The 3 gallon, No Hose, Home Carwash

[spearfish25]

For years now I've lived in condo buildings where I didn't have access to a hose and couldn't hand wash my car at home. With the purchase of my new Z, I decided I needed a solution to the problem as I don't like to pay for car washes nor trust that a hand car wash uses clean water in their buckets. Further, in Chicago winters I needed a way to rinse off the road salt without going through a whole carwash each time.

I came up with this:
Went to Home Depot and bought a 2 gallon hand-pump sprayer used for lawn and yard weed eradication ($18). I tested it today and, I'll be damned, it works pretty well. It took about 1/3 of the sprayer's volume to rinse the car. Then I had another 1 gallon bucket filled with soapy water for the wash. The remaining 2/3 of the sprayer volume was just enough to rinse the rest of the car and do the rims. In the winter, I'd probably use another 2 gallons (full sprayer) to rinse the undercarriage.

Just an FYI post for all you guys in the same 'hose-less' situation where you're looking for a way to handwash the car.