Duane Oxley said:
Personally, I don't like Little Giant heaters. We build systems with them if the customer requests it, or in order to make a less expensive system. But I always try to educate the customer to the benefits of high heat. And if I'm successful, they opt for it.
I personally love Little Giant heaters! We build systems that are the most RELIABLE for our customers whether they like it or not. We don’t use heaters with steel coils rusting and putting out black water, that use flow switches and milliamp generators and electric spark igniters. We do not sell carpet cleaning systems that exceed the maximum temperature limit of the pressure hose of 250 degrees. If you use a system that exceeds the pressure limit of the hoses and an end ruptures and scalds a child, who now needs skin grafts on her melted little face, in a courtroom environment that would be considered a slam dunk loss on your behalf. You can kiss everything you’ve ever owned and will own for the rest of your life goodbye.
Duane Oxley said:
I've built systems with Little Giants and without them and can tell you from true A / B first- hand experience how they compare with "pressure washer" heaters.
Judson has built systems with heating systems other than Little Giant. The inventor of the truckmount, my Dad, Judson O. Jones, built the very first truckmount with a steel coil 600,000 BTU heater, milliamp control, spark-ignite, flow activated system. This system was built for Monsanto the inventors of Astroturf to clean football fields. This system worked fine for this application because the wand was four feet wide and had a flow rate of 8 gallons pr minute. So, Judson can give you a first hand experience on EXACTLY what does and DOES NOT work for a carpet cleaning machine.
Duane Oxley said:
Standard #3 Little giant heaters are fragile, lukewarm heaters, that simply can't keep up with normal demands for carpet cleaning, unless your idea of "demand" involves wild fluctuations in temperature and a relatively constant 150 degrees at the wand in warm weather. This may seem like a contradiction, so let me clarify:
If you pull the trigger on a Little Giant #3 with a wand with a #6 jet or equivalent, at 500 PSI on your system, and hold the wand keyed most of the time, it will give you a relatively constant 150 degrees at the wand.
If you cycle the trigger, 10 seconds on and 10 seconds off, you'll get spikes of close to 200 degrees. This is because when you're not keying the wand, the Little Giant is continuing to fire and "catch up" to the demand. (It isn't flow- fired. It's thermostatically- controlled. So it fires whether you have the wand keyed or not, if it's internal temperature is less than you have it set for.)
Little Giant heaters are NOT fragile. They are NOT lukewarm heaters. Any issues these heaters ever had were corrected years ago. Little Giant heaters WILL keep up with NORMAL demand for carpet cleaning. You do not clean carpets holding the trigger on full time! If you use the carpet cleaning machine for it’s designed purpose of cleaning carpets, which does NOT require you holding the trigger on full time, the Little Giant heater will maintain your desired temperature. Judson has hundreds and hundreds of Little Giant carpet cleaning systems with the original heaters that are still operating after 25 years! If these were lukewarm, fragile pieces of crap, I don’t think they would still be working after this long of a period of time. The temperature at the wand is irrelevant. All carpet cleaning systems lose the same amount of heat through their pressure hose, regardless of who’s system is being used. Greenie’s high flow system is designed for gaining more temperature at the wand without having to have the temperature of the machine beyond the capabilities of the pressure hose. Instead of having the temperature set at 270 degrees which is beyond the limit of the pressure hose, which is what Duane is suggesting HE does, the Greenie system flows the water faster through the pressure hose, minimizing the temperature loss to maybe 10 degrees.
Duane Oxley said:
And, it's copper coil is subject to easy freeze damage, precisely because it conducts heat (and cold) so well. In addition, they rattle as you drive. And that rattling has been known, in my personal experience in a number of cases, to cause enough wear in a given spot to wear a hole in the area and result in a leak.
Judson doesn’t suggest that the operator allow any truckmount to freeze, because a ruptured heater is going to be the least of your troubles. At least if it does rupture, it can be repaired at a local radiator shop. When a pump head bursts, there is no repairing it. As far as the rubbing of the coils goes, I’ve seen a few do this after they’ve been in use for around 15 years. Again, it’s just an easy fix at a local radiator shop. As I mentioned before, all the issues were addressed by Little Giant years ago.
Duane Oxley said:
Although a standard #3 is rated at 900 PSI, the suggested regulator is set to a 600 PSI limit. Some systems have pressure gauges that show a caution at 600 PSI and a "Red Line" at 900 PSI.
As far as the #4, if it's rated at 1400 PSI, then based upon what I've seen with their rating for the #3, I would be very hesitant to run it at 1200 PSI. So I wouldn't take that 1,400 rating as a given to work with.
