Winter+QEW+foam gun = new "wifehatescar method" ?

[wifehatescar]

So here I am with my nice new foam gun and it's 30* outside! I like QEW but I always hated using it on a dry and dirty/salty car. So I decided to do the following:
-2 caps of QEW in the foam gun with the rest water
-Pulled the car outside and sprayed it very thouroughly (did a quick wheel/tire scrub at the same time), took about 5 minutes
-Pulled the car inside still wet with the QEW mix
-Did my normal 2 bucket QEW

This accomplished a couple things:
-The tires and wheels were cleaned outside the garage minimizing water in the garage
-The car is wet with QEW (pre soaked) before you even start mitt washing it
-Most heavy dirt is washed off with the QEW/foam gun spraydown

Anyway, seemed to work well for me. Course I have heated soft water and a heated garage but you could do this process without all that as well.

[Bob]

I like this idea. However I drained my hoses so they would not freeze for winter. :(

[wifehatescar]

My hot water hose connection is IN my garage :D

[Bob]

My hot water hose connection is IN my garage :D
That makes perfect sense then!
When I was drawing plans for a house I was making sure that the garage had a gas stub for heat and hot and cold water stubbed in.

[wifehatescar]

That's what I did, gas for the heater and hot/cold bib on the inside wall of the garage shared with the house. I don't have to turn it off unless it gets REAL cold outside.

[awd330]

I don't have heat in my garage, but I do have hot/cold water taps mounted on the innermost wall. With heavily insulated garage doors, the temperature inside the garage doesn't get below 40 even if it is well below zero outside. If I want to detail, I turn on all the lights (including two sets of ceiling mounted halogen lamps). Within 20-30 minutes, the heat generated by the lamps raises the temperature to about 50 degrees which is fairly comfortable for detailing. :)

By the way, my new winter pre-soak product of choice is Poorboy's Bug Squash diluted with 3 parts water. I visited my folks in snowy Pennsylvania over Thanksgiving and came home with a road salt encrusted car. The Bug Squash pre-soak worked much better at dissolving this mess than S&W or QEW pre-soaks.

BTW - I like my new foam gun too. So far, a 50/50 mix of SS&S and water in conjunction with the 1/128 dilution setting seems to work best for me.

[Bob]

The joys of a connected garage! :(