Anyone use Unger Rinse n Go?

saw this product and looked interesting. Posting to see if anyone has used it and what were your thoughts.

$141 Unger Professional Rinse ‘n’ Go Spotless Car Washing System with Deionization Filter – Spotless Water System, Deionized Water, Streak-Free Results, Great for Boats, Cars, RVs & Solar Panels

https://www.amazon.com/Unger-975450...a-834893156573&psc=1&ref=&adgrpid=84218104048

 

Following. Looks like an interesting device.

 

Researched DI water a couple years ago and came to the conclusion that I don't have a bad enough hard water problem to warrant it. Most people I see who use DI in some way for car washing relegated to using it only for the rinsing stage. If you're doing the whole wash with DI it can run several dollars per car wash. Even worse if you've got really hard water as it will fowl the resin faster requiring it's replacement.

Saw the listing for the refill for it at $86 which might not even be that bad a price per pound compared to others.

Found this channel when I was looking into DI, he has a handful of videos this one was making a larger DI filter for a better resin yield:

 

Never knew about that Rinse & Go washer system, but I added it to my list. Seems like a good idea.

 

I like it the idea. It claims 11 washes on the resin. Wonder how long could get from rinse only. $48 for replacement resin could get expensive quickly.

 

as much as i want to buy something like a cr spotless system or the unger rinse n go, or even the cheaper dual canister options, it is hard to justify, the initial cost of these combined with the cost of replacement cartridges or resin adds up extremely fast. a cr spotless simple chuck can be about $475, with replacement cartridges costing ~250. and output is advertised as about 400 gallons. i can buy distilled water at walmart for $0.82/gallon. I could buy almost 580 gallons of distilled water for the cost of the simple chuck, plus an additional 305 gallons for the cost of the replacement cartridges (about a year worth of car washes assuming 15 gallons per wash per week). so until you buy the unit and 2 sets of filters, you aren't getting any real value out of it. I would get it if i had extremely hard water and couldn't live without it, or were detailing for money and could profit off of the saved time/product/hassle of using unfiltered water, or if i had disposable income to the point that the cost wouldn't matter. but for the home user, it is a $500 per year cost in cartridges assuming you wash your vehicle once per week. i don't imagine the smaller/cheaper units on the market would be more economical.

 

A neighbor uses the CR Spotless System with a electric pressure washer for the final rinse and can wash his 180k car in the full sun and not get spots

 

I think the pressure washer and using the DI water only for rinse are really the key to keeping a system like this practical and affordable. I looked into DI and found it might be expensive since my water is very hard and may use a lot of the media. I recently started using a pressure washer and foam cannon and it's amazing how much less water I use now to wash our cars. At some point I'd like to get back to building a DI system.

Found this a while back: https://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2832232 I know there's more online as well so it's worth doing some searches.

 

just picked up a 5 stage 75 gallon/day RO/DI system, (meant for aquariums), with a drinking water setup. Going to get a 30 gallon tank to use as a car wash/rinse water source. cost way less than the cr spotless, and i will have pure drinking water as well. here it is: https://airwaterice.com/reefkeepers-rodi/typhoon-5-stage-rodi-reefkeeper.html, $159 plus the cost a container for the water.

 

I have been interested in getting something to deal with my super bad water at my house, our pumping station pulls water from a limestone mine and they dump so much chlorine in you can smell it in the summer, so its pretty bad stuff, even 1 gallon of our city water in one of my 55 gallon aquarium kills all the fish in there... I have to buy 5 gallon jugs from the store to keep the fish alive.

Looking at the rinse n go and the cost of refill bags, I got to thinking... this just uses the same resin stuff that water softeners use (I found this stuff when I cut my old water softener up so I could haul it upstairs), so I looked around and you can get a 50lb bag of it for $80-$100... the normal refill bags are only 5 lbs and cost $80 for a 2 pack (10lbs). You can get reusable bags from aquarium stores that will hold the resin. So for about $100 you can get 10 refill bags that should last around 110-120 washes. If you avg 2 hand washes a month in the summer, this should last you a really long time.

 

Pretty sure water softener systems don't remove all the solids that DI resin does hence why it's so expensive. Certainly in the topic of car washing you'd be better off with that than tap water but you may find that depending on what is in your water supply that DI would be needed to make it truly spot free.

 

They dont remove all solids, but the resin does trap spot forming things in water. The rinse n go is half of a water softener, it contains the resin beads, but does not contain the salt normally used to "recharge" them. If you were to recharge the bag that it came with the same way a water softener does, then you would be able to use the bag that it comes with much longer... but there is very little money to be made in letting people recharge the bags when you can just sell them for 10x the cost.


How Do Resin Beads Work?
The crosslink structure contains negatively charged “exchange sites” that hold sodium ions. As water travels through the softener, positively charged ions like Calcium, Magnesium, and Iron will stick to the exchange sites on the bead.

99% of ion exchange happens INSIDE the resin bead.
As the Hard Water Ions “stick” to the bead, the sodium ions are knocked off the bead, and into the water supply. Once the resin bead is loaded up, the softener must regenerate the beads with more sodium to continue working.

An effective regeneration is CRITICAL for long-term softening performance.
Iron Damage to Resin
Well Water in our area can have extremely high Iron levels, and most City Water sources still have low levels of Iron – even after going through the water treatment plant.

It takes 4x more sodium to clean iron off of a Resin Bead than it takes to remove Calcium or Magnesium.

If the iron is not THOROUGHLY cleaned off the bead, oxygen in the water oxidizes the Iron molecule causing it to grow roughly 20x in size. When this happens, the Resin Bead plugs up and loses a majority of its capacity.

https://www.premierwatermn.com/hard-life-water-softener-resin/

 

i just had a water softner system installed in my house and the company added a spigot in the garage. now i can use my water softner to wash my truck spot free. ill let youll know how that works out

 

Hi Vreal71... just curious how your water softener system worked for a spot free rinse? Thanks for any updates!

 

A water softener does not provide for a spot free rinse, it will just be easier to remove the spots left by the softened water. Water softeners replace hard minerals in the water, like calcium and magnesium, with softer minerals (sodium). Deionized water is the only way to get a spot free rinse without using any drying aid or towels.

 

Ive used this a few times and it works pretty good... not perfect, but better than other soaps.