Yes! I found one as referenced in my post, it was at a bp garage and had like 6 or 7 booths so you don’t have to feel like you’re getting daggers when using it. And also not being utterly apoplectic when you’re stuck behind someone for years.
Nice one, I’ve seen folks spraying their wheels etc. while waiting just to prepare (if there’s a que). Best to bring your own sponge shampoo anyway as sometimes the brushes there are boggin or the hot shampoo/wax is not really working.
Ten tines better than 10 trips with buckets.
I got you, mine is stored in an underground parking lot with no water and this is what I do:
Get Optimum No Rinse or another competing rinseless wash, a bucket with gritguard, a Rag Company Ultra Black Sponge, a spray bottle and a drying towel (I use the gauntlet by the Rag Company).
Spray down the car with the ONR in the bottle at 16:1 ratio to let that dwell and loosen up some of the dirt. Then starting from the top down, wash with the ultra black sponge and ONR in the bucket 256:1 ratio. Some water will end up on the floor but it's really not a lot, like I say I wash mine in an underground parking lot and what does wind up on the floor evaporates on its own, it'll be even quicker outside and won't make its way into drains. Lastly lightly mist the car again with the ONR in the spray bottle and wipe down with the drying towel. I do the wheels last with the same bucket and a wheel mitt and leave to air dry. A bottle of ONR will last a LONG time because the dilution ratios are quite high (low??).
It ain't perfect, it won't do a super dirty car and you can't do things like iron decon but I have clayed it before. But it gets you most of the way there from home and won't damage the paint like car washing places or automatic washes.
I used to use ONR in a waterless ratio but it's such a pain and so so many towels. Using the rinseless method was a huge improvement. Also all items can be stored in the empty bucket in a storeroom when not in use, so it doesn't take up much space.
+1 for ONR. I have a driveway but I’m lazy and it works well for me. If it’s dirty I snowfoam first (and if it’s really dirty do a proper wash) then use the black sponge with ONR and several microfibre towels. Our water is hard so without it you need to dry really well to avoid water spots, with ONR it just needs to be fairly dry.
When I was in flats I used a self-contained 12v pressure washer that I also used for mountain bikes. These days you can get battery ones from Worx, Ryobi and others (including cheap Chinese knockoffs) that can just suck from a bucket of water.
Supermarket self serve jet washes for me. I've a storage place about 20mikes from where I live that has a great one so I'll go over there few times a week. I've got a makita battery hoover and decent wipes to keep the interior clean which as a tradesman is my biggest bugbear
I could go to a friends and do the proper snow foam and wax but I'm not that anal about detailing
Same. Once a year before MOT.
I feel bad for the mechanic working on a shit hole, so I always wash it. I'm not sure why, as they're up to the elbows in oil.
Rain does literally nothing for cleaning a car. It might look cleaner because it's wet, but as soon as it dries you can see the dirt magically reappear
The place I use does an excellent job, inside and out and I have never had any issues with them at all. A couple of years ago while I was in the queue, there was a McLaren a couple cars ahead of me and only last week someone was there with their brand new £100K Range Rover.
I figure if they're happy to take those cars to this place and trust the staff to do a good job, it's absolutely fine for me and my car.
Let's be honest here, neither one of us can say for sure those people were leasing the cars. However, both drivers were of retirement age (I'd estimate between 55 and 65), so I would say the probability of them owning the cars is quite high.
If you paid cash for that you’re not going to wreck the paint work in a hand car wash realistically, the McLaren anyway. Range Rover drivers aren’t petrol heads so probably don’t care or even notice the swirls
I've been taking my cars to this place for nearly 10 years and not once have they ruined my paintwork, nor have there been any swirls. It is possible that hand car wash places actually take pride in what they do, and as such do an exceptional job.
I use them occasionally but I drive a 17 year old Terios that's already a bit battered so I'm not too concerned. I work on a farm and have a horse so it gets filthy on the reg.
When I first got my cayman I was young and dumb. I used to go to my local car wash every Saturday morning before I went out. Anyway, a full £2500 respray later and £500 in detailing products I’ve learned my lesson.
