hey guys,

as some of you know i aim to start out with a small trolley based wfp set up.

dumb question, but, do i need some water storage in my van, or will the trolley system hold enough to do a few washes on a saturday morning?

also, which vans for around the 2k mark would you recommend?

thinking a wee citroen or pug, or a transit connect?

as some of you know i aim to start out with a small trolley based wfp set up.
Anyone who has a trolley system as opposed to a van-mount will tell you it's great. Ask anyone with a van-mount if they'd want to go back to having a trolley in a wee van and it'll be mostly resounding NOs!

No such thing as a dumb question unless you forgot what you were told the first time you asked   

do i need some water storage in my van, or will the trolley system hold enough to do a few washes on a saturday morning?
On first cleans, you'll be using at least 2ltrs a minute - that's 10 minutes actual cleaning per 25ltr cannister

also, which vans for around the 2k mark would you recommend?
Chase out the local bargains if you can - see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login Put in your postcode and they come up by distance. However, as cash will be tight, why not look at finance for the motor to spread the cost at the start. Later on, when you're rolling in it, you can pay cash upfront for the latest model! Spend some on getting the van lettered with "window cleaner" in big graphics rather than being white-van man.

thinking a wee citroen or pug, or a transit connect?
Go for the biggest payload you can get - by the time you've got a tank bigger than you THINK you need, all the gear you'll have to have, and if you ever actually fill the fuel tank . . .

£65?!
Ask the supplier of whichever trolley you decide on for their price for cannisters- you'll be pleasantly surprised.

As you're dann saff it's likely that you're in a hard-water area, so you'll need to have a Reverse Osmosis set-up before the final D.I. filter. Up here in Bonnie Scotland there's not many need RO, unless you're going through fantastic amounts of water and it's worth writing-off the initial cost over the years.

There's a WFP DVD over on 'resources too . . .

Playing Devil's Advocate - but remember I've worked with a trolley from an Escort van and have decided to stay with a truck-mount in a Scudo . . .

if you work on your own and only ever intend to work on your own
I have work it takes the three of us to get done, but if I was a one-man band, I would still have got that work.

then you want a trolley in my opinion with atank and a 30m hose
A 100m microbore reel (I have two) saves me moving the van twice if I had a 30m reel.

you will get snacked on allsorts you will spend more time sorting out your hose than you will cleaning windows
The only way you will get snagged using microbore is if you don't watch where you're laying the hose first of all, and if you bring the end of the hose back with you to the reel, watching where it's going again, it won't snag when you're reeling in.

with my trolley system i have 5 metre length of hose connected to the trolley simple and straight forward
And the time you spend setting up per job is exactly the same as setting up with a van-mount, but you have to move your trolley every 5 metres.

The defence rests, your honour - no further questions.

Touche' - well, that's the closest I can get to having an accent above the e. Humph.

I suppose that my jaundiced view about backpacks (I bought one but it's never even been charged up!) is down to the re-filling that I had to do when I had 25ltr cannisters. The job I described above is six blocks of flats on one site for a factor, the 100m reels are fully out, and we're using about 1.5ltrs/min - that's five to six fill-ups an hour for each backpack, and I'd be on much the same time using ladders.

Each job's different and I think you should always keep an open mind. . . For years we had one guy doing second floors and another following - doing first and then ground. The last time we were there, we did one guy doing two sides of each block, with the other man doing the other two sides - and knocked off about two man-hours on the whole job. WOO HOO !!

do you van mount guys leave the pole and hose connected
No

or do you drain the water out each time you move
And no.

I've got my waterstops opposite to most folk it seems, but to me it makes sense. My reels have a tap at the end of that hose so no water is lost from there when you disconnect. And the pole hose has the waterstop on it, so very little water is lost from that either.

Simples.

thanks for that wavie davie just wondered as i'm the only wfp user in my area