Forecourt Trader of the Year 2025 winner, David Charman at Parkfoot Garage in West Malling will shortly begin using the heat from his many fridges to warm the water for his jet washes.
“I don’t know why I haven’t done it before,” he says. “We’re taking the heat from our refrigeration that would have been thrown away and using it to warm the water for our jet washes.
”Up until now we would have heated the water with an oil or gas boiler. The water comes from our own borehole and at this time of year it comes out at five to six degrees but needs to be warmer than that. It costs us a lot to heat so this way will definitely save us money.”
The heat exchanger idea actually comes from the butchers industry: “I had somebody come to our site who had a past life installing refrigeration in butcher shops and they told me about it,” says Charman.
”Apparently it was a very typical thing for butchers to do. They obviously had refrigeration in their shops and in their big freezer rooms out back, and they would run that to provide hot water because there’s a lot of washing up involved in their business.”
Valeting is a huge part of Charman’s business. “Our car washes open at 7 or 8am and operate right through to 8pm and we’re relatively busy throughout that period so we have a constant hot water requirement.
“We’re going to take the water from our borehole, put it through our normal filters, then it’s going to head off to the water softener – as we’re in a very hard water area. It will come out as softened water, and it’ll head off through the heat exchanger and return directly back to the boiler where, hopefully, the temperature would have risen by some degrees.”
The Aquatec jet washes use hot water for a quicker, more thorough clean. The heat exchange water will never reach the 40 degrees needed for the jet washes, but Charman says these days every little bit helps.
“If we can cut the cost of heating water because the water is already at a slightly higher temperature, then that’s a very good thing. It’ll be one of those things that, if it does work and it’s relatively inexpensive, then people can calculate a payback.”
He’s not sure how much this is all going to cost him but reckons it will be ‘relatively inexpensive’.
Charman, who also won Forecourt Trader’s best sustainability strategy award last year, hopes the heat exchange project will go live in the next two-to-three weeks.
He invested in a borehole years ago and is a big advocate for them. “With a borehole, it’s not crazy expensive. It’s an investment, and again, very easy to calculate payback.”
He says with car washing so popular on forecourts once again it could be a really good investment for many sites.