Optimum no rinse is the perfect product. Fill one bucket with clean water to rinse your wash mitt, one bucket with some onr in it. Wet a panel, then wash with mitt soaked in onr, then drying towel that panel, rinse and repeat one panel at a time.
This is perfect for maintenance washes.
Ideally for deeper washes you should just get a detailer round and get them to do a ceramic coating. You could skip the coating though as they charge a lot, you could use turtle wax hybrid ceramic spray yourself. To add this to the method above you should spray one or two sprays on the wet panel before drying. It’ll leave it nice and hydrophobic and make bird shit super easy to remove.
Leave a pack of clean microfibres and a bottle g techniq quick detailer in the car so you can remove bird mess as soon as you see it rather than letting it ruin the coating and then the clear coat
I bring my own car wash kit to a BP self-service jet wash and wash my car there. Splurge on a professional detail maybe once a year or so.
My maintenance wash process is:
1. Park up at jet wash. Spray wheel cleaner, use small brush to agitate dirt
2. Spray prewash all over car body with pressure sprayer (2 L garden plant type sprayer). I buy prewash in concentrate and dilute accordingly.
2. use jet wash for high pressure rinse all over (put around £1.50 in)
3. pour car shampoo in bucket and fill bucket with water using pressure washer.
4. manually wash car with mits. I use 4 microfibre mits to avoid having to rinse them and contaminate the bucket of shampoo
5. once car body is clean, use remaining shampoo water with EZ wheel brush to clean inner barrels and exhaust (if necessary)
6. high pressure rinse all over (around £1.50-2 depending on the change I have)
7. pack up stuff and move car to a parking space elsewhere at the petrol station and towel dry. Spray all over with liquid wax/sealant for some paint protection.
All in all takes me about 1.5 - 2 hours.
I've also waxed my car at the petrol station before (inc clay bar and polish, took about 5-6 hours in total) but as I've grown older I'd rather pay someone to do it nowadays haha. Perhaps when I move to a house with a driveway I might do it again.
I sometimes do this. But only at odd hours when it's quiet.
Just before dusk my local jet wash looks more like a car meet sometimes as all the enthusiasts come out!
Haha over here the local wash park is 24/7 with decent lighting (and people sometimes bring battery work lights), it looks like a car meet every Thursday to Saturday until 3am.
I am also known to wash my car past midnight, usually super quiet in my area with maybe the occasional cabbie
Lighting isn't great so I bring a headtorch!
Oh head torch that's a good idea.
Personally I only bring a work light, Monello Luce, and use it's magnets to put it on the metal siding of the wash box, which is fine enough. I love washing my car past 10-11pm and finishing up at 1 or 2, so peaceful and relaxing.
I spend 10 min at the actual jet wash. Move my car to a parking spot to dry it etc. Never bothered anyone.
I'm also very aware if anyone is waiting and will hurry up to not take the space longer than needed.
I get an odd sense of superiority especially from boomers who love their cars waiting for me cause I actually know how to wash my car properly, while they proceed to use the public brush and use a chamois.
If you've never seen the old fifth gear review of car washes, they got an expert in to see which was best of an automatic car wash, a hand car wash and...I can't remember what the other one was now, I'm sure someone will know. To their surprise they found the automatic one caused the least damage to the paintwork and came out the winner
It stays filthy until I shove it through the local car wash. It's purely an appliance for myself and on street parking has ruined the paintwork anyway.
A couple of options, honestly my best one was paying the garage to do it as a deal with my MOT. I have a parking space quite far from my block, I bought a 25m outdoor extension lead which gets the hoover to my car and works a treat. For washing I wash by hand with 2 buckets but I have seen some portable bike sprayers with foam attachments which look like they'd do a great job.
Our flats has its own car park and there is a tap and hose under a metal cover in the ground to the side. Some of us use that. To hoover the inside I run a long cable from a power supply in the ground hall.
Ryobi battery jetwash with snow foam attachment, 3x10L Nalgene carboys I recycled from work filled with water, rinse bucket, wash bucket. Not an apartment but a terrace house with no driveway. Would be a pain carting stuff from far away and leaving it unattended if your parking spot was far from your flat though.
Two buckets and a garden spray bottle that can be pressurised. Ceramic wax was a godsend to reduce the number of washes I had to do!
