Who Dual wands?

Ive cleaned a lot of carpet in my life and I CAN see a benefit in dual wanding but never have I seen it done or even see why it would be needed unless you are just cleaning two side by side buildings (rare). As you know I recently added my RC99 and have the 47 blower with the option to dual but knew I never would....if I thought I would need to dual wand I would have bought a bigger TM/blower.....anyway the increase with my RC99 is a nice kick....I dont know how much I increased things but it sure does a job at the end of the wand. I run the two ports to the RC99 and then down to the one.....this thing is screaming! Im pleased with the advice I got from you guys on getting the filter....the machine stays cleanere too. I dont see any leaks in this thing at all and honestly if it did it would be so minimal it may even help being I have a lot of extra suction now.....not that I needed anymore....its just there for the cool factor!



When do you guys dual...how often?

Nice! I think I need to back to 4 to the door myself and glad your happy with the RC99.

Never dual wanded but its very efficient having a helper pre vac pre spray and help with the hoses while your wanding

Why do they say 4 to the door anyway?

4 inches to the door, 2 2inch hoses


dual wanding is awsome but its only faster if you have a helper on each wand plus the guy wanding

just using a well trained helper on one wand is faster if your talking about commercial


for really large residential where there might be a basement or lots of carpet with 2-3 different stair cases leading to upstairs areas then dual wanding is fast.


We did a huge house the other day with 2 vans, not really dual wanding but sort of... 2 separate TMs


banged out a 600.00 job in less than 2.5hrs

Devon07 wrote:Why do they say 4 to the door anyway?

Because it's 2 - 2" vac hoses which makes it 4" and some cleaners run 2 - 50' vac hoses to the filter and the filter is usually sitting by the front door, thus 4 to the door term is born

Yes I dual wand once in a while if needed, usually for sectional and carpets job ( a good size one ), and just make sure both tools stick to the materials you're cleaning as much as possible.

I believe you can run dual wands with your blower too Devon, but you may need to increase the rpm on dual wand setting a little bit, so that you'll get a bit more cfm.

ya its really nice to bang out upholstery and carpets at the same time.

we do that with a splitter on the heat/pressure line then the rotovac CFX for vac on the upholstery since it gives more suction than you would ever need for upholstery especially when its a real short hose run

No dual here, with a 36 blower..........but I've always thought it would be cool to be able to on those bigger jobs, especially the larger commercial jobs.

I dont see me doing a dual wand at all here....I have one job that you dual guys would dual on but Im a beast and just truck through....okay not a beast but Im a bad ass....so, I lied again...I want to be tough though!





Dual involves two trained guys...Im the only one. Today my son let me trip over some hose and you guys know thats a no no. I pay him at each job as I want him to understand earning....his pay was weak on the trip job! Next month we go to weekly pay

Oh sure blame the little guy for tripping over hoses

I run the 47 blower in my butler, but never dual wand either. I just don't see how it is a benefit to have 2 under-powered wands cleaning compared to a single high-performing wand....now if I had an aerotech or something, sure.

I like the life lessons you are giving your son. Curious, have you ever read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad"? The first lesson he gives the kid is having him work in a store for low money and no time off until the kid gets fed up with it and shows up to say that he doesn't want to work any more.

Rich Dad says good, you just learned lesson one: Working for someone else sucks.

Mo...he had rule number one...DONT LET DADS FEET TOUCH THE DAMN HOSES! lol...he knew he messed up today when I did and his hands were in his pockets! he has a lot on his mind as he started school two weeks early with band camp stuff....they are working hard and being a freshman has its issues too...so, he was thinking ...just not about hoses. bet it doesnt happen again. lol.....only because I have bad knees and he worried he let me down....I let him off the hook.

