FlowStat
Viran Nana displays the FlowStat app.
During his many years as owner of one of the largest operations in the car wash space in this area, Viran Nana, more often than not, dreaded one piece of mail over all the others.
The water bill.
“There is no greater headache or stressor than looking at a $10,000 water bill because of high water usage or leaks,” he says.
Perhaps the most important business metric in the car-wash business is the amount of city water used per car washed.
Car washes are designed to recycle a lot of water for reuse. But things can go wrong with recovery systems in place. Leaks can form, too. As Nana notes, there are a dozen things that could go wrong that no one would recognize until Uncle Sam’s courier arrives with a special delivery from the city.
“I could not find a consistent solution. I couldn't deal with it.”
It was money that literally and figuratively was going down the drain. Not surprisingly, he found that other operators had the same problem.
But that was then. Nana, having sold his 11 car washes in 2022, has brought to the marketplace the solution that always escaped his clutches, a digital water meter in the main equipment room.
FlowStat
Nana is calling FlowStat, his new product, the world’s first instant water usage data and high-usage alert system for car washes. It’s designed to save operators more than $30,000 in water savings per location annually.
Nana developed the technology through his Euless-based Q Companies, with his son Dilan, who is on the stretch run of completing a graduate degree in computer science at Stanford.
FlowStat’s proprietary technology is the first mobile application that leverages key performance indicators to monitor the volume of municipal water utilized per car washed on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis.
FlowStat instantly alerts users if gallons per wash are above normal, enabling operators to swiftly address issues in real time and avoid high water bills at the end of the billing cycle. FlowStat also detects water leaks, and alerts users if and when leaks are present.
Presently, numerous car wash facilities consistently utilize 40 to 60 gallons per vehicle, Nana says, often without being aware that simple adjustments could reduce the figure to 20 gallons per vehicle.
“If the tunnel is set up for 20 gallons [per car], then [the operator] will put maybe 30 gallons or something [as a gauge],” Nana says. “But if it goes over that, then a message will be sent to whoever on the team needs to know that something is wrong. Or at night, if you have water going through the meter when you shouldn't, then it's going to assume that something's wrong. Maybe a leak.”
That’s what they call a game changer.
The system runs on six key components:
- Car count data: Data is obtained from the car wash tunnel controller or sensor; and sent to the app via a cellular gateway
- Digital water meter: Meter is installed in the main city water line, sending the water usage data to the app
- FlowStat housing: Houses the cellular gateway and stores gathered data from tunnel controller and digital water meter
- FlowStat application and database: Measures the volume of municipal or city water used per car washed, collects data, and transmits to users’ smartphones or computers for real-time monitoring and analysis
- Cellular antenna: Transmits data to FlowStat application
- High usage alerts: Alerts operators when usage exceeds the maximum allowed usage (set by operators)
Nana says he tested his technology at 17 distinct car wash facilities across the United States.
FlowStat made its formal market debut at the Southwest Car Wash Association's annual convention and expo in Fort Worth on Feb. 28-March 1. Nana will go on the road with it at the International Carwash Association’s 2024 The Car Wash Show in Nashville on May 13-15.
The technology is in use at 22 locations.
“People are interested, curious, and excited,” Nana says. “Nobody is really doing this like we are doing it. A lot of people thought of your water bill as something you can't do anything about, right? You just get it and you pay it. It's like your electric bill. Nobody thinks you can reduce it, so you get it and you just pay it. So, now they're kind of realizing that they can do something about it.”
Nana and his business partner and brother, Jags Patel, sold their car wash business, Q Car Wash, to Caliber Car Wash, an Atlanta-based company, in June 2022.
The deal included all 11 of Q Car Wash’s locations, including five in Fort Worth, and one each in Benbrook and Arlington.
FlowStat
The brothers built Q Car Wash into one of the largest operations in the express car wash space.
Nana says he has a patent pending on the technology.
Pricing to implement FlowStat per car wash location is $8,900, plus a monthly $199 maintenance and optimization fee. No long-term contracts are required.
Operators get a full return on their investment in less than a year, according to Nana, who should definitely know. After Nana sold his business in 2022, he and his accountant analyzed how much his car washes lost per year. The figure was about $330,000 a year.
“Freaking huge,” he says rhetorically.
So big, in fact, did the negative impact of water waste have on his net operating income that it cost him millions in the sale of his car washes, he says.
“This is a big problem,” Nana says. “FlowStat is poised to play a pivotal role in facilitating improvement.”