How are Car Washes like Airports?

Every airport in the world has exactly the same challenges - get people and stuff ON airplanes; get people and stuff OFF airplanes.

So, how come no two airports look remotely the same?

You'd think by now someone would have come up with a design that works, and boom - there's your airport.

Every airport.

Well, someone has in fact come up with such a design. It's in Munich.

Scale it up or scale it down as needed.

Problem solved.

But I guess that'd be too easy.

I got to thinking of that (again) today as I ran two different test cars through the PetroCan car wish in beautiful downtown Milton.

(No no, not simultaneously.)

Like airports, all car washes have exactly the same challenges - spray water and soap onto cars, wipe it off, rinse, and dry.

So, how come no two car washes look the same?

Some have sprays here, some have them there. Some have rotating bristle-brushes (or waving ribbons of cloth) here, some have them there.

Some have neither brushes nor cloth, but for all the good 'Touchless' car washes do, you might as well just pray for rain.

(Oh, and for those of you who cringe at the thought of a rotating bristle-brush car wash, did you know that the last stage in the manufacturing process for Porsches in Zuffenhausen Germany is a rotating bristle-brush car wash? You're welcome.)

Believe it or not, there actually IS a 'Car Wash Institute', which I gather is some sort of 'professional association' for, well, car wash professionals.

You'd think maybe they'd come up with some standard design.

Not so's I've ever noticed.

I get it that in some cases, there is only so much real estate. Some sites need to pack more stuff into a smaller space.

But most car washes in suburbia have all the room they need.

How do they decide what they need, or what goes where?

I dunno.

There are, however, two things which all automatic car washes seem to have in common:

- the rinse phase is at least 30 seconds too short. There is always - ALWAYS - soap left on the car somewhere;

- the drying phase is at least a minute too short. The car never - NEVER - exits from the bay without droplets all over it, sometimes with streams of water still cascading off it.

C'mon, Car Wash Institute. Whip your membership into shape.

(Hey - you gotta think of SOMETHING while you're sitting in a car wash. I can't usually get cell reception in there.)

Comments

[Chris Hsu]

You are correct about washes - some are definitely better than others. Depending on the design of your car, it will almost always leave an area looking like it was only lightly washed, or not at all. However, one possible exception is the new AutoSpa in Burlington which as all the elements of a normal wash except they are doubled. Not too far from where you live, just south of Appleby Line and Upper Middle Rd, it has twice the number of brushes and twice the number of dryers. For an automatic wash, its about as good as it gets. Plus, for $28, you get a full vacuum, windows cleaned and dash dusted off. Heck, you even get your choice a spray air freshener. For people who like to keep their cars clean in the winter months, this is as close as you get to a full detail.

[Dom Iafrate]

Can someone explain why some car washes only have two dry blowers pointing down at the top of the car....is there something wrong with drying the sides of the car?

Best car wash out there by far is Suds located in Cambridge. They have an endless supply of water, and rotating soft cloth brushes that keep coming out of nowhere. Oh yes, heavy duty blowers that make you feel you are in the middle of a hurricane.

[Richard]

RE: (Oh, and for those of you who cringe at the thought of a rotating bristle-brush car wash, did you know that the last stage in the manufacturing process for Porsches in Zuffenhausen Germany is a rotating bristle-brush car wash? You're welcome.)

Did not know this, but I doubt the previous Porsche through the car wash had mud/salt/tar/clay from the new subdivision/your choice of contaminant on it. In a public car wash, I'm guessing that a lot of that crap stays in the bristles, just waiting to swirl the paint on the following car. This is just a guess, though - I'm not a profesor of car washes.

[Larry]

You can't standardize an airport design, simply because airport locations are not the same.

[Jim Kenzie]

Hi Chris:

I know you don't work for these guys so thanks for the tip!

I'll give it a shot.

But TWENTY-EIGHT BUCKS???

Yikes...

[Jim Kenzie]

Hi Dom:

Another chapter to the mystery!

I'm not far from Cambridge; I'll give that one a try.

Jim Kenzie

[Jim Kenzie]

Hi Richard:

Good point. That'd be one of the hallmarks of a decent automatic wash - how much water they use to pre-clean the brushes.

Jim Kenzie

[Jim Kenzie]

Hi Larry:

Um, big open fields, space in every direction - they all look awfully similar to me!

And we're talking the design of the terminal building. Assuming the 'footprint' is about the same size for airports of similar capacity, it shouldn't be an issue!

So, copy Munich! Get a 'MagnaJector' (only oldies will probably remember those), scale it up or down as big as you need, and presto!

Jim Kenzie

[Larry]

Jim, that's a little naive - if the space left for the terminal is dictated by the runway layout, which varies depending on whether the airport's in a valley, on a coast/island, at the edge of a city, etc., a single layout is not feasible regardless of the size of the footprint.

[Larry]

Even if we take Munich to be perfect (which it isn't - e.g., capacity issues), its shape and layout don't necessarily work for similar volumes of different types of air traffic or geography. Munich's 'space in every direction' is limited by a river lying to the west of it, for one thing!

Its integration with transit systems, however, is a model for other airports.

[Jim Kenzie]

Hi Larry (and Richard):

Yes, but most new airports are 'greenfield' projects, built in the middle of nowhere, like Munich, or Denver.

Or Madrid, easily the stupidest airport ever designed.

No excuses for these new ones.

Even re-built ones like Toronto typically have plenty of room (actually, Terminal Three isn't bad; the 'new' Terminal One is a disaster, especially w/r/t signage in the parking garage.)

No, the problem isn't lack of space, it's lack of imagination and intelligence, and a surfeit of architectural ego and municipal, um, 'manhood envy'.

Jim Kenzie

[car wash las vegas]

Like most industries that are driven by private industry or interests there are no standards for them.

[web design]

Honesty, the reason they are not standardized is because they all grow organically. They are built when there becomes a need to fly people in because other forms of transportation are not adequate. Most cities do not start with an airport. They are always added after the city population has become so dense it becomes necessary to build one.

That's obviously not always the case but probably more times then not. Of course we've only had flight for around 100 years and like everything else that's happening today for the first time again, it will improve over time as engineering principles begin to be applied those as they eventually are applied to most forms of creation.

An interesting thing that's occuring today (I saw this on the History Channel), is that dirigibles are making a come back. It may not be well known but the US Navy has been the largest consumer of these types of "lighter than air" ships since WWII. Well there's now a company over seas that's betting that these ships can carry more cargo for cheaper across the Atlantic.

I can't remember the name of the company right off hand, but I dug up this interesting article online from Popular Mechanics.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/airships/4242974