Rob...yes, I read that book. he is planning his finances for the next few years....he is going to college ....he was feeling like he had some real cash with money in his savings and checking and $140 in his pocket so I made him buy lunch today....I had steak! He understands a lot about money and value of presious metals etc....I told him when he was young how a silver dime could buy a gallon worth of gas back in the day and how the same dime can today as well


His plan is to become a neurosurgeon or an anesthesiologist and has been for 3+ years. The carpet cleaning will teach him a bunch.

Lofty career choices.....go with the anesthesiologist, he makes more money and only has to see the patient once.

I asked my last one prior to surgery why he got paid more than the surgeon? He smiled and then reminded me that it isn't the surgeon that is going to kill you and bring your back after the surgery.

Choose your gas man carefully.

2 vans at the same time in a lot of jobs....

Running high flow wands, but really using Zippers Wands a lot...

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com
Bring on the Blue!

Mark Saiger wrote:2 vans at the same time in a lot of jobs....

Running high flow wands, but really using Zippers Wands a lot...

Mark Saiger
www.saigers.com
Bring on the Blue!

You are one of the reasons that I set out to build my new truck, I like the idea of 2 trucks per job. Having 2 trucks just makes sense to me as you not only can attack the one house, but offer services to the neighbors at the same time.

Heck, even pulling an equipped cargo trailer could get you that benefit. Then again, rolling in a Aero or Vortex gets it done with just one vehicle to maintain.

Many options in the industry, but having the ability to keep 2 tools working at the same time seems like a good one.

I have been running dual wands for over 20 years, and can tell you we are able to do a lot more work every day with our dual wand setup, as opposed to only running a single wand with 2 techs.

Those who think they can do more work single wanding with 2 techs, have not tried dual wands with a true dual wand truckmount, and two techs trained in setup procedures and proper hose management using dual wands. You have to have a machine with enough pressure/flow, enough heat, and enough vacuum, so that neither tech can tell there is someone else using the truckmount. Once you have that setup, you will never look back.

The reason there are so many naysayers about dual wanding is that many attempts at dual wanding have resulted in lackluster results, especially in the vacuum department, and the truckmount design is just not set up for dual wands.

You cannot dual wand unless every TM high pressure hose is 3/8" I.D (maintaining enough flow)., terminating into a manifold with two - 1/4" QD outputs. Your high-pressure pump has to produce at least 3.5 GPM. Your heat source has to produce at least 220,000 BTU's. You need at least a #45 blower, over-driven, feeding dual 2" hoses from blower intake to recovery tank, and two 2" barbs coming from the recovery tank going to 2 wands, each with it's own inline filter.

With our setup you do not need to keep one wand on the carpet at all times; in fact, you can disconnect the vac hose from one wand, lay it open on the floor, and continue to clean with the other wand no no noticeable loss of vacuum at the wand cleaning.

Im sure a dual wand operation can do more than a single wand.....I havent really justified more than a couple jobs a year that it would be worth doing the dual.....so, old school works fine.....the reason I bring it up, was in case I was over looking something. Dual has its place ...but not around here.....and I wasnt able to really recall when I would have prefered dual but just a hand full of times in my many years.

Devon07 wrote:Im sure a dual wand operation can do more than a single wand.....I havent really justified more than a couple jobs a year that it would be worth doing the dual.....so, old school works fine.....the reason I bring it up, was in case I was over looking something. Dual has its place ...but not around here.....and I wasnt able to really recall when I would have prefered dual but just a hand full of times in my many years.

Do you have a helper, or do you work alone?

Right now I have a helper but Ive had a company prior to this and had three vans with an air duct cleaning division, two guys in one van and two in the duct cleaning...the other two had just one guy set ups. It may just be this area because there is not really the need for dual in my eyes....I may feel different if someone can show or tell me how the savings is happening.....I know it could speed things up but we just dont see huge jobs here (commercial type) The biggest Ive done here was at a University and if dual was an option I would have used it.....with the huge jobs so thin, I couldnt even consider it. Never did my guys have the need to use dual even when one went to help the other on a job that grew in size from add on cleaning.

Dont get me wrong either....I can see if you are in the bigger cities etc. them having a place.

