Install Floor Drain or buy a Steamer? What would you do?

I am about to move my training facility to a town very close to where I live in the next 2 or 3 months. It’s an old building that needs a little bit of work as most old buildings do. It needs paint, better lighting, more outlets, etc. The office needs a little work as well. But it’s a great size in a great location, as I know the area very well, so anything that needs to be done will be worth it as I plan to be there for a long time. I know doing the lighting and electric, even if I do some of it myself will be a few thousand dollars. It was already zoned commercial and for automotive use so that’s no problem. The location also is extremely close to the wealthiest zip code in the country, Alpine, NJ 07620. This is my favorite town for many reasons and the proximity of the shop to this town should help pull in the more wealthy detailing clients and their high end automobiles.

Now I have been through this dance before and it’s a pain in the ass. Before getting into a fixed location there are many things that need to be considered. You have to look at the size of the building, square footage, the location (neighborhood, and if it is a good detailing area), rent cost, parking, work that needs to be done, and an often overlooked, but major issue. Does the building have a floor drain and will the owner and municipality allow you to install one?

This is huge. Years ago when I first needed a building and before steam and waterless washing had come into play, it was critical to have a floor drain in the shop, especially in the Northeast. I have seen some detail shops where they wash cars outside or even run a car through the local car wash before bringing it in to detail. There are huge problems in either washing outside or bringing a car to the local car wash. You can easily figure them out so I will continue. I lost out on some nice buildings because either the owner would not allow a floor drain to be put in or the town would not. You see many years ago, before all this new regulation, auto shops would sometimes drain fluids and let them run down the drain like anti freeze, transmission fluid and oil. So any auto related business coming in would sometimes scare an owner. I also ran into shops where the owner had capped off and cemented over floor drains just so there would never be any hanky panky. So a shop that did not have a floor drain was basically a deal breaker for a detailer that wanted to do things right and be compliant.

When I finally found a building (after over a year of looking) the shop sure enough did not have a floor drain but the owner and the town would allow one to be put in….at our expense of course.

Cost and installation of a floor drain

After sourcing out the correct pieces and knowing the law as to what needed to be installed, the concrete floor needed much cutting and digging. This job really sucked. We rented a saw and cut and cut and cut…and then jack hammered and jack hammered and jack hammered…and then dug and dug and dug. It was a huge mess and a big undertaking. Laying the actual drain was easy. The pipes fit together like a puzzle and they laid in the ground and were covered back up and cemented back over. The only thing that needed access was the oil separator which needed cleaning every so often. But…..the job was far from done. The drain was now in the floor in the shop but it had to run into the city sewer line. The pipe had to go through the side of the building and into the ground outside and connect to the pipe that ran to the street and into the sewer system. Once it was correctly figured out where that pipe was, a backhoe had to come in and dig up the ground. Of course, what they were digging was a part of the parking area that had nice asphalt already, but now that was ruined. And of course the city pipe was not a few inches down in the ground, but a few feet….more like about 8-10 feet deep. A licensed plumber had to connect the pipe and it needed inspection by the city plumbing inspector before the ground could be filled in. Then the blacktop had to be re-paved before the job was totally finished

All told it took a month to get it done and a cost of about $8000. That was with most of the concrete cutting, jack hammering and digging done ourselves. And the plumber was a family friend so that cut the cost a little bit. It was also done about 6 years ago so figure the cost now. It’s a job I swore I would never ever do again because of time, aggravation, the amount of work involved, the mess, and of course….the cost!

This new old building…buy a steamer or a pressure washer?

Back to the building we are moving into. Sure enough it does have a floor drain….and lucky enough it has the drain in the exact spot where I want to prep and wash the cars. How lucky! But even if the drain doesn’t work all that well or the water doesn’t flow in the direction I really want it to, I don’t really care all that much. You see, I don’t really need a floor drain. I don’t want to wash cars with high pressure water and regular soap anymore. If you know me at all, you should know I have a steamer for everything and the perfect polymer car wash product. So I won’t even set up a power-washer most likely. In that other building we set up a car wash type pressure washer that needed a dedicated 220 volt circuit and we set it up all the way in the back room to be out of the way. We had to run pressure hose all the way to the front and then and set up 2 hose reels for washing. That wasn’t cheap either.

This new building I wont do that. No pressure washer will be here at all. Even with the floor drain. Even in an area of the country where we are not in a drought or under any kind of water runoff laws, there still won’t be a pressure washer. If this building did not have a floor drain, it would not have been a big deal at all. This time a building with no floor drain is not a deal breaker. And it should not be for you either.

You see there are ways to get a car clean without tons of water. Many of you are doing that already. We all know about the great “waterless” or polymer type products to get a car clean. However it does make sense to help the process along by having some steam, preferably at a higher pressure to help move things along. I know everybody is more in tune with steam and now steam washing and it’s great that more and more people are aware of this. We know the benefits. For those of you who are still a little in the dark we will provide a link to an article I previously wrote on steam washing at the end of this article. So you already know what my choice is. Of course my choice to prep and wash cars will be a steamer. But the questions will still remain….What kind of steamer?

What kind of steamer to put in your shop?

If you are not going to have a floor drain and therefore not going to be using a garden hose or a power washer to wash the vehicles, then your choice of steamer will be pretty important. Of course you should be using a “waterless” product to wash the cars but as I have written about before, you will need some assistance with some steam. We know the small units won’t do a great job on the exterior of the vehicle for obvious reasons. That leaves the larger, more powerful vapor steamers, where the water content is low but the pressure, volume and heat are higher. Or, the other type of higher pressure steamer where there is slightly more water content involved, a propane operated unit with even more pressure and more water content.

I am going to use the propane steamer for this application. I want a little more water content and I want the highest pressure possible. I will be using our LW250 steamer

The floor will only get slightly wet and there will be very little water runoff, but it will go down the drain anyway, so I don’t care how much water content there is with this unit. It’s the perfect way to be green while still having great heat, good pressure and the ability to really blow embedded dirt out of cracks and crevices and get wheels really clean with a longer wand and super heated steam.

I can also advertise the green factor and the use of steam both inside and out. So while a steamer like this, or even the high power vapor unit like the Vapor Chief 180 will be more expensive than a power washer or obviously, a garden hose, I can be green and if the shop didn’t have a floor drain, it would not really matter. I don’t want to spend upwards of $10,000 again to install a floor drain. You should not have to either. There are other effective options.