Aquashine Carwash Pipe Freeze Protection

Aquashine carwash, a family-run business centered in Wyoming, Ontario is suffering the problems caused by “Weeping water” during winter times. One property of water is that it is one of the few known substances that expand when it freezes. When housed in any form of container, this expansion can generate enough force to break the container. In the case of hoses, the end result is a burst hose that is incapable of doing its duty. This is of great concern in the carwash industry. In self-serve carwashes, hoses extend from the ceiling to wands that customers use to wash their vehicles. These sections of hose are not in a heated environment and are prone to freezing during cold month, causing large amounts of damage and making the bay inoperable. To resolve this, carwashes continuously drain water through the hose when it is cold in a process called weeping. Just, like it is harder to freeze a flowing river, the moving water in the hose is harder to freeze. However, this method of freeze protection has a number of major problems.

Timothy Spikens, a student from University of Waterloo, was intended to design a method that could protect the washing pipes from freezing.

Figure 1 – A fractured pipe showing the damage possible from freezing water