I agree with you Devon, I do mostly large commercial, but I prefer running dual trucks than dual wands simply because we always attack from different parts of the building to reduce hose runs.

I don't know if it would help running two hoses through roughly the same entrance without having to run extended hose lengths.

By dual trucks, I can keep the hose runs under 250 ft which is a good range for performance. Dual wands would require 400 + foot hose lengths at least.

I love the idea on residential as one can go high and the other low for multi-level homes without requiring a lot of extra hose. I would be interested in that, but I don't see any commercial right now where I would prefer it.

We mostly dual wand residential jobs, but we also do some commercial jobs.

Here's a doctor's office that we did recently, where we dual wanded.



You can see that we have plenty of heat (hear the wands popping), and you can hear the vacuum is very strong at each wand even when the other wand is laying open on the floor. Each wand has a #6 flow (2 -9503 jets on each wand) for a total of #12 flow, which is plenty of flushing. The heat was set on 210º, but it could go to 310º (have never turned it past 240º).

My point is, with this setup, both wands have totally full power for cleaning, just as strong as a single wand would have on other truckmounts.

Hoses are color coded so they do not get mixed up when managing them. We are able to bust out 3-5 medium to large jobs every day with 2 of us and 1 van.

No, dual wanding isn't for everyone, but it has worked for us for over 2 decades of cleaning using the same truckmount. BTW, our truckmount is over 30 years old, and will outperform many new ones.\

We have another van and ETM, which also dual wands with plenty of power, but prefer using one van and 2 guys.

Here's the ETM doing a single wand job.



It has as much power as some gasoline truckmounts, but runs on two 15 amp circuits. It has the same patented LP heater as our other truckmount (one which I have patented and used to sell to cleaners).

What size blower does the 30 yr old have, Bob?

Davey Cracker wrote:What size blower does the 30 yr old have, Bob?

It is on it's second Roots #45 blower, and still has the original Cat pump (has been rebuilt a few times), and the original recovery tank. The TM has 22,000+ hours on it.

We designed the vacuum system after I purchased this TM new in 1985, by re-routing the vacuum hoses and adding another 2" hose from the blower intake to the recovery tank (4 to the tank - LOL). Then we added a second 2" hose barb for the second wand to the recovery tank, and have never looked back (The Roots #45 has a 2.5" intake, and a 2.5" discharge port). We also added a 4" Stoddard silencer (4" intake and 4" exhaust) to reduce any back-pressure from the vacuum blower (all hard pipe and no 90º bends - only 45º bends), and run an 8" pulley on the 24 HP Honda motor, and a 7" pulley on the blower. The Cat has the original clutch for extraction work.

No one else has ever been able to get this much vacuum out of a 45 as far as I know. We are running the Honda at 3000 RPM after over-driving the blower (8" pulley on motor to 7" pulley on blower), to give us the sweet spot power curve on the motor, and to reduce fuel consumption, with no bog-downs while running even with wand lock-down.

I dont doubt the power of TMs being able.....I just get tangled up with one set of hoses....Im an old dog I guess, but honestly in residential it doesnt make sense to me!....I can understand doing lots of footage and like Rob says....have different approaches and more like doing two jobs at one place.....Sounds like you have it very efficient though...not sure I could achieve that.

I once used a ETM and had doubts it was any good...I was very impressed and to this day would still use one or even buy one.

Now, lets talk about the guy (unless its you LOL) who sets the wand down on the pressure hose! lol....when I teach a new guy I tell him to flip it over and the thing that looks like a handle is in fact NOT a handle ...its a wand stand that he is welcome to use as a handle. lol

Ive threatend firing over that....mainly because it can tip and break something or get wore and burst indoors....you know its going to squirt all over the 7th graders painting that is threated like a picasso.

Over all...nice set up and strong sounding equipment. Ive never been so busy in a day I couldnt get the workload done with single wanding.

Curious Bob, why did you stop building those heaters? I like the sound of it.