7 Tips for Preventing Your Car Wash from Freezing Over

If your car wash is located in an area that gets freezing temperatures and snow, you need to take extra precautions from late fall to early spring to keep your business open and operating. The last thing you want is to have to close because your water lines froze and your equipment isn’t working.

Car washes tend to be busy in the winter months as people want to get salt, sand, and other dirt off their vehicles. If you aren’t open because your car wash froze, you are sending hundreds of customers down the road to a competitor.

Tip #1: Get a Water Weeping System

This type of system helps keep water flowing through wash wands and other wash equipment to prevent freezing. There are several different types of systems, from ones that work 24/7 and have to be manually turned on and off to ones with advanced technologies that turn and on and off automatically based on the outdoor temperatures.

Tip #2: Get Anti-Freezing Soap for Foaming Wash Brushes

To keep foaming wash brushes from freezing, you can get anti-freezing soap that coats the inside of the supply lines and prevents the water from freezing. Just remember to also adjust the metering on the foaming soap delivery to avoid using too much anti-freezing soap than needed.

Tip #3: Switch to Winter Cleaning and Air Freshener Products

If you offer car cleaning accessories like carpet shampooing, spot remover, carpet protectant, and misting air freshener products at your vacuum stations, you also need to swap these out before it gets too cold. There are anti-freezing carpet shampoos, spot removers, carpet protectants, and oil-based air freshener misters that keep working to around 0 degrees F.

Tip #4: Install a Radiant Heating/Floor Heating System

To keep water from freezing on the floor and creating slick spots where people could slip and fall, you want to make sure the floor is heated. There are various types of systems that you can have installed unless you did this already when you built your carwash.

Tip #5: Install Car Wash Bay Doors

You can help keep it warmer in your car wash bays by installing doors on both sides if you have a drive-thru bays, or one door if your customers pull in and back out of the bays. The door should remain open when there is a car in the wash bay. Not everyone is bright enough to know to shut off their vehicle when it is in an enclosed space to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning.

Tip #6: Install Air Dryers 

Air dryers are great for blowing off excess water before it freezes, as long as your bays are heated. If not, then you may want to use some type of heater instead. By selling microfiber towels in your vending machines, you could also encourage your customers to dry off their cars.

Tip #7: Keep Your Car Wash Well-Maintained

The winter requires doing maintenance more often to ensure your car wash equipment, cash wash parts, and supplies do not freeze. Part of your wintertime maintenance tasks is also snow removal and putting down rock salt to prevent ice around your bays and vending machines.

For wholesale prices on car wash materials, car cleaning accessories, car wash parts, and supplies, please feel free to browse our online store or contact Superior Car Wash Supply at 800-554-9274 today!