I went to my local cheap car wash to get the salt and grime off. This bay won’t be used for a while
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Most car washes recycle their water, try to find out when they flush the tanks… Or you will only be washing the salt and grime off with dirty salty water…
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None I contacted in my fair city recycle their water. Previous discussion many years ago,
While not universally mandated for all, many states and municipalities require commercial car washes to use water recycling systems to reduce, treat, and reuse water, often limiting fresh water usage. These systems, which can reuse up to 60-80% of water, are increasingly common due to environmental regulations and conservation efforts.
The EPA’s Clean Water Act requires that wastewater from commercial car washes be sent to sewer treatment facilities, not storm drains, promoting, in some cases, the installation of on-site treatment or recycling.
The water is collected in underground tanks, processed to remove solids (dirt) and oils, and sometimes treated to remove odors before being reused for washing.
While a home car wash uses 80–140 gallons, a professional, water-recycling car wash uses only about 9–15 gallons of fresh water per vehicle.
However: not all water can be reclaimed; fresh water is often used for the final rinse.
Finally, many older carwashes, especially the family owned, not franchised, do not recycle the water, as it probably was not required when they first went into business (Grandfathered under EPA regulations…) and they cannot afford to upgrade their systems to accommodate the recycling tanks and infrastructure…
So, if the carwashes that you contacted say they do not recycle the water (and you trust them…) then perhaps your community does not have those regulations in practice or enforced. And they might also be the small car washes (only a couple of stalls) and they might be exempt…
As for being an old topic, rules and regulations change… Many folks used to pour old engine oil around the foundations of buildings to act as a termite barrier…
It must be awful cold for saltwater to from ice castles in the car wash.
Maybe the car wash uses fresh water…
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You actually think they’ll tell you that or the attending $20/hr clerk will know?
I mentioned this in a PM earlier and forgot to add it to the above reply…
No, I would not necessarily trust them nor would I believe the person I might ask even knows if they have a recycling tank or when or how often they flush it…
The car washes in our city I have spoken with dump the washwater into the sanitary sewer. Water charge Volume Charge (Mg-1):
First 1,700 cu. ft. each month (per 100 cu .ft.) …………… $2.33
Next 23,300 cu. ft. each month (per 100 cu. ft.)…… $2.21
Over 25,000 cu. ft. each month (per 100 cu. ft.) …… $1.81
Add sewer fee Category “A” - General Rates
Fixed Charge (monthly)… $3.60
Volume Charge (100 cubic feet) … $2.83
Volume Charge (1,000 gallons) … $3.78
Now I need Volvo to figure out how much a month a car wash pays for sewer and water 
My 2 month bill for sewer and water usually around $67
Plenty of areas where that can happen. The ocean freezes if you haven’t noticed…
When I lived in WI, it was not unusual to come across a self wash bay that was frozen solid or had huge ice buildup with a few ruts of melting water running toward the drain. The wash water is filtered. The final rinse was fresh or RO in the automatic bays. The self wash bays were just filtered. Look at the volume of water and amount of salt being added from washing a car. Not that much in reality. Friend owned a few car wash locations and was encouraging me to invest (never did).
It’s not just the self-wash bays that have an ice problem when the weather turns extremely cold. Even though my car badly needed a wash, I avoided the automated car washes in my area for a couple of weeks because the brushes closest to the entry door and the exit door had visible ice accumulations.
The reason I asked that is because I posed the same question to the touchless wash near me. And it was brought up in a town meeting. In NH there’s ZERO oversight and inspection.
Makes me wonder how/if the recycling water thing is done much here in my area where we have very little salt used on our roads compared to northern states… We also have ample water most of the time, no water restrictions…
Well, first of all I am glad that I don’t live where it’s cold enough for water to freeze in a car wash, Second, I could care less if commercial car washes recycle the water. I wash my vehicles at home, using a garden hose and towel. I don’t see the value in paying $10+ at a car wash. The amount of water I would use is nowhere near that much money.
I spoke to my brother the other night and asked him about recycling water in car washes… Now, this is old, really old information, but my brother worked at a Full Service Car Wash in High School in the late '60s in Albany NY… Sunday was the Clean Out Day and several of the workers (my brother included) got extra pay to come in and clean out the settlement tanks… Basically shoveling out all the road debris that collected from the recycled water in the settlement tanks (there were three of them), and all the wash water was recycled but he thinks that the rinse water was fresh… And they did this only once a week, so the weekend washers got a full dose of salt treated wash water during the winter, high road salt use period…
This car wash costs $2.00 and plenty of time to get my car and van clean enough. In cold weather I don’t want to have ice build up in my driveway
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Were these not the common sediment traps used in commercial wastewater drains? Every shop I worked in had sediment traps that required maintenance.
Was there a water shortage in Albany? Seems unusual to need to recycle water in Upstate New York.
My brother was quite specific, the water was recycled and after they drained the tanks and shoveled the debris out, the tanks were refilled with water… He said the tanks were drained into the storm drains and the debris was dumped into the dumpsters… This was the late '60s, and we were still dumping old engine oil around house foundations.
There was no water ration issue probably just a business decision (sewage cost is based on water use…), minimizes water and sewage costs…
We lived in Guilderland, west of Albany, and had a well, in the early '60s we did have the local volunteer fire department dump a truck load of water into our well. I don’t know how that works but we never went dry and I do not remember Albany ever having a water issue…
But the way, that car wash (under new management and with a new name…) is still in business, same location on Central Avenue, just an 1/8th mile east of the I-90 overpass (No Spam Endorsement here… 
)
The dealer I worked for replaced their car wash equipment in 2019, this included installing a below ground reservoir to capture the used water and a filtration system for water reuse. This dealership was constructed in 2004, without a water recycling system for the car wash. Water is cheap.
After installation of the new car wash, they cautioned the staff not to use the pressure washer to clean engines in the car wash entrance as grease and oil would foul the filtration system. That information was not passed on to new hires, I witnessed many technicians clean engines in the car wash.
Knowledge is power - pass it on!
The only time I have used car washes is to take advantage of the underbody spray they provide to rinse off the road salt on the underside of the vehicle. That is much harder and messy to do at home, especially when it is colder outside.
Now I have a pressure washer with wand extensions for doing house washing that would make it easier so we’ll have to see how motivated I am this spring…I really want to hose out the boxed frame of the truck. Reaching up into the drain holes, I can actually feel the accumulated dirt and rust in there that is holding moisture and likely rotting it from the inside-out.