/

The bars on the bottom of the swabby are belt driven by a motor so they can clean faster. My other 3 surface machines are water driven--no motor.

Motor driven surface machines are faster because they turn into the spray instead of being driven away from the spray like water driven. The swabby is an amazing piece of machinery. Do to some circumstances including adding more equipment I am not getting the swabby set-up mid June. I have 3000 brochures going out within a week to promote this type of cleaning. Considering that I am swamped with Clean County PW and am completely booked up just about every day untill June the timing is about right.

My wife is nervous about the flood of calls we may recieve soon but I look at it the more calls....the better If I have to hire more then the two fulltimers I have now thats a good thing. Many people are looking for work here including some of my friends--which is not always a good source to higher from. On my cell and business phone we get at least 5 calls a week from people looking for work..So I hope I get alot more so all is happy.

John, I am trying to call you but the phone is busy

Jim,
Nice talking to you. Thats some phenomenal system you have there. People who do specialized Cleaning would be wise to look into what your doing. The Swabby set-up will be a good fit to go along with some other cleaning that we do.

A great forum to show and Demonstrate equipment besides Conventions is at some of the Pressure washing Roundtables that are held periodically thru-out the country. Besides being posted here on some of these Cleaning Bulletin Boards you can also go to http://www.contractorevents.com/ a site ran by Celeste Gorthrop to see if there is a Roundtable to be held by you in the near future.

I've been to a few of these roundtables that over a 100 contractors appeared and the place was sold out. Some roundtables can only hold 30-40 people so they can sell out fast. There is one in NY in August that is limited to around 40 people if I can remember correctly. These are nice forums to talk shop and network and if your lucky like me you can make some connections and a few thousand $$$$ in the process----Good Luck

Jim@Garagecleaning said:

This is a picture of the " Grey Water" that we must filter before discharging it to the local sewer. Remember, this is only 20 or so minutes of water and is about 1 to 1.5 feet deep that we generate from a corner ( 15% of a single floor with 6 floors) in a 400,000 sq ft garage. We averaged 3 floors per weekend. ( Filtering slows us down ). We are filtering at 35-40 GPM's.

This water is more oil than anything else.

Click to expand...

Thats a lot of dirty water

Jim@Garagecleaning said:

This is a picture of the " Grey Water" that we must filter before discharging it to the local sewer. Remember, this is only 20 or so minutes of water and is about 1 to 1.5 feet deep that we generate from a corner ( 15% of a single floor with 6 floors) in a 400,000 sq ft garage. We averaged 3 floors per weekend. ( Filtering slows us down ). We are filtering at 35-40 GPM's.

This water is more oil than anything else.

Click to expand...

6 parking spots @ 8 ft = 48 ft (min) width x
1/2 parking spot (10ft) + drive lane (15 ft) = 25ft - Total square feet 1200 x
1.25 ft of water =

11205 gallons total.

11205 / 20 minutes = 560.25 gallons per minute

Jim has said he uses 1 1/2 inch fire hose to rinse.

1 1/2 inch fire hose flows at approximately 100 gallons per minute. http://community.fireengineering.co...219672:Comment:135218&id=1219672:Topic:116075

Either

a) Jim is using 5+ fire hoses simultaneously (would wreak havok on the ability to fight nearby fires)
b) This is no more than three inches of water instead of Jim's claimed 1- 1 1/2 feet of water
c) This is over an hour and a half of rinsing rather than the 20 minutes Jim said.

Either way, this entire post cannot possibly be true.

How much more is BS?

"Like this water is more oil than anything else". What? Over 5000 gallons of oil? He should filter it and sell it back to the oil companies.

Gentlemen, this is a little bit of oil, a lot of dirt and a whole bunch of tire rubber. That is why it is so black.

Ever notice that oil floats? But guess what, tire rubber doesn't so much.

More BS.

Tony Shelton said:

6 parking spots @ 8 ft = 48 ft (min) width x
1/2 parking spot (10ft) + drive lane (15 ft) = 25ft - Total square feet 1200 x
1.25 ft of water =

11205 gallons total.

11205 / 20 minutes = 560.25 gallons per minute

Jim has said he uses 1 1/2 inch fire hose to rinse.

1 1/2 inch fire hose flows at approximately 100 gallons per minute. http://community.fireengineering.co...219672:Comment:135218&id=1219672:Topic:116075

Either

a) Jim is using 5+ fire hoses simultaneously (would wreak havok on the ability to fight nearby fires)
b) This is no more than three inches of water instead of Jim's claimed 1- 1 1/2 feet of water
c) This is over an hour and a half of rinsing rather than the 20 minutes Jim said.

Either way, this entire post cannot possibly be true.

How much more is BS?

"Like this water is more oil than anything else". What? Over 5000 gallons of oil? He should filter it and sell it back to the oil companies.

Gentlemen, this is a little bit of oil, a lot of dirt and a whole bunch of tire rubber. That is why it is so black.

Ever notice that oil floats? But guess what, tire rubber doesn't so much.

More BS.

Click to expand...

That's why we call you the BS ESQUIRE DOCTOR

Jim@Garagecleaning said:

We have tried several vacuuming techniques.

We experimented with 700 CFM to 1000 CFM. Though there are times that the 1000 CFM was considered adequate and in some cases preferred, it still did not perform as well as a complete rinse down. A vacuum can't remove 100% of all the deposits all the time.

The 80 gallon per minute rinse gives the best results. All of the residue that is left from the cleaning is picked up and carried away from the amount of water used for the rinse.

A "OK" example is washing your hands that has grease rubbed deep into the pours. Use that, God forbidden .6 -.GPM faucet (Which should be band) from a restaurant restroom, put detergent on your hand, not to much, and wash with warm/ hot water for a second or two only, and then go to an air dyer and blow off the oil and detergent. Your hand may look clean, but depending on the grease, you may still have some residue feeling from the detergent and grease on your hand. Now do the same washing, then rinse under full water pressure, under a faucet at 8 - 10 GPM with unlimited time and supply of water. Your hands will feel cleaner.

Knowing that you do have a good rinse following the cleaning, you may wish to apply more detergent without worrying about the residue left behind.

Granted this is over simplifying it, but you get the picture.

Click to expand...

Another respected PWI member has been banned from the Hinderliter board for pointing out the obvious dangers of disabling the fire suppression systems in a parking garage in opposition to Jim's dangerous claims.

I am glad Jim has a found a place where he fits in. A place where false information on everything from fire hose rinsing to environmental requirements can be doled out to contractors and those who are doing it can pat each other on the back.

We can continue to have real discussions about real cleaning right here on PWI.

Jim Gamble is Still Saying Tampering with Fire protection Systems is OK?