Crappy day

**PhaRO** · 07-31-2007, 06:57 PM

What a crappy start to a week. Since my schedule is fixed washing the same people weekly and biweekly I have pretty predictable days and usually things go very smooth. It rained much of the weekend and then rained me out on Monday. Initially the forecast for Tuesday said rain. Later Monday evening it was changed to a 10% chance. I woke up and the skies looked nice, the forecast was clear so off I went. I had been feeling sick on Monday but felt a little better. I had a fair number of washes to do and was going to try and pickup at least one more from Monday. I opened my truck and something did not smell right. Argggh something must have opened or I left something in there over the long weekend. I couldn`t quite make out the smell. With the windows down I still could smell it most of the way to my first customer. As I was washing the body on the first car I felt rain. I looked up and there were no cloud overhead. I looked around for a runaway sprinkler or someone wielding a hose. There were cloud a little ways away from me so I just figure the rain was drifting. Nothing major just a fine mist and it cleared up. I finished up and drove to the next stop. The smell was driving me nuts and I was starting to feel sick like on Monday. I got to the next stop and starting digging around for the smell. Gym clothes were a little off smelling but not the source. I checked the bottles behind my seat and everything looked ok. It looked a little greasy under some of the bottles so I lifted them up. I found the smell. The greasy look was paint bubbling on the floor. My wheel acid bottle cracked and was leaking out. The smell was different then the acid usually smell probably because it mixed with various things under my seat. It ate the paint off the flooring in large areas. I poured the acid into an empty bottle and cleaned up much of it when I got home later on.

It was starting to heat up and the sun was out when I started the first of two washes at this house. I could see a few clouds moving in. Apparently these clouds were following me around. It would sprinkle and then stop, on and off the whole time. The humidity was just horrible when it would stop rainy and the sun came out again. The heat just made me feel worse than I already was feeling. I was almost finished with the first vehicle and went to wipe off the few drops and it started raining again. This time it was raining rather hard so I took shelter in the customers garage. I called home to have my wife check on the weather again and it was the same. She looked at the radar and said there are a few tiny specs of green in the area. The green specs were my personal rain clouds. As I talked the rain stopped again and I finished. It sprinkled a few more times on the second car there and the heat was killing me. I finished and decided I would live to fight another day and went home.

**danforz** · 07-31-2007, 07:04 PM

Sorry to hear it about the constant rain, it can be a real pain

**Setec Astronomy** · 07-31-2007, 07:18 PM

Another plus to HF!! Hopefully this will lead you (and others) to put the wheel acid bottle in an HF safe containment vessel (bucket, etc.) Probably a good idea to keep the acids in a separate bucket from products that might be flammable in contact with an oxidizer (PD`s, etc.)

**PhaRO** · 07-31-2007, 07:30 PM

Originally Posted by Setec Astronomy

Another plus to HF!! Hopefully this will lead you (and others) to put the wheel acid bottle in an HF safe containment vessel (bucket, etc.) Probably a good idea to keep the acids in a separate bucket from products that might be flammable in contact with an oxidizer (PD`s, etc.)

PD is Petroleum dressing? I never had thought about that. Sitting right next to it was CG`s

Liquid Extreme Shine. Although I`ve used acid for many years, the little I have left is probably the last I`ll buy.

**Setec Astronomy** · 07-31-2007, 07:37 PM

Petroleum distillates. Many acids are potent oxidizers (I`m not sure HF really falls into that category) so there is some really slim chance that it could spontaneously ignite a flammable substance. Let`s say you had an item with high surface area (like a MF towel or foam applicator) and you combine it with an oxidizer with the heat of a closed car in the sun, it`s possible you could ignite something. Not very likely, but possible. Most of your wheel acid should be a lot more dilute than that, but again, conceivable that if the bottle cracked selective evaporation could concentrate it. Again, unlikely, but these are the chains of events that lead to industrial accidents.

**Scottwax** · 07-31-2007, 10:13 PM

It has been my experience that "isolated storms" mean isolated in the exact spot I am working that day. Not to mention the lawn care crews that I swear are following me everywhere I go. :nervous2:

Sounds like a rough day, hopefully tomorrow will go better. I lucked out today because even though it stormed where I was, they had a carport that fully covered my work area. The humidity was absolutely horrible though, 90 degrees when the sun popped back out and the humidity was 75%.