When Judson introduced the Little Giant heater to the carpet cleaning industry, it’s original design was for church baptism pools which were relatively low pressure systems. Through the years, with our involvement with the design of the heater, we have increased the pressure ratings for the #3 and #4 heaters. They are now available in high pressure and standard pressure versions.
Duane Oxley said:
I've had customers come in with number 4's on their systems. And none of them actually deliver the heat that Les mentions. (Maybe he knows something that the other manufacturers are missing. I know he's not dishonest and does know propane- at least, Little Giant propane, well.)
As I mentioned before Judson has been directly involved in the development of this heater since the early ‘70’s and I don’t want to give away any Judson secrets, but a properly installed Little Giant will perform at the temperatures I claim.
Duane Oxley said:
Little Giant's own literature states that #4's deliver 120 degrees rise over input temperature at 1.87 GPM. That means that for an input temperature of 65 degrees, they'll "rise" it to 185 degrees. If you increase the flow through the heater, you'll get less "rise" in temperature. If you reduce the flow, you'll get more "rise".
These numbers are open flow ratings. Duane, do you know of any cleaners who clean carpet with the trigger pulled constantly and who never let go no matter what? Do you know of any cleaners who have their wand triggers duct taped open? If so, perhaps we should eliminate their wand valve altogether! At least that way they won’t get carpal tunnel syndrome from holding the trigger open all the time.
Duane Oxley said:
The above ratings do not take into account heat loss between the system (i.e., the heater) and the wand. Heat loss is typically 30 degrees, but can be more in wintertime and over longer hose runs.
Duane, what do you suggest we do to take into consideration heat loss through the pressure hose of 30 degrees? I know you’re not suggesting having the machine set at a higher temperature than the pressure hose is rated for are you?
Duane Oxley said:
Because Little Giants are thermostatically- controlled, they, by their very nature of operation, have a drop in temperature, in order to fire. (The thermostat functions as a "low limit" switch.) The "HT" series has a feature that does offset this somewhat, placing the thermostat closer to the cold water input and causing it to therefore be more responsive than the older "H" series.
This is correct Duane. When Judson developed the HT series and moved the thermostat from the bottom to the top, it was to take temperature fluctuation out of the heater. As a matter of fact, the heater does NOT drop in temperature to fire the burner, because we designed it to where the cold water hits the thermostat probe first and fires the burner ring immediately. This is why a Little Giant heater is so responsive like it has a flow switch, but it doesn’t have one. Why have a flow switch when you don’t have to?
Duane Oxley said:
As for "pressure washer" heaters, we build systems with them. They do go on and off when you pull the trigger. (The thermostat functions as a "high limit" switch.) And the time it takes for them to fire from the trigger being pulled is about 1 second. For them to go off takes about 2 seconds. At least, that's how ours do. (This can be affected by a few things, such as the make and model of the gas valve, the type of flow switch, and others, but it's entirely possible to build them so that they respond quickly to the wand trigger as a matter of normal, every day use.
Duane, I guess if you MUST have a flow switch even though you don’t need one, you should just keep tinkering with it to get it figured out.
Duane Oxley said:
I don't know about a 4,000 PSI coil for pressure washer heaters. Ours are rated at 10,000 PSI. As a result, they are virtually indestructible. (I've never known one to be damaged from freezing.)
Again, Judson doesn’t suggest letting your machine freeze. Even if you DO let a Judson machine freeze, as long as you just drain the heater first it won’t burst either. A copper coil is extremely efficient on fuel consumption and is rated WAY higher in terms of pressure than what we need to clean carpets or tile floors, so I don’t understand why anyone would build a system with a 10,000 psi coil that would HAVE to require a thick-walled tube to have these ratings. A system like this would be so inefficient!
Duane Oxley said:
If you've read my posts over time, you've probably noticed that I've been a promoter of "high heat / high flow" since I came on the Internet in 1997 or so. I was into "heat and flow" long before that. But at any rate, there is one thing that I've always been specific about when speaking of heat: flow rate. Why? Because quoting temperature without specifying flow is all buy meaningless, in my opinion. So, I'll say this about these heaters: On our standard, single- wand propane systems, I can set them up to deliver more heat than you can use. And I define that as "over 240 degrees, measured at the wand". So, they're "tuned" to deliver 230 to 240 degrees, measured at the wand... at a flow rate of 1.8 GPM. How much is 1.8 GPM...? It's 600 PSI, at the jet, through a number 6 jet or equivalent. (We actually measure at the wand valve, which is as close as reasonable.)
