Bobtorious

Bob - another thought if you want less fuss, if you have a water treatment company in your area, you could rent a DI (deionization) tank for your final product rinse too. Most of the larger dealers (i.e. Culligan, ECOWater, etc.) have the DI tanks available for rent on an exchange basis.

 

Some car dealers use the rental tanks where the water is real hard for a true spot-free rinse.

Just wanted to throw another round of thanks in this thread for everyone's replies. They've all been incredibly helpful! Cheers!

I've heard nothing but awesome about the CR Spotless.

I'm looking at them now... I need a whole home de-ionizer

I live in Vegas and the water here is very hard, add to that the heat, and it makes drying the car a nightmare! Well I went on an internet search and found a filter called CR-spotless water. It is a resin the removes ALL the minerals (de-ionized water). I also found out they sell it at cosco for cheaper than the website.

 

Anyway. I wash my car with regular hose water and when I'm ready to rinse I use the quick disconnects to switch to the cr spotless water filter and rinse away. Now if the water dries, there are no spots whatsoever!!! This thing has made car washing so much less stressful for me! It is expensive and the replacement resin ain't cheap either, but I love it! And would never wash my car without it again!!! Give it a look-see. And know that it does what it claims to do.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This sounds awesome, I will look into this. Thanks a lot!

Bob - you are likely seeing the sodium in your softened water. Maybe some other minerals but likely the sodium.

 

 

The carbon / charcoal filters or sediment filters available from your hardware store won't remove the sodium which is completely dissolved in the water. The carbon / charcoal filters are designed to remove tastes and odors from the water.

 

 

Sediment filters are designed to remove contaminants that are not dissolved like niphkin described - items that you can see if you pour water in a glass. Sometimes the sediment will settle to the bottom of the glass.

 

Have you thought about using purified water (RO or distilled water) for a final rinse? If you have a source for inexpensive bulk water, you could pour 3 - 5 gallons of purified water over the surface of your vehicle(s).

To be honest, that thought never crossed my mind. In all my previous residences, the water lines were hard. For whatever reason in this house, the lines running to the outdoors are SOFT (I've traced them back). I may have to get my soldering skills ready and move some pipes.

"Soft" water has salt added, no? Isn't that basically how those systems work?

 

Just thinking this through outloud...instead of air drying (essentially forcing the air to evaporate on the surface), maybe try towel drying with DS as a drying agent. Then you are lifting the water from the surface, along with any minerals in it. That MAY help.

Yup, I've been toweling drying in the interim. I'd just prefer not to if I don't have to.

I know some softening systems require salt to be added. Filtration systems (like RO) just pull stuff out of the water. We actually had a "hard water" spigot installed at our house, just so that the soft water wasn't used for car washing.

 

Sounds like this is just going to take some experimentation.

Indeed, soft water has salt added. I'm going to go troll around the hardware stores for a while. I'll report back with any purchases I make

You can find in line filters at your local hardware store that might help, but they tend to really slow the water pressure too.

Just in-line mineral filters?? I wish I knew what was in my water. I'd take the lower water pressure to not have to deal with this horrendous water.

I live in an area which has very "unfiltered" water. My problem is if I wash my vehicle, pool rinse it, and then dry with a leaf blower, I get these "spots" where the water has evaporated and left the minerals behind. It also tends to leave a nice film on my glass. The only way I can get these deposits off is to then detail spray the entire vehicle.

The line I wash from is soft water, so I'm guessing it's some other kind of mineral deposit that's hanging around. Does anyone else have really bad water, and if so, how do you handle the minerals?