Power Washing and Roof Cleaning Forum

Although it seems like an easy answer, it depends on your equipment and are you going to stay shut down.

I have my truck set up with a schrader valve on a female banjo fitting that goes to my SH intake fitting. By turning different valves, I blow the lines out into each tank and then blow the hoses out individually. As to the PW... I have a reservoir on the wall that has a hose that goes to a T in the PW intake. I close the valve before the filter, open the valve from the reservoir and pour in the antifreeze until it comes out the end of the PW hose. When it's time to work I reverse that process.

For now, since we have at least one job this week I only blow out the plumbing under the truck and set a kerosene heater with a thermostat inside the box to keep things from freezing.

Brett

-- Edited by BlueRidge on Sunday 18th of December 2016 07:01:55 AM

The important thing is to get the antifreeze in the pump and unloader. Unhook your hose and simply drain it. But yea,.it's not a complicated concept and is as simple as it sounds. (Although getting a pump to pull small volumes of liquid can sometimes be hard,..depends on your setup)

*And when doing this,..remember to ALWAYS use as low as throttle as you can when getting the pump to suck in the antifreeze. Pumps will pull better at low RPM than at high RPM.

Jeff

I've got to figure out how winterize my skid without taking it apart. Right now it's in my sorta heated garage but my wife wants her parking place back. 🙄

Jeff, when you say you blow out the lines, are you blowing them out with air and then adding the antifreeze? Or using the antifreeze to push the water out?

Hello all, Happy Winter 2016/2017! There was a similar question on another site, and this is what I posted as a response. The same goes for this great forum and cast of professionals. Thanks for all of your input and helpful topics! My rig is now in my yard, on pallets with a tarp covering the tanks.

Not sure what I can add, but figured I'd try since this BB has helped me considerably. I have SWS Gen II skid and just pulled it off to winterize last weekend. I don't have a garage and the rig sits outside all winter patiently waiting for spring. I live south of Boston. I only operate on the weekends and was straight out from March-November.

Last year (winter 2015) I used 5/6 gallons of -25 windshield washer fluid and run it thru all tanks, valves, all combos of to and from, reels etc., and took the pump off and brought it to the basement. When I fired it up this spring there were no issues, leaks, burst line or plastic connector issues.

Last year I bolted U shaped supports from Lowe's onto the 4 vertical ladder rack supports just above the tanks height, out of the way and slide 2x4s under /thru to lift the rig off the truck. The ends of the 2x4s extend out past the sides of the truck and are used as lift points. Sort of a King tut chariot. This makes it easier to lift up, get the weight off the bed rails, and move. I placed 4 pallets stacked at the tailgate on the ground and off it went. I did take off the reels and booster pump to bring inside this year, I wanted to do some maintenance and the weight taken off adds up for a lighter easier lift. we did it with three this year VS four last year.

There were some booster pump topics:
I have the SWS booster pump setup running to a 275' hose reel of the back deck. Use it on every job as SOP. One hose from the HO bib to the booster pump, and can either fill the buffer tank or run from the bib straight. We put another hose out at the rear of the house bib if they have one as SOP in case needed and to sped up the wrap up using plant wash. There are times when there is not enough water pressure to run both straight from the bibs, so we fill the buffer tank and use the booster from there, while the back house hose is running. When we run from the buffer tank to booster, we get average pressure at the hose end VS from the house bib to booster which is higher. It definitely save time for plant wash, final wash application, rinse etc.

I don't have a blend or proportioner but have been looking at both for cost comparison, best application for me . I like the concept to save time, bleach, surfacant etc. but with a Gen II it's all about retro fit compatibility.

Always keep a spare pump, pressure gauge, wand parts etc. on board! We got good at swapping out!! Long winded, hope it helped some and good luck!!

v/r Jeff

I put 3 way banjo valves at my my tanks. I just close off the supply from the tanks and use a small whip line and suck TV anti freeze into the system and through all the hose reels.

Yeah a frozen pump can be a $700 headache.
One season when I was running another company no one winterized and following spring first PW job 2 of 3 PW's were down on site. Took me a few hrs to fix one. The other the pump was cracked bad. Was quoted $700 just for the pump for a machine I paid $850 for.
Had 4 guys standing around holding their junk while I fixed others mistakes.

I got caught, Time to start winterizing

I used RV anti freeze.