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why would people not use hot water??????
- Thread starter Baldmonkey
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I would very much doubt a diesel boiler would change it much, apart from it adding £5k to the value of van. Gas boiler would be different in my opinion.
Chris34
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The way I see it, you don't see any other form of cleaning saying 'use cold water for better results'. Carpet cleaning, best results = high pressure hot water, dishwasher = long cycle hot water, washing machine what do you do for those whites? = 90 degree hot water, washing your car, steam cleaning an engine etc every type of cleaning seems to involve adding heat to get the best results. Now I'm not in a position to afford the costs to go for any type of heat system but if I had the money then it would certainly be something I would be looking at.
I can't help but feel my results would be a lot better if I was using hot water. On some of my customers the whites of the frames are greying and although I can't be sure, I think if I had been using hot water then this would not be happening.
I want to provide an excellent service, for excellent money and I see hot water as probably being a key part of the puzzle.
My van used to run on LPG and I've got a 90 litre tank in it, used to run great but has need a service for years now. I always felt safe with it, they have safety valves installed in the event of an accident and are actually safer than petrol. I don't know whether it could be adapted to make a hot water system but it is something that I will look into when the funds are there. LPG is around 65p per litre, the van used to run better on that then it does on petrol.
I can't help but feel my results would be a lot better if I was using hot water. On some of my customers the whites of the frames are greying and although I can't be sure, I think if I had been using hot water then this would not be happening.
I want to provide an excellent service, for excellent money and I see hot water as probably being a key part of the puzzle.
My van used to run on LPG and I've got a 90 litre tank in it, used to run great but has need a service for years now. I always felt safe with it, they have safety valves installed in the event of an accident and are actually safer than petrol. I don't know whether it could be adapted to make a hot water system but it is something that I will look into when the funds are there. LPG is around 65p per litre, the van used to run better on that then it does on petrol.
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scottish cleaning service
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I was out today and converted my customers to hot water. With the help of my miracle stuff (the pink stuff & I) removed all the black marks from their white pvc doors and gave them a rinse with my hot water. The doors came up so good I then did the same to the back doors. It took me a while but I think it will be worth it when they see the results. Now carry a small tub of the stuff with a small sponge scouring pad inside it. Handy, if anyone can be bothered but the customers think I'm a miracle worker and hopefully stay with me. ?
Chris34
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I use the pink stuff but I'd be wary of using a sponge scourer, I personally wouldn't use one on plastic as it will scratch it. I use a magic sponge, even with them though you have to be careful. The best are the standard cheap ones that fall apart, I used a Flash Eraser sponge that's supposed to be the same but they arn't, they don't fall apart and I actually scratched a sill with it, loads of fine scratches and you could see them in the light bouncing off it. Luckily it was just one sill and the customer never said anything. Learn't my lesson though.
scottish cleaning service
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I used a cloth today but I thought a sponge would be better but I ditch the scouring bit. Thanks for that @Chris34 saved me a lot of grief. ?
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As I've already said paying £5k+ for a Webasto type hot water system isn't value for money. 90+% of our work is maintenance work where you don't need hot water, and it makes no difference whatsoever if you do use it. It also makes the majority of glass appear hydrophobic.
Where it is very good is on very dirty windows, including coastal windows that are quite often salty. It is also very good on add ons, fascia etc
If I had the knowledge I have now I would do one of 2 things
Firstly I would look at an Immersion heater if I had a van filtration system. If I filtered into an IBC I would look at buying a hotbox and heat the water when transferring it into the tank.
The above 2 will give you hot water at a fraction of the price of a Webasto heater.
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Where it is very good is on very dirty windows, including coastal windows that are quite often salty. It is also very good on add ons, fascia etc
If I had the knowledge I have now I would do one of 2 things
Firstly I would look at an Immersion heater if I had a van filtration system. If I filtered into an IBC I would look at buying a hotbox and heat the water when transferring it into the tank.
The above 2 will give you hot water at a fraction of the price of a Webasto heater.
.
Chris34
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I've been in cleaning all my life just different areas of cleaning but obviously still learning with the window cleaning. I think that cleaning the actual glass wouldn't make much difference, it's more the frames I'm thinking the difference will be. Bird **** and stuff like that would be easier to remove but I don't get much anyway, make 1 in a day, if that.
When you say it makes the glass appear hydrophobic, what do you mean? Is that the self cleaning glass where it doesn't produce a cascading effect and you're chasing beads down the glass?
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Yes it tends to make all windows bead rather than stream, a Gardiner scraper will help you a lot on bird marks. You very rarely get windows as dirty as carpets etc. I have hot water, 2 man 8kw Webasto, and would love to be able to tell everyone how great it is and what a good investment it was, but it isn't and I can't.
It genuinely is a luxury for 99% of windies and something I would recommend if you're making £50k a year and want something to reduce your tax bill.
It genuinely is a luxury for 99% of windies and something I would recommend if you're making £50k a year and want something to reduce your tax bill.