Used to be a faff and then I moved into a house with a hose and a garage.
I saw a guy parked up on the side of the A5 a few weeks ago washing his car. I passed him twice. He was sponging it down with a bucket first, then he had a hand pressurised garden sprayer he was using to rinse it off afterwards!
Not quite the same thing but, I used to run mine to the local hand car wash place, let them blast it, wash and dry, mini valet but not put the quick shine pretend wax shit on it. Drive home, bucket of boiling water with some car shampoo in it, pocket full of microfibres and a bottle of Super Resin Polish, clean any bits they missed with the bucket and microfibres, then crack on with the polish. Can always go back with your bucket and get some wax and more microfibres if you can be arsed after polishing.
Don’t need the 2x bucket method when you have a dozen microfibres.
I saw multiple times that people brought their gear and filled up at the public toilets in the sink then washed it in the public car park, washing on the side of the road is another option
Draper sell a battery powered pressure washer for £120 or so - I’ve got one and it’s surprisingly good, tho the snow foam attachment is a bit crap.
But I take that down with two big buckets of cold water, one bucket to rinse, and a big bucket of suds.
I pressure wash, foam, rinse, contact wash with two bucket method, final rinse and then wax on the side of the road. Takes a while to get it all downstairs and set up but it’s easily enough done on a Sunday.
Next time you wash it properly use a SiO2 sealant, there's loads available and they really do keep your car from getting as dirty. It helped me when I was trading my last car in too, salesperson thought it had a ceramic coating and got the price up a bit. Just a few sprays onto a few panels at a time and rinse off.
I just clean it on the side of the road. Do a bucket full of warm soapy water, then use a clean cloth and bucket of clear water and wipe the soap off. Then finish with a microfibre
Used to grab the essentials, and head off to a jetwash early in the morning. Not many other people would be fussed about using it at 7am, so it gave me enough time to give it a spray down, then use the hot foam brush to apply foam (but never actually touching the car, because they scratch the paint to hell). Gave it a proper going over with a sponge with the foam on it, then hosed it off. Never had any issues or even anyone waiting behind me.
The bit where it potentially gets weird; our city centre parking permits allow you to park in the multistorey car parks, so I'd pop to the one 30 seconds down the road and park up on the 5th floor. There I would break out the microfiber drying towel, give it a full wipe down and dry, then spend an hour putting on wax and buffing it off. Only once did a security guard ask me what was going on, and after that, they left me to it. For 3 years!
If you ever seen someone polishing their car in the Greenmarket Multi in Dundee, that was me!
Tried to always leave it in the multis, because the seagulls in Dundee have laser-guided arseholes and target shiny cars.
It's rather bad for the environment to flush soap/detergents into the ground and down storm drains. You probably shouldn't wash at home, but of course there's no law against it (yet, but expect it because it is illegal in other European countries). Anyone who has children should definitely think twice.
But imo it's just dirt, doesn't hurt me.
Bucket and car sponge. Usually have to trapse in/out - up/down the building a lot as a good wash takes at least 5 buckets for various stages of cleaning.
I use a waterless wash, and it's been so far so good. There are no micro scratches on my car when using it. But you can't really use it if your car is really dirty, like muddy, but it works well for very, very light dirt.
Go to the Albanians for £7 I value my time too much lol. Brother spends hours religiously washing his every week he can’t believe I let them touch mine!
Worx Powershot. It's a portable 18V pressure washer with an accessory hose that can draw water from a bucket. Really handy when I lived in a flat.
It's nowhere near as powerful as a mains unit, but for snow foam or rinsing after a hand wash it does an admirable job. Definitely need two batteries to get round anything bigger than an MX5 though.
I’m in your situation. But I’m lucky to have a communal outside tap, so I can wash my car properly.
But before my current place. I would bring 2 wash buckets and cleaning stuff to my local shell which had a jet wash.
I’d only use the lance and avoid the brush as I’d do the scrubbing myself with my own mitt and buckets. You can get an IK hand pumped foamer for snow foam. A little labour intensive if your local jet wash doesn’t have snowfoam.
Pull off to a parking space once done and dry the car, polish and wax with a cordless polisher if required.
