RO water with pressure washer

Ahoy TW. I have a 40 gal trash can full of RO water and a Tacoma that needs to be washed with a 2100 PSI Sunjoe electric $100 pressure washer. I'm thinking to try an electric booster pump to feed the RO water into the pressure washer garden hose inlet.

My google-fu didn't find much on this topic-- I'm guessing this is already a solved problem that doesn't need re-inventing. What is the standard protocol for pressure washing / foam cannoning with RO?

edit
I tried siphoning with about 2' of head height and that worked well enough to feed the Sunjoe pressure washer but it does take ~10 sec to stop cavitating on each activation. Overall the improvement to wash quality is good enough to justify a $60 booster pump on the feed line to avoid running the washer pump dry (cavitating) initially on each activation.

 

You can try one of these cordless pressure washer wand that can draw water from its built-in hose.

 

Great suggestion thanks. I never thought about these because they are probably weak, but my 2100 PSI washer probably ablates the paint too much anyway. Going with this is likely what the paint prefers as well

 

I ended up with a 40 PSI well pump including pressure tank and pressure switch for ~$75 from Amazon. The tank and pump are cheap chineesium stainless with 1" not quite right NPT threads and it delivered used but for the price and performance it is awesome. This this is hiqh volume at 40 PSI so I can use a regular hose nozzle that doesn't erode the paint with RO water (40 gal trashcan filled by a RO unit). The pump is quiet (guessing 80 db at 1 ft., did not measure) and keeps pressure 30-50 PSI using a hose with a spray nozzle.

Cheap crappy well pump but highly recommended if you don't want to blast erosive RO with a pressure washer.

$145 TROPOW 1HP Shallow Well Pump With Pressure Tank, 845 GPH Stainless Steel Shallow Well Jet Pump, 115 V Water Pump With Automatic Pressure Switch, Water Transfer Pumpfor Garden, Pool, Well, Irrigation

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0D5QKH7LZ?ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

 

An easier way is to purchase a DI (Deionized water) tank and connect your hose to the inlet and the outlet hose to your pressure washer. Mixed bed resin works best.

https://clean-garage.com/spot-free-wash-systems/

 

Thanks that site is interesting, I hadn't dug into the 1-time-use resin absorption DI generator approach. I'm using this RO generator (converts 800 PPM SoCal water into <10 PPM RO water at around 5 gal/hour into a 40 gal trashcan) for 2 cents a gallon of water based on annual replacement of filter cost:

$300 NU Aqua 5-Stage Under Sink Reverse Osmosis Water Filter System - Booster Pump - 100 GPD RO Filtration w/Faucet & Tank - PPM Meter - 100GPD Undersink - Home & Kitchen Drinking Water Purifier

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078XN8P9J . Looks like the Resin system is good if you use low volumes. For higher volumes (i.e. for large fishtanks too) the generator I'm running is probably a lot cheaper based on replacement resin cost.

 

My setup is a 65 gallon tank with a float valve fed by my RODI system, I am on well water so I use RODI water for every part of the wash. I put the tank on a water heater stand which is about 18" high, and the tank gravity feeds a stainless shallow well pump (about $170 but it includes a pressure switch and tank) from harbor freight, which is connected via pex tubing to the valve that feeds the pressure washer, a comet 1700 wall mounted in the garage. I have had the set up for about 2.5 years and it is great, no issues at all and I haven't had to dry the truck by hand since I installed the system.

Sounds like you could possibly get by with nothing more than a stand for your trash can.

 

The water heater stand is a good idea. Thanks.

 

DI water for the entire wash process (wash and rinse) is the way to go if you have really hard water.

 

I use the DI resin with a hose/pressure washer. I use salt to regenerate the resin.

it helps but is nowhere near as spot free as what you have in your trash can.

Get yourself an RV pressure or boat wash down pump. The pressure in your pump is fine but the gallons per minute on the electric models is very low. If you live in an area where it gets hot in the summer you want 2.2gpm minimum.

the pressure pumps are 12v but don’t draw much. I used a 120-12v power supply from an old cable box and it worked great.

 

This is an interesting idea. You have a 40 gal trash can- did you actually use that much per wash?

This has the wheels in my head turning…