Transcription
I showed you how easy it can be to start a window cleaning round or a window cleaning business using the gardener backpack here. Great little piece of equipment.
You know, even people that have been window cleaners for a long time still use this piece of equipment for different applications. So, it's really great way to get started. But I said in that video, all you need is the pure water. So, I wanted to show you a few different ways of making pure water. Took me a while to get to grips with the different methods of making pure water and which was the best method for me in my area.
So, over this side I've got an RO system. This is an really neat little freestanding RO system. It's a filter plus from Streamline. This is a 600 GPD RORO system. It's a really great little way to make pure water. Over here, I've got a couple of DI vessels. So, I wanted to show you the difference between these and what circumstances you would want to use the DI vessels, what situation you would use the RORO system.
So, the main factor that will decide whether you use a DI vessel or an RO system to purify your water will be how hard your water is from your tap. Now, in order to measure the hardness of your water, you'll need one of these. This is a TDS meter. Now, this uh is a really quick and easy way to measure the hardness of your water. All you do is uh run the tap, run a little bit of water into a jug or a container. You put this into the container and it will tell you how hard the water is in parts per million. Okay?
So, if your water is below about 100 ppm, you got nice soft water. And all you'll really need to purify your water is a DI vessel. Very simple and easy to use. The hard water will cut go in one end and pure water will come out the other end. Simply goes through the resin inside the container. Really quick, easy to use.
Now, some window cleaners, I think, would say that 100 is getting a bit high for a DI vessel. You see, the higher your ppm is, the harder your water is, the more quickly you will wear down the resin in the container and the more often you will have to change the resin. So, if you're doing a lot of window cleaning and you're getting through a lot of resin, that's going to be more expense and it's going to be eating into your profit. So, some window cleaners will only use this if their water is down as low as about 50 ppm. Some window cleaners will use it a little bit above 100 ppm. I think it depends also on the amount of window cleaning you're doing and just weighing up that cost because an ARO system like this is a little bit more expensive to buy and set up. But in the long run, if you've got very hard water, in the long run, it's going to be cheaper to run. The filters are going to need changing less often. So, this could be a better option.
So, the Aro filter system that I've got here is very, very similar to the system I've got built into my van, only this is a freestanding version. So, here we've got three pre filters. Okay, these are really nice and easy to change as well. They're just click filters that click into place like so. So, they're so so easy to change over and you just buy them as a set of three. and they need changing usually about every 3 months. It depends how much water you're purifying, but once you start using them, they'll start to degrade and deteriorate. So, usually about every 3 months, you'll need to change those pre filters.
Then on the top here, this particular one has two RO membranes, which contain a little RO filter like this one. And it's got a special little tool as well to help you undo the fittings and undo the fitting on the end in order that you can change the RO membrane. Now, these are a little bit more expensive, but they don't need changing quite so often, but this is a really great way of filtering a larger quantity of water.
So, the way I've got it set up here, just to show you, I've actually labeled the hoses. So, it just connects up to my regular garden hose like this. And I've just labeled this one in because that's the water coming in. And then I've labeled this one pure because this is the pure water that's going to come out. And in this case, I've set it up just to go into a barrel. I've seen guys just filling up a load of barrels like this, and they'll fill their vehicle with barrels of pure water and keep refilling their backpack as and when they need to. So, that's a really great way of doing it.
I've seen other window cleaners who have a system like this and they'll have it situated with a larger tank, maybe in their garage, something like that, and they'll purify large quantities into a larger container, maybe a,000 L container, and then they'll pump it into their van system if they've then got a smaller tank in the van as and when they need it, maybe for each day's work. So, there's a couple of different ways of doing it. And then there's a small smaller hose here which just comes out of the back and that's for the waste water. For me, that just goes into a drain here nearby, which is really really handy. I've just got a nice little drain there in my driveway.
So, from the water that comes in, a percentage of it will be pure water that will go into the container and a large percentage will be waste water which is produced as a result of the process. And one thing to look out for is sometimes the effectiveness of the system depends on the pressure from the tap. So you've got a little gauge here to help you gauge the water pressure. So that's really important as well to look out for. You need a certain amount of pressure coming into the filter system so that it works efficiently and effectively. So that's one thing just to look out for.
If you have got very low pressure coming from your tap, sometimes that can be an issue and you may need a pre pump to push the water through at better pressure in order for it to work effectively. So, that's one thing to just to look out for, a little pitfall that can happen. Um, but this is a really great way and a really common way that waterfed pole window cleaners use to purify large amounts of water. It's really great.
So, what usually happens with a pure water system like this, this will purify the water down to about between maybe 15 and 20 parts per million. So, that's not really pure enough to clean windows with. So, usually what window cleaners will do, they'll use a resin vessel very similar to this one. So, usually what happens is a window cleaner will have a DI vessel like this mounted in the van and the water that they've purified down to about 15 or 20 ppm will then come out through the resin vessel on the way out up to their waterfed pole. So, this will then polish the water off, taking it from that between 15 and 20 ppm down to zero so that it's pure enough that they can clean the windows. So, for a lot of window cleaners, that's how it will work and that's how they'll purify their water if they're using a van mounted system.
If you're fortunate enough to live in an area where the water is nice and soft coming from your tap below 100 ppm or even lower ideally you could use just what you could just use one of these and that would be fine for purifying the water.
When I first started using pure water for window cleaning I was using the unodi vessel that we have over here. Now this is a great tool and it really helped me get started in pure water window cleaning. The great thing about this is it's got a number of little features which make it really mobile. Obviously, it's got the wheels here. It's on the casters. Uh it's got a built-in TDS meter on the top to check that I'm using pure water all the time. I can just check it nice and easily on there. And uh I would just take this on the job, plug it into the from the customer's tap, plug in the water, and pure water would come out the top. It was a really nice easy little way to to use pure water.
But what I realized later down the line is that the water in my area is actually really hard water. So I'd have to change the resin quite often and it was costing me actually a lot in resin and the resin comes in really nice convenient little bags. So it makes it really easy and convenient. Now, at first I was just using it for those kind of high ticket jobs like conservatory roofs, facial cleans, that kind of thing. So, it kind of paid for itself. But then I started trying it on some window cleaning as well. So, the more I used it, the more I realized that I was really getting through a lot of resin. But for me, I mean, it was a great way of getting into waterfed pole window cleaning. And so I used this for maybe a couple of years before I even switched over to my van system. I was even using my own DIY pump system for a while, purifying my water and working from barrels in that way. So yeah, I tried a few different things and a few different methods of working before I moved over to the van system that I have now. So there we go. I think these are some of the most common ways that most window cleaners in the UK use to purify their water for window cleaning.