Question regarding the use of RO water for washes

[Kolokefalo]

RO or reverse osmosis water is a true natural ph of 7.0. While this may seem irrelevant in car detailing it is very significant in water chemistry equations. Since ph is logarithmic and a ph of 8.0 is 10 more alkaline than a ph of 7.0 and a ph of 9 is 100x more alkaline and so on... I am sure the chemists who worked on the car wash formulas weren't able to anticipate all the variations in the local ph of everyons city water supply.

For example my ph here of my city water in Tarpon Springs Florida comes out of the tap and nearly 8.2 - 8.7. Very alkaline due to the limestone in the aquifer. Up north due to salt treatments to soften the water it could be a huge swing. I am very new to detailing but know a great deal about water chemistry due to owning a reef aquarium store and in that environment a ph swing of .2 -.5 in a narrow window can cause coral death and fish toxic shock. By now you're wondering what does this have to do with detailing?

Seeing as how the people who developed these mixtures for washing our cars I am sure in a lab environment used RO water as their base has anyone used it and noticed a difference?

I would think keeping the naturally occurring minerals in our water off our cars would be something to think about as much as possible.



I should preface this by saying I am ridiculously anal retentive and have access to a 25 gal per day RO unit.

 

[15951]

Some people here use RO water to allow for spotless drying without towels, but I've never heard anyone mention differences in the effectiveness, sudsing, etc of the wash chemical(s). I would expect that manufacturers would control for a reasonable range of water ph when they're developing the product. Even if they don't, the basic surfactants that make up car wash soaps aren't picky, and should work just fine within the normal range of tap water ph.

 

[Kolokefalo]

The final sheeting rinse being RO water makes perfect sense. What got me thinking about this was reading through threads and someone had mentioned concrete dust in their area because concrete has a ph of 12+. I thought about how bad that stuff could be as a surface contaminant.