Astral

So I live in Worcester, MA, in an apartment. No driveway or garden hose or anything like that where I could just take a bucket and take my time washing the car.

The automatic car washes, e.g. touchless, are $7-$10, too expensive to do on a weekly basis (often I want to clean various parts more often than that).

Self-service bays in commercial car washes are expensive and don't allow bucket washing or hand washing... $2.50 for 4 minutes of water, soap, but with no option to pause. Who takes 4 or even 12 minutes to wash their car? Last time I tried doing it all in the "proper" fashion (pre-rinse, foaming brush, rinse), took me $7.50 to get some decent results.

So what would be nice is to have a place where you can go, that has a hose, and you can take 45-60 minutes rinsing, washing the car, etc, out of the hose. Don't need high-pressure water crap.

Anyway..

leungwingkei

This is one of the disadvantage of living an apartment, since I live in one too. No hose and no plug for vacumn cleaner, etc.

I wash the car in the wash bay too. You can also go to a good friend's house to wash the car. Or for small cleaning jobs, there's always Armor All Car Wash Wipes.

I planing to get a set. Has anyone tried them before?

mopho

I went out and bought a pressurized water tank with a nozzle at Home de Pot, the kind used to for spraying bug/weed killer on your lawn. It works, but the Problem is it is only about 3 gallons and the water stream is very small, so you can only wash/rinse in small sections or the soap dries too fast and leaves spots.

5SpeedP5

tsk tsk tsk jesse.... you should keep you car clean

anyways, this is always a problem thats concerned me about moving out soon.... i have to have a clean car..... but from what i know you should beable to find a hose and such at your apartment complex to use.... just look around or ask

JAC

Don't you have a good friend that lives in a house? That's what I used to do when I lived in an apartment, we got together to wash the cars, have beers and ****.

ZoomZoomH

it depends on the apartment complex.

some complexes are 'high-end' enough that they will provide a 'car wash lot' with a hose and a free vacuum

others, especially older complexes, usually don't have these types of convenience features planned in or built.

Mark_02DX

At my apartment, they yell at you if they see you so much as check the tires...

I go to the DIY place down the street, but I go at like 11pm. Nobody cares if you hand-wash at that time of night, and the place is open 24 hours. There's another one I wouldn't DARE go to late at night, but that's another story.

Mxyzptlk

I always use the spray and wash places late at night that way I can do the bucket washing and waxing under the lights.

Astral

Hmm good idea.. a lot of these places are open overnight.. have you ever had a problem bucket washing at late hours? Probably nobody is around to kick you out.

fossil boy

I used to have this problem, but even worse - the bird cages HAVE to be cleaned frequently! Depending upon the configuration of the apartment complex and your location within, here's what I used to do:
get an adapter from a hardware store that fits your sink faucet (if you remove the screen, you will notice it is threaded) Take it out, and find a male-to-male connector that fits your faucet diameter and standard hose size (whatever these are, I'm not sure). Then just run a hose from your kitchen sink and out the window or door, and, Voila! Best yet, you can use hot or cold water!

choke on words

I don't live in a apartment, but I do go to the quarter car wash. Once a week I go, and I spend exactly $5 using all the options they have. I really don't see those $5 being a waste because when I'm done with it, it's just like new

On a side not, I spent 5 1/2hrs yesterday washing, waxing & detailing my car when later in the day it begins storming...

Mach 1

Move to the south. Apartment complexes in the south have hoses and car wash areas, just about all of them, even the low rent ones.

Apartments in the north do not.

Living in an apartment in the north sucks compared to the south for many other reasons as well.