Chris34
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Yeah, it's always good to do a test patch when using a new method / chemical. So many things can go wrong. Like when you use bleach for cleaning it can appear all white on some things and you walk away feeling really happy. Go back a month later and find it's all gone yellow.
The pink stuff I tend to just try little scuffs with the pink stuff and a microfibre cloth. I don't go mad any more as the customers never seem to appreciate the extra time and effort, so I just do the job as hired to do. I use it on obvious sills now and again where the difference is most visible.
Got some pvc cleaner last year in about August, not even used it yet. Want to give that a go. The pink stuff makes it white and clean but there isn't a shine, think the pvc cleaner might bring back the shine. Not overly worried about it any more though, but its good to know what does what and what is possible just in case the customer asks.
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I have found the total opposite , hot water sheets easier than cold on our work , we do lots of salty sandy jobs on the coast and hot makes a huge difference, I have been that impressed with it i now have hot in every van , makes the working day much easier and quicker evan on maintenance cleans ,it brings white frames up much better than cold , I don’t view it as a luxury and you could work without it but in my opinion it’s well worth the cost and evan if I was a sole trader doing 20k a year I would still have it regardless in the summer months doing gfs hot water will bite straight into dry green algi evan without any chemicals cold takes time and far more scrubbing on this type of clean it takes half the time , on maintenance window cleans it is also much quicker again we get a lot of seagull poo on windows and when they are feeding on herring,mackerel and other oily fish try removing that from the windows with cold , it can be done but takes ages , we have several hotels that have several bits like this on practically every window on the building hot has halved the time on theses jobs . Domestic maintenance cleans it is also quicker on as well but difficult to be exact how much quicker but I would say each van probably does 5-7
properties a day more with hot than when we were cold again some of this is down to bird poo ,spiders , bee pollen spots that hot will remove much faster , this is just my personal experience over the last 5:5 years of using hot over cold .
When using hypo on plastic if it turns it yellow straight away within a couple of hours maximum of washing it off it will return to white provided you haven’t used a strong or neat solution , we use it quite a bit on plastic cleans and old scabby frames to whiten them up always looks much better than just using Virosol on old plastics
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Well you agree with some things I said ? I am very surprised about you saying it sheets better. My son hates it because of the beading.
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dmw
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As said on here, most of mine is inland estate work dull maintenance cleans, loads are still having fortnightly cleans (we're still living in the Eighties here). And I might consider an electric reel, but hot water cleaning seems to be problematic sometimes. I do see the benefit on snail trails though.
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Only time it beads is on hydrophobic glass and even then it’s minimal much less than cold did , ???? No idear why we have it different to you ??? , when cold I always found in winter months water was thick and didn’t run as fast or freely down the windows now with hot it’s fast and nice thin sheet over the whole pain .
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I originally said that we only use it when temperature is below 2 degrees because my son moans about using it above that. We get beading on every window, will try and remember one day to video the same window being rinsed with hot and with cold.
David K
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Hot all the Way , started cold for 8-10 yrs , now hot gas system , hate cold water and bird poo and Yellow bee spots go off easier with hot. Upside is its warm thru the pole too , off course downside in 30 degrees summer ...?
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Mostly we are dealing with dust and light dirt, not fats, grease or ingrained heavy dirt, I wash my van and my wifes car with cold water and I get the same results as I would using warm water,
Chris34
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I've been in cleaning all my life, cold water doesn't clean as well as hot water for all other aspects of cleaning. The only thing I would say is that when cleaning glass on the inside of doors I used to use a synthetic leather, I found it better to use cold water but it was because the cloth dried out too quick when using hot.
The only way I'll know for sure is to test it myself but I'd think it will make the frames whiter and make it a lot easier to clean off insect poo in the summer.
Be a long time before I can set one up though, think I would have to go the immersion route but then again I might also look at the LPG and see if something could be rigged up using the tank that's already in the van.
scottish cleaning service
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This is the science behind hot water. I did a test on low level dirty gutters with virosol, ubik and degreaser. The only difference was the temperature of the water. I used boiling water and the dirt ran off itself so it must make the dirt react and move about so its a no brainer i'm afraid. ?
Chris34
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Yeah it is fact that adding heat increases a chemical reaction. I don't think anybody would disagree with that. It's whether hot water makes enough of a difference to be able to 'tell' the difference.
Interestingly, here is an experiment anybody can do to see the effects of hot water vrs cold water reaction when added to a chemical. Go to your kitchen sink, put the plug in it, put in lots of fairy liquid and fill it up using hot water, notice how many bubbles foam up. Now drain the sink and try and rinse the bubbles away using only hot water. Now do the same test but after draining the sink wash the bubbles away with cold water. It's faster to get rid of the bubbles with cold water because the chemical reaction with the soap is greatly reduced. It's worth noting that whenever you're rinsing chemicals out of a cloth, or sponge, use cold water it's faster.
