Corvette Junkie

Does anyone use a water deionizer? What your thoughts on them? My water is so hard I have to figure something out.

ZaneO

Once you use demonized water, you'll be spoiled forever. It changes washing and detailing dramatically. It's just not overly cost effective if you use it exclusively.

TOGWT

If you are using tap water that contains high levels of minerals such as calcium hydroxide, magnesium or silicates, some of the polymers will bond to these minerals and take them out of solution therefore more product might be necessary to compensate for this effect.

a) By adding Optimum (OPT) No Rinse Wash™ & Shine New Formula (ONR).to a regular car wash soap will improves the results when using tap water (0.5 oz / gallon) always add it to the water to remove the minerals before adding your soap. This will maximize the benefits of using No Rinse in this manner.

b) The CR Spotless - the DIC-10 provides approximately 100 gallons, the DIC-20 provides approximately 300 gallons of mineral-free, de-ionized water that will provide spot-free vehicle rinsing and remove hard water minerals, based on your water input quality. It consists of two de-ionization housings that feature replaceable cartridges that simply slide into the watertight tubes.

This unit can be mounted next to your hose bib and comes with pre-drilled mounting holes. Using a pressure washer allows you to detail a car while using significantly less water, maximizing the life of your Spotless Water System.

Snowwolfe

Any idea how this product removes the minerals? Where do the minerals go? Doesn't make sense to me.

TOGWT

[When you use 1 oz. of No Rinse in 1 or 2 gallons of water for your wash at the molecular level this provides hundreds of billions of polymer molecules to do what was said above. Additional product will not be necessary except if you are using tap water that contains high levels of minerals such as calcium hydroxide or silicates.

In these cases some of the polymers will bond to these minerals and take them out of solution therefore more product might be necessary to compensate for this effect. This is another reason why adding No Rinse to regular car wash soap improves the results when using tap water] - David Ghodoussi - Optimum Polymer Technologies

wjnjr

I use a CR Spotless, love it! Takes my 270ppm tap water to 000ppm. No water spots.

Corvette Junkie

I went ahead and bought a CR Spotless water system. I should have done this long ago. For the first time in I don't know when I washed my car and don't have days worth of work cleaning up water spots ahead of my.

LowFlight

My buddy has the Dual Canister one for his RV. Could I get away with teh Single Canister one for my Z06 and my wife's Jeep?

wjnjr

Sure you could, but you will need to recharge it about twice as often since it holds 1/2 as much DI resin. That's the trade off. I use the dual long canister model for final rinse only about 1 - 2 times a month. I bought it 9 yrs ago and have recharged it 4 times.

Hope this helps

0Killrwheels@Autogeek

Since this time a product called Optimum No Rinse (ONR) has been released. It offers a water softener in it as an ingredient. You can add a couple ounces to your wash bucket and the results have been well regarded. Certainly another option, and Autogeek offers it as well as the Spotless system above.

Kvothe

I've tried this and to be honest with the water I have in my area it doesn't really make a difference. I'm a fan of ONR and like to use that over a traditional wash when I can.

0Killrwheels@Autogeek

Wow that's indeed hard water ....

Would something like this filter help ???

http://www.autogeek.net/clinhofianda.html

Kvothe

Not sure what this translates to but the hardness in my area is:

276 mg/l (milligrams per liter = parts per million) to 362 mg/l or 18gpg (grains per gallon) to 21 gpg.

I've looked at those filters before. Just haven't decided if it would work well enough or not for the investment. For now I'm using ONR as much as I can and only doing a traditional wash when I have to.

wjnjr

Several years ago I was having a lot of trouble with water spots due to hard water. Tap water TDS (total dissolved solids) at the time was 270 - 350ppm. I did some research and tried a few gadgets, here's what I found out:

Water softeners exchange Sodium or Potassium for the Calcium found in tap water. After "softening", the water still has dissolved solids at a similar PPM or sometimes higher than before treatment, just different solids. Sodium and Potassium are physically softer than Calcium, so deposits left behind are easier to deal with. Thus the term "soft water"

De Ionizing systems (DI) remove dissolved solids. No dissolved solids means no water spots when the water evaporates.

Particulate filters remove suspended solids (think muddy water), which is a good thing, and carbon filters remove Chlorine and organic matter.

I learned about this stuff back in '07 when I got my first black vehicle. After trying some rinky dink filters and water softeners, I finally paid up and got the big CR Spotless - two 20" DI canisters on a cart. It's a nice pro-grade piece of equipment, and it works. TDS of the output water measures 0. I've suffered no water spots from washing since I got it, very pleased.

Hope this helps, good luck.

ronkh57

Buy up all the Mr. Clean spotless wash systems you can find. (send me some please)

LowFlight

Bought the CR. Love it.

Al D

Has anyone tried an Aqua-Rex or similar type of "conditioner". Keeps hard water particles suspended and won't stick to the finish as much. Makes the spots wipe off more like dried talcum powder. Had one on my old house and worked great. My current water is so good, I don't need anything.

wjnjr

Yep, it's the real deal. The other stuff is just kind of Mickey Mouse. Congrats!