If you will go back to the beginning of truckmounts….the very first truckmount in history was the one my Dad has a patent on that he designed to clean Astroturf with in 1967. I challenge any manufacturer to produce a system with as much flow as it had. It had a flow of 8 gallons pr minute.
Duane, I know you went to a lot of trouble, making this long post, and it is quite obvious that you are trying to discredit my post. In this statement where you claim temperatures of 240 degrees at the wand, you are saying that you are selling truckmounts that are putting out more temperature at the machine than the pressure hose is rated for. The maximum temperature rating for Goodyear Neptune is 250 degrees. The max temperature for Parflex is 230 degrees. This is one of the most dangerous situations you are putting your customers in! If there is ever a rupture and someone is injured, with as hungry as lawyers are out there looking for anything, I don’t know how you are going to explain your way out of this.
I don’t understand why you WANT all that HEAT at the wand anyway! You do know that a piece of carpet is a piece of plastic nylon don’t you? One time I was playing with a heater, and I kept turning it up and up and up. I think I had it set at 250 degrees leaving the truck. Where the pressure hose was first entering the building, it was laying in a couple of loops. When we finished the job and were loading the hoses up, where the hose was laying on the carpet, it heat-set V grooves in the carpet that we could not get out. The heat permanently damaged the carpet.
Another thing with having high temperature on the pressure hose is that it is too hot to touch! You can’t keep reaching down to pull it out of the wand operator’s way.
Duane Oxley said:
There is a pressure loss between the system and the wand. That loss depends upon the diameter of hose, of course. But with 1/4" hose, it's 150 to 250 PSI, depending upon hose length. So, taking a median for example, 200 PSI is reasonable. As a result, you'll have to have 800 (200 PSI more) pressure at the machine in order to have 600 at the wand.
I know of no Little Giant anywhere that can match that.
Duane, if you are talking about running a Little Giant heater at 800 lbs, so you will have 600 lbs at the wand, a standard Little Giant heater will do this. There is no problem running 800 lbs on a standard Little Giant heater. The reason Judson developed the new high pressure systems was for tile floor cleaning purposes. You can run these heaters at 1200 psi.
Duane Oxley said:
As far as fuel consumption, these systems do use more than 1 gallon of propane an hour. They use about 1.25, but they deliver a lot more heat from that. (I say, "about", because it varies with how hot you run them and what your wand key habits are. If you key less and dry stroke more, you'll use less propane. If you turn the temperature down, you'll use less.)
The fuel numbers that I am giving on a Little Giant heater are accurate, because I have actually put a propane bottle on a scale and weighed the bottle under commercial and residential conditions. The #4 Little Giant heater on a 10 flow Greenhorn wand, set at 500 psi, on 100 feet of pressure hose, will maintain 240 degrees and consume nine tenths of one gallon of propane per hour under commercial carpet cleaning conditions. The same #4 Little Giant heater will maintain 240 degrees on a 10 flow Greenhorn wand, set at 500 psi, on 100 feet of pressure hose, and the propane consumption is .5 gallons per hour under residential cleaning conditions.
Duane Oxley said:
But one thing they do NOT do: They do NOT heat when you're not keying the wand. Because they're not thermostatically- fired like a Little Giant. A Little Giant, by contrast, is like a home water heater (because they are, basically, a home water heater, with coils instead of a tank). It fires and keeps the water hot, whether you're using it or not.
This is one of the best things about a Little Giant heater! It is very similar to a home hot water heater. People with home hot water heaters have them in their house. They are allowed to be inside people’s houses because they are extremely SAFE! Why are these home hot water heater’s so safe? They don’t require electricity. They don’t require flow switches. They don’t require milliamp generators, and they don’t have spark igniters. They have a standing pilot light JUST LIKE a Little Giant heater.
Duane Oxley said:
In addition, I'm not so sure that the actual trade- off in efficiency is accurate. Maybe this is because these systems have a lot of coil to them. They're not wound like a Little Giant. They're wound with a single coil going up the sides, and then "pancakes" of coil- flat spirals, basically- at the top. Some heaters I've seen have 2, some have more. Ours have 3 to 4, depending upon which model.
And by the way, we use the same coils for the oil- fired systems we build. And we use the same flow switch and plumbing, so they respond in a very similar manner... On virtually immediately and off within a couple of seconds.
There is a BIG tradeoff in efficiency for not using copper coils! Basically Judson designs carpet cleaners for that purpose only. We don’t overbuild something for purposes it will never be used for. All Judson cares about is reliability, simplicity, and common parts FIRST. As I stated in my response to this post that you were trying to discredit, I have NEVER seen a better heat source for a Greenie 10 flow wand than a #4 Little Giant heater. It is just so reliable and proven. They have been around a long time.
