Hi Just getting ready to put in a wash down area, was wondering if there is anyone out there with ideas or things they would do different? I am thinking a 35' x 35' concrete slab with about 2" of fall. I am located in Eastern Oregon so I will be building a 8 x 8 heated and insulated building to house the pressure washer in. I am out in the sticks so no worries of regulations for catching the water or any thing like that. Anything else I am missing? I have seen lots of people have wash bays inside their shops, that seems really neat but my shop is too small and hard enough to keep clean the way it is. Thanks
The best setup I've used was when we had a steam cleaner up one end of our workshop with the connection through the wall to outside, could flick switch and wash off right outside the main doors, any dismantling to aid cleaning didn't involve trudging around in waterproofs, and parts could be carried straight back into shop or leant against wall etc. Was real convenient, machine could be wheeled straight inside without picking up fresh muck. Concrete got washed off sideways after, onto a grassed area. Sadly we had to leave this paradise, as it was demolished in name of expensive house/garden development. Before and since, have had to use a separate wash off area which is good for heavy soiled machines, but completely loses the convenience of washing right outside shop doors. In practice, we just don't wash off small items or parts like we were then, when we could quickly step outside and blast it clean. All the best with it all.
I like a smaller 12" or so deep concrete containment box with trench plate cover in the middle of the concrete wash area. Install the outfall pipe near the top and run it out to a good fallout area. It is really handy to be able to shovel the big chunks out occasionally and keep the area clean. You may ebven find a part or two out of belly pans. Then you may be set when the requirements do change as they surely will. Easy to wash your wash pad into a center box instead of chasing it all off the pad edge.
And if you put an elbow on OIH's containment box, then you have an oil trap, and there will be oil. To keep the shed from freezing, you can use ground heat by digging a deep enough "basement" under it so that the heat loss from the structure is much less than the heat rising up from the 50 F or so earth. The "basement" could be a few augered holes, a culvert buried vertically, whatever makes sense to you. Of course the building has to be fairly tight and insulated.
I would put a little more fall than 2" tho.. & a couple of steel I beam or rail to help keep the tracks from destroying the pad..
I would put the containment box up to one side and slope all to one side. It really is no fun laying under something with the drain in the middle of the slab.
Definitely want to do the trench idea ours is just a 3 ft.² box probably 3 to 4 feet deep which makes it really hard to get the Mud out. Good lighting so you can see what your doing.
Done about everything imaginable, in climates where they don't freeze, doesn't matter everything seems to work, where it freezes half the year, to wash in front of the shop makes an ice rink all winter long, wash pits are a pain to clean out no matter how you do them. The idea I liked the best was to have an area beside the shop with sloped cement and everything runs into a lower cemented area for a catch basin you can scrape out with a skid steer a couple feet deep at most with no top on it, in the winter its iced up but spring comes and you can scrape everything out, nothing to suck out, shovel by hand, grates to remove and mess with and the catch basin is beside and lower than the wash pad, all you do is wash the pad off when done and down into the catch basin. Used several of these over the years of different designs and its on the want list for my shop I have now, had one at the last shop but not gotten around to is yet here. The overflow to the catch basin just washes over a short cement wall and the wall has several pvc pipes through it to provide holes in the wall water can run out anywhere it needs to, the wall aids in something to shove up against when cleaning the pit area out, just use a stick to clean the holes in the wall back out and its ready to go for months again. Just an idea that worked for us over the years, best of luck on whatever you decide to do.
Good point about the ice, when we washed off outside the shop doors it worked well as our cold spells are normally short lived, the concrete pad had a fall diagonally across of probably 40:1 and it was a steam cleaner so it didn't hang around on the pad. But from my trips to northern Illinois in winter I can imagine the ice could make it interesting right outside the doors. Like your sediment basin ideas Randy, makes a lot of sense. Also like the idea further up of steel beams cast in for tracking around on, must save on wear.
Steel beams with steel tracks in the winter makes for great skating conditions, we like rolls of belting to drive on instead, keeps the machine where its supposed to be and when done, roll the belts up, wash them off and set on end so they stay put and wait for next time to use them, or toss out a few used tires to track on to save the concrete, either work good and are really cheap. We also use the belting in the shop on the concrete as we track machines in and out, lay them flat to track in on, roll them up over the tracks when we're done moving the machine and keeps from tripping over the belts all the time, makes for sitting on tracks much nicer as well working on machines, adds that no slip idea to the equation as we climb around on steel tracks. Rock conveyor belting is pretty cheap when a new belt gets put in or round baler belting works too, same for feed conveyor belting. On a side note a case of beer will buy all the used belting you can ever need for a few decades from farmers or ag business's who sell new belting or have used belting laying around.