Not for everyone but my car is parked underground with a drain very close to my car so I use a battery powered pressure washer and just fill up the tank with water on the way down or from the tap in the parking area. And clean as normal
Take a 15 minute drive to my parents when I was in a flat. I’d do a rinseless wash too just with two buckets between deep cleans.
Realistically it depends on the car, if you like your car and don’t want swirls you’ll need to get a detailer round once a month (£30-40 inside and out) and two bucket rinseless wash between visits or full diy but that’s harder without easy access to hose and power for jet wash etc
Personally I get some foreign guys (they're always foreign) to do it for me.
But I have washed by hand. You can buy a handheld, battery power wash now that looks like a drill. Not as good as a real one but works ok.
There are car wash places where you spend like £4 and can do all the work yourself. You can even bring your own sponges etc
how do you find these?
Morrisons petrol station next to me had one. £4 is the 10min wash. You have pressure washer/shampoo and brush at your disposal.
Tescos
Tacos, Sainsbury's, Shell - any petrol garage tbf
Yes! I found one as referenced in my post, it was at a bp garage and had like 6 or 7 booths so you don’t have to feel like you’re getting daggers when using it. And also not being utterly apoplectic when you’re stuck behind someone for years.
Nice one, I’ve seen folks spraying their wheels etc. while waiting just to prepare (if there’s a que). Best to bring your own sponge shampoo anyway as sometimes the brushes there are boggin or the hot shampoo/wax is not really working. Ten tines better than 10 trips with buckets.
My brother lives in an apartment, he drives to our mums house and uses her drive way
Can you ask your mum if I can use her driveway
I got you, mine is stored in an underground parking lot with no water and this is what I do: Get Optimum No Rinse or another competing rinseless wash, a bucket with gritguard, a Rag Company Ultra Black Sponge, a spray bottle and a drying towel (I use the gauntlet by the Rag Company). Spray down the car with the ONR in the bottle at 16:1 ratio to let that dwell and loosen up some of the dirt. Then starting from the top down, wash with the ultra black sponge and ONR in the bucket 256:1 ratio. Some water will end up on the floor but it's really not a lot, like I say I wash mine in an underground parking lot and what does wind up on the floor evaporates on its own, it'll be even quicker outside and won't make its way into drains. Lastly lightly mist the car again with the ONR in the spray bottle and wipe down with the drying towel. I do the wheels last with the same bucket and a wheel mitt and leave to air dry. A bottle of ONR will last a LONG time because the dilution ratios are quite high (low??). It ain't perfect, it won't do a super dirty car and you can't do things like iron decon but I have clayed it before. But it gets you most of the way there from home and won't damage the paint like car washing places or automatic washes. I used to use ONR in a waterless ratio but it's such a pain and so so many towels. Using the rinseless method was a huge improvement. Also all items can be stored in the empty bucket in a storeroom when not in use, so it doesn't take up much space.
+1 for ONR. I have a driveway but I’m lazy and it works well for me. If it’s dirty I snowfoam first (and if it’s really dirty do a proper wash) then use the black sponge with ONR and several microfibre towels. Our water is hard so without it you need to dry really well to avoid water spots, with ONR it just needs to be fairly dry. When I was in flats I used a self-contained 12v pressure washer that I also used for mountain bikes. These days you can get battery ones from Worx, Ryobi and others (including cheap Chinese knockoffs) that can just suck from a bucket of water.
Supermarket self serve jet washes for me. I've a storage place about 20mikes from where I live that has a great one so I'll go over there few times a week. I've got a makita battery hoover and decent wipes to keep the interior clean which as a tradesman is my biggest bugbear I could go to a friends and do the proper snow foam and wax but I'm not that anal about detailing
You wash your car multiple times a week? I’m really slacking! I’m about every 6 months
Same. Once a year before MOT. I feel bad for the mechanic working on a shit hole, so I always wash it. I'm not sure why, as they're up to the elbows in oil.
I live at the coast and do about 500miles a week some weeks, my cars get very dirty very quickly
I live in a house. My strategy of washing to car is letting the rain do it's job ..
