The ‘fastest tunnel of Scandinavia’ is opening soon
Pesukunkku translates as Car Wash King. From next month on, the expanding Finnish company claims to have the fastest express car wash tunnel in Scandinavia. “We will be able to wash up to 150 cars an hour”, says CEO Jussi Jaakkola.
The new, fully automated tunnel will be situated in the town of Toppila, in central Finland. Close to Oulu, with over 200,000 inhabitants the fifth-largest city of the Scandinavian country.
Do you need such a fast tunnel in relatively small town like Oulu, we ask ourselves. “Of course we need it”, answers a very confident and proud CEO Jussi Jaakkola. “When you plan to open a tunnel you first have to focus on the density of the city you are in. So you draw a circle of about 7 km and count how many people live inside that circle. The density will justify building a tunnel or not.”
The new, 50 m long tunnel will be equipped by Sonny’s The Car Wash Factory while the signage is from Mr Foamer. The extensive water filtrage comes from Clewer, a Finnish company that has specialized in cleaning and reusing about 90% of the used car wash water.
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Really fast
Jaakkola gladly explains why speed is everything when it comes to exploiting express tunnels. Especially in Scandinavia.
“The speed and the length of the conveyor always correlate. It means the longer the conveyor is, the faster the speed can be. It influences the production per hour. So we are able to handle up to 150 cars per hour. It is a really fast tunnel.
When you are working at such a high speed, everything needs to be very powerful and reliable. For the drying, we are using 10 blowers with a combined power of 150 hp.” The company also has cut back on staff. Everything is automated, from entering to exiting and payment. “We only have one staff member present at the site.”
EuroCarWash
The new express car wash is the second Pesukunkku location in Oulu. It has been installed by EuroCarWash Ltd., A company run by Esa Mäkinen. It was founded in 1992, and is a full service carwash machine supplier, including waste water management (Pineline), license plate recognition (Easywash) and water reclaim systems (Clewer).
The company has thus far installed eight sustainable express car washes across Scandinavia, in Sweden and Finland.
All the car washes use recycled water and green power from solar panels. “This is our 9th tunnel” ,says Mäkinen. “We are one of the bigger suppliers of car wash equipment in Scandinavia so we have a lot of knowledge about the existing tunnels in Scandinavia and I can safely say we now have built the fastest one. Other tunnels are not coming even close to the speed of the tunnel we are opening in Toppila next month”
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Costs cut in half
Both Finnish men can talk all day about express tunnels and its technique. Mäkinen: “Let me give you a simple example why speed is so crucial”, smiles. “Let’s say the conveyor is moving forward one meter in 10 seconds. Let’s agree the car is 5 m long and let’s say you have a nozzle big enough to spray the whole side of the car. How long must it run to spray the whole car? I will give you the answer: 50 seconds to spray the whole length of the car. Now let’s say this pump uses 1 kW for the job. Now what happens if you double the speed? If it only takes 25 seconds, you will cut using the pump in half. The same principle also applies to the blowers, all the energy used and the chemical & water consumption. All variable costs are suddenly cut in half if you are able to double the speed.”
So you can offer a much cheaper wash…
Jaakkola: “Exactly. Our unlimited membership starts at €30. You can wash your car as much as you want. In that case it’s CRUCIAL to limit the production cost for one wash. So in the end the speed helps to limit the production cost.
All of our nine tunnels are sustainable. We recycle up to 90 % of our waste water and limit our power consumption.”
Is that important in Finland and Sweden?
“Of course. Water is very expensive in countries like Norway, Sweden and Finland. It’s about one euro per wash. The cost of freshwater includes the cleaning of it. The cubic meter price of water in Scandinavia is about five euro. If you are using 4 to 500 L for one car, you are paying 2 1/2 euros per wash. So you need to limit the use of water and also use recycled water. When you’re selling unlimited car washes like we do, the biggest cost is water. So if you are able to recycle, you can cut this cost drastically.”
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What are other challenges in Finland, Sweden and Norway?
“One of the challenges is the weather. Especially in Norway, with its long coastline. This means the temperature is often around zero all winter. And since many of the roads in Norway go up and down, they have to keep them permanently salted during winter.”
I can imagine this salt probably causes a lot of corrosion in your machines.
Jaakkola: “Yes. We need to use a lot of solvent. Not only because of the salt but also because of all the bitumen residue, caused by spiked winter tires. This combination of asfalt and salt is very bad. Water can stay liquid even when it’s freezing outside. The asphalt sand mixed with liquid salt is a very damaging element in a car wash. You cannot clean this dirt from a car, using regular chemicals. The alkaline which is used normally doesn’t do anything against asfalt bitumen. So we use solvent. This means you have a HUGE chemical load in your recycling water which can cause huge problems in your technical department. You have to be able to get rid of this porridge somehow if you want to recycle water. We clean this water completely.”
Locations
Pesukunkku plans to open more sustainable carwashes in the future, though one of the problems is finding a suitable property. Jaakkola: “If you want to build a long tunnel, you need to find a big location. For a 50 m tunnel you need a property that’s at least 70 to 80 m long. That’s difficult to find in a residential area. Even in Finland.”
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