Drying after the self-service wash costs car wash operators hard cash. As long as customers
manually dry their vehicles, they can occupy a wash box and other potential customers drive past the car wash. customers drive past the car wash. "Nobody wants to wait until they can wash their car today, until they can wash their car," says AirJet Managing Director Walter Grosshammer, summarizing the problem. His start-up's self-service drying system is designed to increase sales at this point, which UNITI expo visitors were recently able to see for themselves.
Self-service car washes often have their sales peaks in good weather. "Nowadays, most self-service car wash operators have peak times that they are almost unable to cover in the car wash business and so customers drive away to competitors. Our overall concept is based on pulling customers out of the wash bay so as not to exacerbate the peaks," explains Walter Grosshammer. "Very big players on the market have already tried to integrate self-service drying with blowers in the wash bay, but in the
end, the operator loses money because the customers who are drying need a few minutes longer and subsequent customers don't want to wait any longer."
Maximum pressure from the very first second
"Our frequency-controlled compressor provides 2,200 liters of air per minute. In order to provide the customer with maximum air pressure on the vehicle surface from the very first second, we use a corresponding compressed air reservoir," says Grosshammer, explaining how it works. To maximize the drying speed, a significant proportion of the humidity is removed from the air flow.
Nozzle as a patented in-house development
The combined AirJet nozzle has a special silicone bumper that protects the car paint from accidental contact. Over a width of 290 mm, the drying air is pressed out at 8 bar through an opening just a hair's breadth of 0.1 mm thick. "It's like a scalpel made of air: once the customer dries over an area at the recommended distance and angle, it is dry," says Grosshammer, describing the impressive result. "For areas that are often difficult to dry, such as side mirror housings or number plate holders, our safety spot nozzle, with which the hard-to-reach areas can be reached, provides a remedy." A mid-range vehicle is dry in 3 to 4 minutes.
Extension of washing times even in winter
As soon as colder temperatures prevail in fall and winter, the number of car washes, especially in self-service car washes, decreases noticeably. Many customers still seem to fear that locks, windshield wipers and the like will freeze in frosty conditions. AirJet also offers a solution to this problem. "From an outside temperature of 3 °C, the system starts to preheat the drying air with an integrated compressed air heater. This is unique to us." This is an important prerequisite for keeping revenue fluctuations as stable as possible across all seasons and reactivating many non-scrubbers in winter.
Source: Sandra Schäfer on CarwashPro.de