Rain does literally nothing for cleaning a car. It might look cleaner because it's wet, but as soon as it dries you can see the dirt magically reappear
I know, it was pretty much a joking way of saying that I am a lazy bum
Oh sorry, I thought you were being genuine, hard to tell with just text XD
Avoid hand car wash places like the plague, baffles me why anyone would pay someone to vandalise their car.
Realistically most people see their car as a utility, totally fair enough to use these hand car washes. 🤷
Might as well go through one of those car wash machines and enjoy the show.
Some are better than others. All are better than the rolling sandpaper drum ones.
The place I use does an excellent job, inside and out and I have never had any issues with them at all. A couple of years ago while I was in the queue, there was a McLaren a couple cars ahead of me and only last week someone was there with their brand new £100K Range Rover. I figure if they're happy to take those cars to this place and trust the staff to do a good job, it's absolutely fine for me and my car.
Similarly with mine, been going there for years and I've never once had an issue. They're certainly not £30 a pop or jet washing my foot mats...!
People with a lease car probably don't care that much about it.
Let's be honest here, neither one of us can say for sure those people were leasing the cars. However, both drivers were of retirement age (I'd estimate between 55 and 65), so I would say the probability of them owning the cars is quite high.
If you paid cash for that you’re not going to wreck the paint work in a hand car wash realistically, the McLaren anyway. Range Rover drivers aren’t petrol heads so probably don’t care or even notice the swirls
I've been taking my cars to this place for nearly 10 years and not once have they ruined my paintwork, nor have there been any swirls. It is possible that hand car wash places actually take pride in what they do, and as such do an exceptional job.
Hardly use them and when I do they do without any care in the world.
I use them occasionally but I drive a 17 year old Terios that's already a bit battered so I'm not too concerned. I work on a farm and have a horse so it gets filthy on the reg.
Not to sound like a dick but why would you be bothered about someone else washing a near 20 year old Volvo?
When I first got my cayman I was young and dumb. I used to go to my local car wash every Saturday morning before I went out. Anyway, a full £2500 respray later and £500 in detailing products I’ve learned my lesson.
With a bucket and some sponges in the car park?
How do you remove the soap without a hose? Honest question, I've never washed a car without access to one.
You can buy a small hose gun which has a battery and use a bucket of water as the feed
Didn't know those existed, Ill look into it.
Optimum no rinse is the perfect product. Fill one bucket with clean water to rinse your wash mitt, one bucket with some onr in it. Wet a panel, then wash with mitt soaked in onr, then drying towel that panel, rinse and repeat one panel at a time. This is perfect for maintenance washes. Ideally for deeper washes you should just get a detailer round and get them to do a ceramic coating. You could skip the coating though as they charge a lot, you could use turtle wax hybrid ceramic spray yourself. To add this to the method above you should spray one or two sprays on the wet panel before drying. It’ll leave it nice and hydrophobic and make bird shit super easy to remove. Leave a pack of clean microfibres and a bottle g techniq quick detailer in the car so you can remove bird mess as soon as you see it rather than letting it ruin the coating and then the clear coat
I bring my own car wash kit to a BP self-service jet wash and wash my car there. Splurge on a professional detail maybe once a year or so. My maintenance wash process is: 1. Park up at jet wash. Spray wheel cleaner, use small brush to agitate dirt 2. Spray prewash all over car body with pressure sprayer (2 L garden plant type sprayer). I buy prewash in concentrate and dilute accordingly. 2. use jet wash for high pressure rinse all over (put around £1.50 in) 3. pour car shampoo in bucket and fill bucket with water using pressure washer. 4. manually wash car with mits. I use 4 microfibre mits to avoid having to rinse them and contaminate the bucket of shampoo 5. once car body is clean, use remaining shampoo water with EZ wheel brush to clean inner barrels and exhaust (if necessary) 6. high pressure rinse all over (around £1.50-2 depending on the change I have) 7. pack up stuff and move car to a parking space elsewhere at the petrol station and towel dry. Spray all over with liquid wax/sealant for some paint protection. All in all takes me about 1.5 - 2 hours. I've also waxed my car at the petrol station before (inc clay bar and polish, took about 5-6 hours in total) but as I've grown older I'd rather pay someone to do it nowadays haha. Perhaps when I move to a house with a driveway I might do it again.
