Case Study
Car Wash Mods — Teaching Industrial Vacuums When to Breathe
How smarter controls, better UX, and disciplined engineering turned runaway power bills into measurable ROI.
This story didn't start with a whiteboard.
It started with $8,000 electric bills.
At car wash sites, the numbers were impossible to ignore. Month after month, the power bills stayed high — regardless of how busy the vacuums actually were.
That's when the real question surfaced:
"Why are our biggest motors running at full speed… when most vacuum bays are empty?"
THE REAL PROBLEM
The largest motors on the property were running 100% of the time, from open to close.
That might make sense if:
But in reality:
Energy wasn't being used.
It was being wasted.
THE EARLY PROTOTYPE (BEFORE US)
Before we entered the picture, Jon (owner of this idea) had already done something important:
They noticed the problem and started experimenting.
An internal engineer began prototyping a simple idea:
A vacuum is "in use" only when the nozzle is removed from its holster.
It sounds simple — until you try to make it reliable in the real world.
Wind.
Customers bumping hoses.
Nozzles not seated correctly.
Vibration.
Weather.
It took nearly two years of iteration just to make the concept dependable.
"By the time Jon approached us, they had a working mechanical concept — but not a system."
WHERE DESIGN 4 IT STEPPED IN
Our role wasn't to reinvent the idea.
It was to turn it into a product.
That meant:
In short:
We took a prototype and made it deployable.
"We took a prototype and made it deployable."
THE GUI & UX TRANSFORMATION
The system needed visibility.
So we added a screen-based interface that allowed operators to:
No cryptic LEDs.
No blind tuning.
The UX was designed for industrial environments — clear, readable, and fast to understand.
This wasn't a tablet slapped on a box. It was a purpose-built control experience.
CONTROL LOGIC THAT MATCHED PHYSICS
The real breakthrough came when airflow control and motor control were treated as one system.
We integrated:
demand
Instead of relying on rubber seals across dozens of idle poles, only active poles opened.
The physics did the rest.
Less airflow → less turbine load → less energy required to spin.
THE BLAST GATE MOMENT
The first installation ran on a 20 HP Sonny's turbine.
With just the vacuum idle system:
27% energy reduction was achieved in the first months
Good — but not game-changing.
Then came the next idea:
"What if every vacuum pole had its own blast gate?"
EVERYTHING CHANGED
Once implemented, energy reduction jumped from 27% to 75%.
Why?
One user → ~65% speed
Two users → ~75% speed
Three users → ~85% speed
Airflow stayed strong.
Energy usage collapsed.
REAL INSTALLATIONS. REAL DATA.
By 2026, installations began
Hypothetically, measured using installed power meters:
Site 1: 75% average power reduction
Site 2: 55% average power reduction
And critically:
This wasn't lab data.
This was real-world abuse included.
THE BUSINESS MATH
With an installed cost of approximately $20,000:
Site 1 projected ROI: 3.52 years
Site 2 projected ROI: 2.94 years
And that includes:
In other words — conservative numbers.
WHAT THIS PROJECT REALLY DID
Gorilla Express didn't just reduce power bills.
They:
And most importantly:
They stopped paying for energy they weren't using.
THE TAKEAWAY
This project reinforced a core DESIGN 4 IT belief:
Real efficiency isn't about better motors.
It's about knowing when not to use them.
From GUI and UX
to control programming
to BOM and deployable hardware
This wasn't optimization.
It was intelligence added to infrastructure.
"Ready to turn raw equipment into a thinking system?"