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Exceptional Results By Using Spot Free Water

I Hate Water Spots!

You may have washed your car yourself, or accidentally parked next to a sprinkler, and noticed these very hard white circles on your paint, that don’t seem to come off no matter what you do. What causes these?

Here in Albuquerque and certainly other places, you are extremely lucky if you are fortunate enough to have soft water. Hence the massive bags of salt or other treatments sold around the city, which is great for your inside water and your hair. Unfortunately, most sprinkler systems are not hooked up to a softener.

Hard water can create serious spotting issues on paint, creating a huge challenge in paint correction. Not only does hard water directly affect the performance of car wash soap, if left to dry, it can etch into your paint. This is Permanent Damage, just like bird droppings or scratches. Calling an IDA trained and Certified detailing technician like Peter with Park’n’Shine is your best bet to restoring your car to its pristine shape.

How to avoid water spotting!

How your water is softened or purified can make a huge difference for you as you detail or wash your car. Here are four main ways to soften water, as well as different costs and advantages.


1 – Distillation

Essentially boiling the water into a gas and then condensing it back to liquid. All the solid ions stay behind in the original container and only water gets recovered as liquid. Distillation while fully purified is not cost effective, because of the energy and equipment required


2 – Water Softening

You Probably have a water softener or know someone who has. Potassium chloride or sodium chloride are common choices for softening water. You will get great results in the shower, and in areas with hard water you may wish to soften before using other methods of purification. Softened water can still leave spots on your car however.


3 – Reverse Osmosis

Pressurized, filtered water is pushed through a fine membrane. The ions remain on the outside of the membrane and only ions that are small enough can get through. Most ions get filtered out and result in purified water. Reverse osmosis has a relatively high up front cost, wastes some water and is not as high a purity as DI. But, it costs less to maintain and the water is fine for detailing.


4 – DE-ionization

Water is sent through a bottle with resin that attracts and holds all the ions. The pure water passes through and is collected on the other side of the bottle. De-ionization is a fairly easy set up and results in the highest purity but is much more expensive to run. In areas with very hard water, DI alone is completely cost prohibitive but can be combined with an initial RO process to get both cost efficiency and very high quality water.


The benefit of using pure water is that it allows our detergents to perform at their optimum level, which means we can use less chemicals. This is easier on the environment and on your car.

At Park N Shine, we use Reverse Osmosis for exceptional results.

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We also Utilize a technique known as the Rinse-less Wash, Which we’ll describe in another article.

Source info from Dave Phillips – P&S Director of Operations and Chemist Extraordinaire

Ceramic Coatings

Ceramic Coatings

Clear coat is generally only as thick if not thinner than a strand of human hair! When your car is polished or paint enhanced, a very fine layer of that clear is removed, showing extra gloss underneath. What happens when you go through this extra thin layer? Well, it’s not pretty. In Fact it significantly reduces shine, and the life of your paint. It’s called clear coat failure. What can you do to remedy this you ask?

Ceramic Coatings have been around since 2004. It seems every detailer has a ceramic coating service – even body shops and PPF installers are getting in on it. I have been behind the times it seems. I might be called a laggard… or slow. Really I have been in the dark. There are some misconceptions about Ceramic coating. What exactly is a Ceramic coat? It’s been called a wax on steroids, this simply isn’t true. LESS LIKE A WAX, MORE LIKE A SECOND CLEAR COAT. In the factory clear coat is applied through multiple stages, in a clean room environment, and baked to bring the hardest part of the clear to the surface. Like clear coats, most ceramic coatings require a cleanroom, and baking for the best finish, leaving mobile detailers lagging.

Also like a clear coat, ceramic needs to be maintained. We’ve come a long way from waxes and sealers, (which generally only fill, and give gloss but wear out quickly) with ceramic “boosters” that act as a protection and give that wow effect making your vehicle easier to clean just like wax, sealants, polymers would with a factory clear.

Ceramic coating molecularly bonds to your clear coat giving it a harder, easier to clean surface, and adding thickness to your clear coat, replacing any that was polished off in the paint enhancement process.

What about mobile detailers? Advances in polishing and ceramic technology allow us to do a better job, than standard polishes, which have oils in them that prevent the ceramic coat from “sticking” as the polishes we use don’t have these oils, and actually lay ceramic coating down as we polish, effectively lengthening the longevity of your coating and insuring against failure.

Depending on the product you choose and the layers added, coatings can last from 6 months with an entry level coating, to 4-6 years with a high end coating.

Every ceramic coat, even at the beginning needs a booster, to protect it from rain, as if it gets wet before full cure you risk getting water spots that will need polished out. After your vehicle is coated, it is recommended depending on how much your vehicle is in the elements, that you maintain your ceramic coating by regular washing, just like you would with clear coat, and a booster coat, every 6 months to a year.

1 – Park n Shine is committed to preserving as much clear coat as possible.

2 – Park n Shine is IDA certified, and is one of two mobile detailers in Albuquerque, New Mexico having that certification. We are committed to continuing education, and giving you the customer the best possible service and quality possible with a mobile service.

3- We can come to you, and Ceramic coat your vehicle!

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