I would hate standing in queue behind you..
I sometimes do this. But only at odd hours when it's quiet. Just before dusk my local jet wash looks more like a car meet sometimes as all the enthusiasts come out!
Haha over here the local wash park is 24/7 with decent lighting (and people sometimes bring battery work lights), it looks like a car meet every Thursday to Saturday until 3am.
I am also known to wash my car past midnight, usually super quiet in my area with maybe the occasional cabbie Lighting isn't great so I bring a headtorch!
Oh head torch that's a good idea. Personally I only bring a work light, Monello Luce, and use it's magnets to put it on the metal siding of the wash box, which is fine enough. I love washing my car past 10-11pm and finishing up at 1 or 2, so peaceful and relaxing.
I spend 10 min at the actual jet wash. Move my car to a parking spot to dry it etc. Never bothered anyone. I'm also very aware if anyone is waiting and will hurry up to not take the space longer than needed.
I get an odd sense of superiority especially from boomers who love their cars waiting for me cause I actually know how to wash my car properly, while they proceed to use the public brush and use a chamois.
I hate filling buckets with a pressure washer, so I got two 19 liter buckets with a screw lid so I can bring hot water from home for wash and rinse.
If you've never seen the old fifth gear review of car washes, they got an expert in to see which was best of an automatic car wash, a hand car wash and...I can't remember what the other one was now, I'm sure someone will know. To their surprise they found the automatic one caused the least damage to the paintwork and came out the winner
This: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PZjWkB_q2lE
I just take mine to local hand carwash, they take £4 and do a decent job unlike some of them I've seen.
It stays filthy until I shove it through the local car wash. It's purely an appliance for myself and on street parking has ruined the paintwork anyway.
A couple of options, honestly my best one was paying the garage to do it as a deal with my MOT. I have a parking space quite far from my block, I bought a 25m outdoor extension lead which gets the hoover to my car and works a treat. For washing I wash by hand with 2 buckets but I have seen some portable bike sprayers with foam attachments which look like they'd do a great job.
Used to be as part of service / MOT (6m apart), then sometimes when visiting the in-laws.
Our flats has its own car park and there is a tap and hose under a metal cover in the ground to the side. Some of us use that. To hoover the inside I run a long cable from a power supply in the ground hall.
Nice of you to assume that I wash my car.
Ryobi battery jetwash with snow foam attachment, 3x10L Nalgene carboys I recycled from work filled with water, rinse bucket, wash bucket. Not an apartment but a terrace house with no driveway. Would be a pain carting stuff from far away and leaving it unattended if your parking spot was far from your flat though.
Two buckets and a garden spray bottle that can be pressurised. Ceramic wax was a godsend to reduce the number of washes I had to do! Used to be a faff and then I moved into a house with a hose and a garage.
I saw a guy parked up on the side of the A5 a few weeks ago washing his car. I passed him twice. He was sponging it down with a bucket first, then he had a hand pressurised garden sprayer he was using to rinse it off afterwards!
Not quite the same thing but, I used to run mine to the local hand car wash place, let them blast it, wash and dry, mini valet but not put the quick shine pretend wax shit on it. Drive home, bucket of boiling water with some car shampoo in it, pocket full of microfibres and a bottle of Super Resin Polish, clean any bits they missed with the bucket and microfibres, then crack on with the polish. Can always go back with your bucket and get some wax and more microfibres if you can be arsed after polishing. Don’t need the 2x bucket method when you have a dozen microfibres.
Cordless pressure washer and a water Jerry can
I saw multiple times that people brought their gear and filled up at the public toilets in the sink then washed it in the public car park, washing on the side of the road is another option
Draper sell a battery powered pressure washer for £120 or so - I’ve got one and it’s surprisingly good, tho the snow foam attachment is a bit crap. But I take that down with two big buckets of cold water, one bucket to rinse, and a big bucket of suds. I pressure wash, foam, rinse, contact wash with two bucket method, final rinse and then wax on the side of the road. Takes a while to get it all downstairs and set up but it’s easily enough done on a Sunday.
