Trends in Flow

Trends in Flow – I sell a lot of jets and work with guys on optimizing their Flow.

Tracking the trend in Flow per linear inch definitely shows a trend towards higher Flow.

To calculate the Flow per linear inch of your wand:  (Number of Jets x Flow rate of each jet) divided by the length of the cleaning path.

Example greenhorn wand: (5  x 2)    /   14 =   0.71 (see Table)          

Standard flow rates from 2000-2010 with the first truly great wands like the Prochem Titanium and Stanley Steemer wand were low, like 01 and 066 respectively. Stanley’s jets were so small they absolutely needed a jet screen filter ( I came along and made their filter fit all jets).  Some cleaners today still use the lesser flows because of the faster dry times but not necessarily better cleaning results.

Greenie, aka Greenhorn Commando, around 2005 got us to thinking.  

He bumped up the flow on his favorite wand, the CMP14 x 5 jet to 02 flow jets for a total Flow of 10 Flow.  Everybody noticed that increasing the flow of each jet (and getting the jets closer to the carpet) increased the heat at the fiber and distributed the flow more evenly and gave us better flushing.  

It all added up to better cleaning results.  He & Lisa sold lots of Greenhorn wands back then.  Some of them are still in use today.

At my urging, Tony Dang relooked at the Prochem Titanium wand, opening up the vacuum slot from 3/16″ to over 1/2″. Conway followed suit.  

Both adopted my Ultra Slots and Ultraholes.  The combination gave us wands that suck harder than any wands prior to theirs. With the improved recovery, we were able to bump up the flow of the jets even more and provide us with wands that outperform even the Prochem Titanium.

Click to Enlarge

So the Table shows the Trend of Flow per linear inch over time.

The Table shows what real cleaners have actually preferred over the years.

You can see the Average Wand AW29 has gradually moved up from 0.33 to 0.50 depending on user experience and the power of his extractor.  Limited by the 1 1/2″ tube, this wand will never be more than an average or  ‘starter’ wand.

You can see the other popular wands like the Prochem Quadjet and how they’ve have stuck with 015 jets all these years.  The probable reason is the limitation of the 1 3/4″ tube.  As good as this wand is, it just doesn’t have the same recovery as the 2″ tubed wands.

One of the first high performance wands, the Prochem Titanium 6 jet has always come with 01 jets but most real cleaners upgrade to 015 jets.  I hardly ever see guys go back to 01 jets on this wand.  The new standard went from 0.43 to 0.64.

Maybe due to the stronger blowers and higher heat capacities, the 015 jet spread to other wands.

Wands like the CMP14 and Westpak14 followed with increased flow 015 jets as standard while PMF’s wands continued with the old style 01 flows.  

Finally, even PMF has gone with the trend. This increase in flow trend never looked back.

We can see Greenie’s influence (green box).  

He got us to using the 02 jet which almost doubled the Flow per linear inch from 0 .43 of the six jet Prochem Titanium to 0.71 with his and Lisa’s Greenhorn.

Greenie’s and my High Shear Kits allowed guys to get better performance from the increased heat, better flow distribution AND increased flow.

For example, the EVO13 originally came with low flow jets but with my High Shear Kit, linear flow increases from 0.31 or 0.46 to 0.62.

Now we have the Dang and Conway wands with the ultra wide opening vacuum chambers.

These wands come stock with 02 jets or a Flow per linear inch of 0.57, a step up in performance from the enviable the Prochem Titanium.

The .025 jet, which I made for you guys years ago is finally gaining in popularity largely due to the increasing popularity of these two wands.  This jet gives the same linear flow as the Greenhorn, 0.71 with one fewer jet, thus the larger droplet with greater impact that guys have been looking for in a wand.  Now, forward thinking cleaners like Andrew Roldan have stepped up from Greenie’s 0.71 linear flow to what may become the new standard of 0.86. I have seen a few cleaners make this jump in the past, mostly with the Prochem Titanium, but most fall back to the 02 jets. Now that we have these wands that suck so much harder, I expect the new 0.86 linear flow will be here to stay.  Let the trend continue.

Andrew R. picked ‘Ultra high Flow’ jets for his 14″ wand. ‘Ultra high Flow’ is the 03 jets.  Add it up 4 jets x 3.0 = 12 Flow. That’s breaking new ground if you look at the Table at 0.86 4×3=12/14″ = 0.86

Now he’s considering the 16″ head (the V4 heads are interchangeable). If he goes with the same ‘Ultra high Flow’ jets then that’s 6 jets x 3 = 18 Flow. 18 Flow over 15 inches is off the charts on the Table of Flow per Linear inch at 1.2 6 jets x 3.0 =18/15″ = 1.2 We did have a few guys try 03 jets with their Prochem Titanium 6 jets a few years back but they got streaking pretty badly. That didn’t go over too well.  Ask Ashley M.  He had to try the big 12″ – he backed off real quick.

Now we know that the Dang V4 does sucks harder than the Prochem Ti so the 03 jets are feasible. However, I think it would be advisable to come down to ‘High Flow’ or 025 jets which is still making new ground beyond what everybody liked in Andrew’s video. A Flow per Linear inch of 1.0 would probably be the sweet spot for the Dang V4 15” 6 jets x 2.5 =15/15″ = 1.0

If Andrew could pull off 0.86 Flow per linear inch with a Boxxer 421 using a Dang v4 then surely you guys with strong blowers would be in heaven with the same thing or even the Dang v4 x 15” with 1.0 Flow per linear inch.