No HP Soap Or Wax Draw On Brand New Coleman Hanna Self Serve

Just installed a new 2 bay unit. Distributor sold customer a Splash-N-Dash unit which was overkill as it's a brand new building with pump room and bays. If youre familiar with the Splash-N-Dash, it's basically a self contained self serve unit that would typcally have the wand and brush mounted directly to the outside of the box/cabinet. It has its own compressors for each bay as well as low pressure pumps for tire cleaner and foam brush which work perfect. The HP chemicals are injected on the inlet of the CAT pump via GC solenoid manifold.

I have 24vac at the solenoids when the product is selected in the bay. I have no leaks so it's not pulling air. I've replaced the chem tubing, foot valve and took apart the solenoid manifold and cleaned them out to make sure no debris is present. It draws water from a main tank above the pumps. I've adjusted the pump pressure anywhere from 900psi (what is recommended in the manual) up to 1200psi. There is almost zero suction at any of the 4 eductors when the chem tubing is removed and a little water spluttering back out of where it should be pulling in. The only way i've been able to get product to the bays is by lifting the 2.5gal jugs of product up on top of the pump station above the pumps and letting gravity basically force the product into the solenoids.

I thought maybe this was just a priming issue at first and kept the drums on top to have it work and have no visible air bubbles in any of the chemical tubing but once the drums are set back down, it stops pulling. Also changing any product in the future will be a problem because of this and the owner wants to eventually switch to 30 or 55gal drums on the floor so gravity will not work. I'm at the point of just installing new solenoid manifold to try but this equipment is all brand new and the site is not even open yet.

I've contacted CH about this but do to me not being a distributor they can't do anything but send me the manual that is on their website which I already had. Owner and distributor are not working together which is why I was contacted for the installation.

Any help is appreciated.

I've never worked on one, but I'm assuming it needs some vacuum in the suction line to work. I would try slowly cutting off the water supply valve from the tank to the point that the pump starts to get noisy, then back off just until the noise goes away. See if you get enough suction there.

Try this...
1. Secure the gun with the trigger open
2. Select Soap
3. SLOWLY close the pump's water supply ball valve until the pump just starts to "rattle".
4. SLOWLY open the ball valve until the pump rattle stops.

Basically, the pump is happy with full flow from the water supply. Throttling the water supply will create the needed inlet suction and the chemicals will be drawn.

Greg beat me to it!

Restricting the water inlet did it. Thanks fellas. Always something so simple.

WHAT???!!!???
You mean I was finally right about something?
Can't wait to tell my biz partner!
(He won't believe me.)

Oh sorry, to confirm I took Greg’s advice, haha