Next time you wash it properly use a SiO2 sealant, there's loads available and they really do keep your car from getting as dirty. It helped me when I was trading my last car in too, salesperson thought it had a ceramic coating and got the price up a bit. Just a few sprays onto a few panels at a time and rinse off.
I go to a BP station with a lance. I will bring a bucket, shampoo, mitt, 2 towels, wheel cleaner and brush
I just clean it on the side of the road. Do a bucket full of warm soapy water, then use a clean cloth and bucket of clear water and wipe the soap off. Then finish with a microfibre
Used to grab the essentials, and head off to a jetwash early in the morning. Not many other people would be fussed about using it at 7am, so it gave me enough time to give it a spray down, then use the hot foam brush to apply foam (but never actually touching the car, because they scratch the paint to hell). Gave it a proper going over with a sponge with the foam on it, then hosed it off. Never had any issues or even anyone waiting behind me. The bit where it potentially gets weird; our city centre parking permits allow you to park in the multistorey car parks, so I'd pop to the one 30 seconds down the road and park up on the 5th floor. There I would break out the microfiber drying towel, give it a full wipe down and dry, then spend an hour putting on wax and buffing it off. Only once did a security guard ask me what was going on, and after that, they left me to it. For 3 years! If you ever seen someone polishing their car in the Greenmarket Multi in Dundee, that was me! Tried to always leave it in the multis, because the seagulls in Dundee have laser-guided arseholes and target shiny cars.
It's rather bad for the environment to flush soap/detergents into the ground and down storm drains. You probably shouldn't wash at home, but of course there's no law against it (yet, but expect it because it is illegal in other European countries). Anyone who has children should definitely think twice. But imo it's just dirt, doesn't hurt me.
I don't
Bucket and car sponge. Usually have to trapse in/out - up/down the building a lot as a good wash takes at least 5 buckets for various stages of cleaning.
I use a waterless wash, and it's been so far so good. There are no micro scratches on my car when using it. But you can't really use it if your car is really dirty, like muddy, but it works well for very, very light dirt.
I take mine to the Albanians once a year, good clean inside and out for £28, they have all the gear and do a good job.
You can get waterless wax, you just need a few micro fibre cloths
Go to the Albanians for £7 I value my time too much lol. Brother spends hours religiously washing his every week he can’t believe I let them touch mine!
Worx Powershot. It's a portable 18V pressure washer with an accessory hose that can draw water from a bucket. Really handy when I lived in a flat. It's nowhere near as powerful as a mains unit, but for snow foam or rinsing after a hand wash it does an admirable job. Definitely need two batteries to get round anything bigger than an MX5 though.
I’m in your situation. But I’m lucky to have a communal outside tap, so I can wash my car properly. But before my current place. I would bring 2 wash buckets and cleaning stuff to my local shell which had a jet wash. I’d only use the lance and avoid the brush as I’d do the scrubbing myself with my own mitt and buckets. You can get an IK hand pumped foamer for snow foam. A little labour intensive if your local jet wash doesn’t have snowfoam. Pull off to a parking space once done and dry the car, polish and wax with a cordless polisher if required.
Tescos car wash boys in the car park, normally about 15-20 quid and they do a cracking job.
Not for everyone but my car is parked underground with a drain very close to my car so I use a battery powered pressure washer and just fill up the tank with water on the way down or from the tap in the parking area. And clean as normal
Take a 15 minute drive to my parents when I was in a flat. I’d do a rinseless wash too just with two buckets between deep cleans. Realistically it depends on the car, if you like your car and don’t want swirls you’ll need to get a detailer round once a month (£30-40 inside and out) and two bucket rinseless wash between visits or full diy but that’s harder without easy access to hose and power for jet wash etc
Pay some illegal aliens £7 to scratch the fuck out of it with dirty rags, I'd assume
What about that pressure washer gun that’s cordless and can feed off any water there decent
Take it in the shower?
Personally I get some foreign guys (they're always foreign) to do it for me. But I have washed by hand. You can buy a handheld, battery power wash now that looks like a drill. Not as good as a real one but works ok.
Has OP never heard of a car wash? There are many options, at many different price points, it’s not exactly a hard service to find?
You must struggle to read
Just take it to the hand car wash like every other normal person 👍
No thanks