Can Running Two Wands

H20

New Member
CAN RUNNING TWO WANDS OFF OF ONE PUMP BE MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN ONE AN D IF SO HOW DO YOU RUN THE OTHER WAND IN HAVE A 4000 PSI @5gallon hot water unit so I was considering doing this to increase production

thanks
 

RogerG

New Member
They have pumps for that. Most of them are 8 gpm or higher. When you have a 2 gun setup you share the gpm between the two.

Roger
 

north coast

New Member
Probably would not be worth it with a total volume of only 5 gpm, it would be like holding a pee shooter. We had a hydro-tek HOSS that had a 10 gpm CAT pump and we tried the 2-gun setup out and it was not all that great. One guy could soap and they other could rinse but it all went down hill when both would rinse. It was very short lived and we went back to one heck of a pressure washer.
 

PressurePros

New Member
H20.. it depends upon the work. With deck work you would up your production even at 2.5 gpm per wand. If I were to do that setup, two guys would be rinsing rails. When it came time for the floor one gun for the increased flow and nozzle spread.

Housewashing, I can see no advantage to splitting your guns. Concrete..definitely not.
 

RogerG

New Member
north coast said:
Probably would not be worth it with a total volume of only 5 gpm, it would be like holding a pee shooter. We had a hydro-tek HOSS that had a 10 gpm CAT pump and we tried the 2-gun setup out and it was not all that great. One guy could soap and they other could rinse but it all went down hill when both would rinse. It was very short lived and we went back to one heck of a pressure washer.


Hi Eric,

Something must have been wrong with the tips or the wrong tips all together. I used a 2 gun setup with Rod and it worked just fine and I think that it is a 8 gpm unit. You could tell when the other gun was being used but I still had good flow. The only thing I didn't care for was when he release his trigger the increase from 4 gpm to 8 gpm in a blink of a eye would make me jump everytime.

Roger
 

north coast

New Member
Don't know what went wrong but we went back to one gun @ 10 gpm. On the flip side to that all of our trucks have 2-3 5-6 gpm pumps in them running off of a PTO and we hook 2 pumps together to have 10-12 gpm, or split them all up for 3 guys working @ 5 gpm.
 

Mark

Moderator / Sponsor
Depending on what you are cleaning, in most cases one gun at 8 GPM or 10 GPM will out perform 2 guns at 4- 5 gpm.

[hello]
 
A

AAKIRAA

Guest
2 gun question

I have a Northstar 4000 psi 4gpm 18 horse power with heat and a wisper wash ground cleaner. We do a lot of city side walk cleaning but running 1 gun just doesnt cut it.
I would like to be able to run the wisper wash and also a wand to do the rinse at the same time in order to cut down on time. Does anyone have any ideas as to converting our unit to a dual wand, a bigger motor or even a better unit all together?
My other idea was to just buy another unit and run them both.

Also does anyone have a better way of getting gum up off the sidewalks? The wand way takes so long. Thats the one thing slowing us down big time.

Thanks
Rich
 

DAFF

New Member
2 wands good in theory!

I also got bitten with the one pump with two wands, even with a 13gpm unit.
With two wands and 4.5 tips still wasn't happy with the preformance of the washer.
Hey Eric,
When you used the pto on three pumps did you direct drive all three or belt drive with electric clutches.

Has anyone else tried silica sand water blasting hard to remove gum which hot h2o cant remove all the film. Seems to work good on heavy wear spots in front of main doors where the concrete has been worn. Also wooks good on rust on older concrete.

For us, we use a 6' lance on our wands, takes some time to get use to, but greatly increases productivity. Plus your feet will stay dry when detailing concrete.
 
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north coast

New Member
All of our pumps are belt drive, our trucks that have 2 pumps have a standard 2 groove pulley, another has 3 pumps that are all controlled with 12v clutches that are serpentine belts and our new KW will have 3 pumps, two pumps with the standard 2 groove pulley and 1 with a 12v clutch with serpentine belt.

We do wet blasting on paint spill cleanups when pressure/heat will not work. Don't know if you can still get silica sand since they determined it is cancer causing so we use clean play sand. Works great but however much sand you use is how much sand you have to sweep up and dispose of. Wet sand heavy.
 

john orr

New Member
DAFF said:
I also got bitten with the one pump with two wands, even with a 13gpm unit.
With two wands and 4.5 tips still wasn't happy with the performance of the washer.

Assuming 300 psi to go with that 13 gpm, you should have been using 7.5 or 8.0 tips an each gun. Using smaller tips will cut back on the gpms. The pressure will stay 3000, but a 4.5 would probably have given you no more than 4 or so gpms from each gun. (I don't have a nozzle chart that goes to 13 gpm, so I'm making an educated guess.)

I have an 8 gpm, 3000 psi two man rig and the tips determine flow. An imbalance from one gun to the other is caused by uneven tip sizes. I am set-up to downstream while my assistant washes concrete. I use a smaller downstreamer (4 gpm) to "choke" my side while downstreaming and we both get what we need.
 

DAFF

New Member
When I stared I was using 9.0tips in each wand, and steped down untill 4.5. The 4.5 worked ok but I think one wand at full power out preforms two.

When downstraming do you still get the pop when one person lets go of the trigger. Tried using ball valves to choke the system, to reduce the pop.

The nice thing in two wand downsteaming is the reduction of waste, when flipping from chem to water-vs one wand operation.

Yah, I purchases the silica sand at a local lumber supermarket. Looked at the play sand but the fine print didn't recommend it for blasting applications. As for clean up It can be a chore, but the customer won't mind paying a high end price for the great results.
 

john orr

New Member
DAFF said:
When downstreaming do you still get the pop when one person lets go of the trigger. Tried using ball valves to choke the system, to reduce the pop.QUOTE]

I installed a flow-type unloader, which eliminates the "pop" when the first gun turns on. It seems to lessen the "pop" for the second gun as well.
 

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