Low-volume pressure cleaning

The South Florida Water Management District defines three low-volume methods one after another in section 40E-21.051 of its water shortage plan. Read together, they show how differently the rule treats pressure equipment from a hose or a bucket.

That difference is the whole of the definition's difficulty. The first two paragraphs can be checked by looking at the equipment in someone's hand. The third asks whether a machine was designed to reduce the water flowing into it, and then hands the measure to industry standards without naming one. The rule prints no gallons-per-minute figure, no pressure figure and no standard by title, so the phrase cannot be turned into a number by reading the rule alone.

The definition's measure is inflow volume, the amount of water going into the equipment, a flow quantity of the kind the GPM entry on gallons per minute describes. Whether a given rig counts, and why a pressure figure cannot settle it, is taken up on what counts as low-volume pressure cleaning under the rules.

The phrase reaches a driveway or roof job through two instruments, and a third document in Bonita Springs attaches a figure to a similar phrase of its own.

In the county's standing rule

Collier County 311's summary of Ordinance 2015-27 says that car, truck and boat washing "and the washing of exterior home surfaces and roofs, shall be allowed anytime with the use of Low Volume Pressure Cleaning Equipment, Low Volume Mobile Washing Equipment and/or water hose equipped with an automatic self-canceling or automatic shutoff nozzle." The summary names that equipment without defining it, so nothing here says the county uses the district's paragraph (17); it is also silent on the ordinance's reach inside the cities, and Estero and Bonita Springs lie outside Collier. The standing rule in full, including where the water has to drain, is set out in the Florida rules that touch a roof cleaning, and a driveway's side of the same rule is in the paver cleaning water-use rules.

In each declared phase

The district's phase text repeats the term under Other Outside Uses. In a declared Phase I or Phase II, "Outside pressure cleaning shall be restricted to only low volume pressure cleaning, seven days a week", and the Phase III and IV texts keep that sentence with fewer days. That is the rule's phase text, and it applies only once a phase is declared; the district's order can impose other restrictions in lieu of or in addition to it, so the days in force are the order's. What a declared water shortage phase is gets its own entry.

In Bonita Springs' guidance

Bonita Springs' own summary of Water Conservation Ordinance 21-07 answers its own question plainly, "Pressure washing is not restricted", and then offers a best-practice line: "Best water conservation practices are to use low-volume equipment that produces water pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch to 4,000 pounds per square inch." That is the city's conservation guidance for its own addresses and nothing more: it is not the district's definition and it is not the county's.