Everyone knows I love to clean my car. I usually do it once every two weeks or so, or should I say, used to do it. Since water restrictions came into effect about six weeks ago, I haven’t cleaned the car once and for a black car, it’s was really starting to show. It got to the point, when it rained for seven seconds yesterday and completely covered the car in dirt, that I had to do something about it.
We have a little stockpile of water in the house from catching it in the shower and from the laundry that gets used to keep the garden happy. It’s amazing how much water is wasted in the 15 seconds or so at the start of the shower where you wait for the hot water to come through. In fact, you can fill half a bucket each shower this way, and the water is perfectly clean. So after a few showers, I had about 10L of clean water set aside. I then got the Karcher out and modified the water intake hose so that instead of taking it from the mains supply, it would suck it from the bottom of a bucket. By the time I’d used all the water, I probably got around the car twice (once with super concentrated cleaning fluid to break up all the dirt, and once to rinse). Then I just wiped it dry, and it was done. I’m thinking I need to do this more often now. :)
I’d buy a water tank for the house and catch it from one of the downpipes, but what’s the point when there’s no rain to catch!
One Comment
Permalink
I hate the Melb dust that comes with rain which always seems to come immediately after you clean the car. Your Granddad Ken was the best at cleaning cars who only used half a bucket of water suds with a very small amount of cleaning agent. Then he would just wipe the car dry. He would only wash a small section of the car at a time. Then he would polish the duco. He always got brilliant results in minutes! I used to get the same result with four thousand gallons of water over three or four hours!!! Daddy